Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.

[dolari]

I need $80. Quickly. Lucy, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to resell your posters. When I print up another run, your two posters will be waiting.

I wasted my entire day today, transferring VHS to XVid...only to find that if my system drops even one frame, the sound and video synch go to hell. They're all being recaptured again, this time with the encoder on "realtime" priority. Basically, it locks down your system sop nothing else but that one program can run at 100% CPU. It works fine on that setting, but I'm hoping it will allow me to hit "STOP" when it's over. It literally locks the system up tight.

One of these tapes is the SIXTH time I've tried to encode it.

And as I look past the laptop to the CPU, I see it's aready dropped 10 frames....

Comments

[iqtech.livejournal.com]

No problem! I owe you an apology for not picking them up sooner. I'm glad that this will help you. I also want to talk to you about transferring stuff to VHS to XVid. I may have a paying job for you - not a big one but paying.

[kisai.livejournal.com]

Hate to say it but you are going about it the wrong way. Don't capture directly to XVid, no processor in the world can do it in real time... well at least not yet.

If you are copying VHS tapes to digital, you should be capturing to whatever hardware spec you have. In my case I just run everything through my DV Camcoder via the Firewire. Once it's captured, I then just set the codecs and run a encode phase. I've converted crap from VHS to DVD this way, just change the output to AVI in said program and set XVID (Actually Gordian Knot is better at this, just set the target and off you go)

Anyway, if you aren't using a DV encoder at some point, you are never going to complete a capture straight to XVid. Once a frame is dropped it's useless.

Capturing RAW also isn't an option unless you capture at 320x240 (VHS resolution, but probably not what you want). I encoded something from Flash at 720x540 (recommended by something...) that was only 90 seconds long and it created a 3.2GB file, that I then turned into a 7MB x246 (next-gen mpeg-4, higher compression than Xvid) So to turn 3.2GB of raw data into a 7MB file is pretty awesome. It's only 3 times larger than the original flash output file.

Another solution, is to capture to an intermediate codec, the quality is going to be terrible by comparison, but if you capture straight to Mpeg-1 or Mpeg-2 you can transcode it to mpeg4(xvid) with FlashMpeg or one of it's later incarnations. If you have an All-In-Wonder series ATI card, or whatever the equivilent is in some other capture/video combo card made in th e last 5 years it should have an MPEG2 or native hardware assisted codec available.

If you are using some USB capture device... goodluck. I have a Mpeg-2 hardware encoder/tv tuner that came with my laptop. Most stuff captures without a problem, but if there is a lot of fast motion, the frames just freeze and sometimes the audio drifts (depends on system codec)

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

>Hate to say it but you are going about it the wrong way. Don't capture
>directly to XVid, no processor in the world can do it in real time...
>well at least not yet.

Actually, I'm not. I'm encoding to Indeo 5.11 using the Quick Compress option via my WinTV Radio. It's VERY VERY VERY good with broadcast TV, almost never dropping a frame. From there, I use Virtualdub to do a two pass encoding into XVid at 1 Gigabyte per two hours.

The proble, it seems, is more "dodgy old tapes." Al lot of the dropped framed are preceeded by a frame missing a lot of the second interlaced frame, so it sounds like the tapes are just shooting out bad vertical blanking signals. :P

I'm getting good quality, just bad synch. But I've since found a solution that works for me. :) Someone mentioned to up the framerate to 120fps in VirtualDub, which allows for better finetuning of the frame rate (in the hundredths of a frame area). It allows you to fine tune it to death, and it worked! :D

[emilydm.livejournal.com]

Some relief is on its way, dear heart. Very very soon. (You know that already, but it doesn't hurt to repeat it.)