Frustrating Capture & Slow Encoding

[gazzol]

I just purchased Easy Media Creator 2009.

 

I have:

 

Dell XPS with Windows Vista 32 bit Premium SP 1

Intel Quad Core Q9450 2.6 GH, 12 mb cache

4 GB memory

Dell Xcellerator with ATI 650 Theater PRO (hardware encoder) - latest update

 

Easy Media Creator 2009

 

1) Frustrating Capture: I'm capturing from my Video Tape Camcorder - VHS through composite video. The Capture Video works well when there's no break in the video. When there's a break in the video between scenes, the capture stops and writes to the file. I want to record a full thirty minute video without having to constantly click things to keep the capture going.

 

Is there any way to force Roxio to record for 30 minutes? I checked the box and have the record set to 30 minutes, but it still stops every time the scene changes -- the signal is lost from the input stream. However, I should be able to force Roxio to keep recording for 30 minutes.

 

Note that this capture happens in real-time because of the hardware encoding. I get an MPG file immediately after the recording stops. This is good.

 

 

2) When I go to encode the video after editing in Video wave it's painfully slow. Can I confirm that Roxio is using the hardware encoding feature from the ATI 650 Theater PRO? When I drag and drop a file into th Dell Excellerator the encode happens at least 20 times as fast at the same quality. What gives here?

 

Many thanks in advance.

 

[ggrussell]

1) As far as I know there is no way to FORCE Media Import to ignore breaks in the video. However if you are using the ATI card to capture to MPEG 2 files, those files should not be re-rendered except the parts that were edited.

 

 

2) No, Roxio does not use any MPEG 2 hardware. They would have to write code for every card on the market and that just isn't feasible. However Videowave and MyDVD are multi-threaded and should take advantage of multi-core CPUs.

[JohnnyVino]

Here's an update. I defrag'd my HDU which is internal with 80GB of free space. I thought there may have been a write latency issue causing the capture to come out of sync but that's not the case. I also updated my ATI display adapter. My capture stops randomly whenever I begin the process. Sometimes it goes 10 minutes but most of the time it stops much more quickly. It fails if I capture to DV AVI or MPEG2.

 

I read another post from Digital Guru (Lou) about WinDV capturing the Date Code data from the tape and have used that to capture an entire 120 minute tape without issue.

 

Ideally, I would like to capture most of my tape in MPEG2 since I have very minimal editing, mostly cutting/splicing and some color/contrast enhancements when necessary. WinDV is good but will not convert to MPEG2 on the fly.

 

Does anyone know if this has been raised to Roxio as an issue?

 

Any suggestions?

[JohnnyVino]

I'm having the same problem with video capture where the capture stops for no apparent reason. I've found that it's not from scene to scene, but simply random. If I use Windows Movie Maker I can capture non-stop without issue. I have an ATI Radeon 9200 display adapter and capturing through Firewire NEC OHCI 1394 Host Controller. The device is a Sony Digital Handycam model DCR-TRV103.

 

I just purchased this package because of all the integrated functionality and so I would not have to use other applications.

 

Is there a fix for this?

[gazzol]

1) As far as I know there is no way to FORCE Media Import to ignore breaks in the video. However if you are using the ATI card to capture to MPEG 2 files, those files should not be re-rendered except the parts that were edited.

 

 

2) No, Roxio does not use any MPEG 2 hardware. They would have to write code for every card on the market and that just isn't feasible. However Videowave and MyDVD are multi-threaded and should take advantage of multi-core CPUs.

 

Thanks for the response. Was hoping for something different but at least now I know.

 

Cheers

Lou

[gazzol]

Thanks for the response. Was hoping for something different but at least now I know.

 

Cheers

Lou

 

 

I just realized that as I was using Roxio 2009, it has a SyncIt! Tool which uses my hardware encoding chipset (ATI 650 Theater). Just wondering why would it use software in Video wave but hardware in SyncIt! Any help/thoughts would be appreciated.

 

Cheers

Lou

[bimicher]

I just realized that as I was using Roxio 2009, it has a SyncIt! Tool which uses my hardware encoding chipset (ATI 650 Theater). Just wondering why would it use software in Video wave but hardware in SyncIt! Any help/thoughts would be appreciated.

 

Cheers

Lou

 

I don't know anything about SyncIt or your hardware but did you try encoding in Videowave using the hardware setting?

[ggrussell]

I just realized that as I was using Roxio 2009, it has a SyncIt! Tool which uses my hardware encoding chipset (ATI 650 Theater).

Exactly how did you come to that conclusion? Speed? How quickly SyncIt converts a file depends on the source format and destination format. As far as I know, Roxio C2009 uses DirectX API programming and does not directly access any hardware. My TV card also has a MPEG 2 hardware encoder/decorder and I'm fairly sure nothing in Creator 2009 will take advantage of it.