How can I improve video capture performance???

[Hoeboy]

My current specs:

P4 1.6a
MSI Sis645 Ultra
256mb PC2100
Maxtor 40gb 7200rpm
ATi AIW 7500
WinME


If I set capturing settings to lowest quality setting, my computer speed is "okay." Anything higher, the computer gets pretty slow. How can this be? Even a 1.6ghz can't capture at decent speed at medium quality? Sheesh. I also enabled DMA on all my devices. Is there anything else I should do to try to improve performance? Is it a RAM issue?

BTW, when I capture, frame rate loss is less than 1% so no problem there.

 

[Hoeboy]

dfd

 

[Willoughbyva]

what are your capture settings?

Depends on what you mean by getting slow? Do you mean that doing other tasks the computer is slow? Or dropping frames?

Will

 

[Duvie]

sounds like he means doing other task, or multitasking while capturing....

At 1.1ghz tbird I could capture at highest settings with no frame drops but the picture of capture couldn't run at real-time....

Whe I switched to 1.4ghz tbird I was able to do highest settings withnear flawless simultaneous playing of the video....multitasking on that was rather slow as well....

Now remember since a 1.4tbird was rather close in performance to a 1.8 p4 willamette then it is likely your non-oc'd 1.6a is quite simlar in performance.....


Since you are not dropping frames it is likely you have fast enough harddrives and drive is fairly well defragged....


I would recommend jumping the fsb up a bit and trying to increase the memory bandwidth...both the raw cpu and memory bandwidth should help....


At 1.8 default with 266mhz ddr when encoding a divx movie multitasking felt sometimes rather sluggish...When I bumped it up to 2.4ghz with 333mhz ddr it drastically helped this and I could do 3-4 things simultaneously....

Also I notice better performance when running winxp...It manages system memoy and programs running and laying in the background more efficiently..It also seems to manage cpu priority much better as well...

 

[joohang]

Get a dual CPU setup.

 

[rmblam]

Try capturing with a different codec. I am guessing that you are using the one from ATI with the AIW which is mediocre IMO.

Definitely: Always defrag the drive before capturing and disable video preview for better capture performance.

Oddly enough WinMe (like XP) comes with windows movie maker. You can upgrade it to the better version (1.2) and encode some rather decent footage (in WMV); if simple capture is all you are after. For capture and editing, DV(raw AVI) via firewire is the way to go.

 

[Hoeboy]

Well I use ATi's Digital VCR and Cyberlink's POWER VCR II. Both cause the system to be sluggish when multi-tasking. I would really love to be able to set up either programs to capture movies/shows at a scheduled amount of time WITHOUT maximizing and showing preview. I want it just to do it in the background silently but I can't find the options to take out capture preview or anything of that sort. Does it even exist?

Do you guys think it would really help at all if I upgrade my 256meg of RAM? What about from PC2100 to PC2700? My SIS645 mobo is able to take PC2700 but I thought I didn't really need the extra speed considering PC2700 costs a bit more.

 

[Hoeboy]

<<Oddly enough WinMe (like XP) comes with windows movie maker. You can upgrade it to the better version (1.2) and encode some rather decent footage (in WMV); if simple capture is all you are after. For capture and editing, DV(raw AVI) via firewire is the way to go.>>

I've used the version that came with WinXP and liked it a lot better because it gave a lot more options for saving files than WinME's version of Movie Maker.

I've searched all over MS's webpage but only found a patch for Movie Maker for WinME. My version is now 1.0.1377.0. If you can direct me to the correct d/l page for v 1.2, I'd appreciate it!

 

[rmblam]

I think you will benefit from more RAM, but maybe not to the level you are seeking. I think it all depends on the capture app. For example, Adobe Premiere is dual cpu aware and it won't work in the background at all while capturing.

I'm not sure about the VCR apps. I have not used them.

It looks like 1.2 is only available for XP (bastardos). My bad. You can get the Windows Media Encoder though. It may allow the higher bit rates that XP WMM 1.2 version does.