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maybe someone with experience of Winnov Videum 1000 AV cards can help me...
I have a PC based on a an AMD 1.2G cpu with 1Gb ram on a Biostar motherboard
with Via chips, and windows xp sp2. During capture this card is dropping
frames like crazy, I'm capturing PAL video using the composite port. I've
found the only way to get a decent recording is to capture at 160x120 (tiny
window) at 15 frames per second. This is well below the performance I was
hoping for. I'm using driver v2.11.3617.1, date 05/05/2002 which I
understand is the latest.
It occurrs to me that my PC might be to blame. Past experience has taught me
that some things just do not like AMD processors, and other things do not
get on with Via chipsets but I don't know if this is really the problem.
Maybe there's some patch or whatever that might improve the performance of
this card? Thanks for any pointers.

net wrote:
> maybe someone with experience of Winnov Videum 1000 AV cards can help me...
> I have a PC based on a an AMD 1.2G cpu with 1Gb ram on a Biostar motherboard
> with Via chips, and windows xp sp2. During capture this card is dropping
> frames like crazy, I'm capturing PAL video using the composite port. I've
> found the only way to get a decent recording is to capture at 160x120 (tiny
> window) at 15 frames per second. This is well below the performance I was
> hoping for. I'm using driver v2.11.3617.1, date 05/05/2002 which I
> understand is the latest.
> It occurrs to me that my PC might be to blame. Past experience has taught me
> that some things just do not like AMD processors, and other things do not
> get on with Via chipsets but I don't know if this is really the problem.
> Maybe there's some patch or whatever that might improve the performance of
> this card? Thanks for any pointers.
>

You can see some reference to the subject here. But I thought that
VIA had done something about this as well (maybe changes to the
VIA 4-in-1 drivers? BIOS change by mobo maker? not really sure).
In other words, don't grab this just because it is there. Check the
history of the VIA response to this technical issue, to see if it
has already been solved.

http://www.georgebreese.com/net/soft...b21_readme.HTM

The fastest way to get a handle on the problem, is plug the card into a
more adequate computer. If the problem disappears, you've got proof that
the machine has something to do with it.

The Videum product description, claims their design was specifically intended
to help problems caused by placing a lot of capture devices on the same bus.
But if the total practical bandwidth on the bus is limited, the product
is eventually going to have to toss some frames or otherwise relieve itself.

Another example here, of old info available:
http://www.usbman.com/Guides/VIA%20T...d%20Tricks.htm

"VIA PCI Latency Patch

* VIA Chipsets have a known issue with PCI Latency. Although, specifically
developed for IDE and sound problems with VIA chipsets, users have reported
improved performance in other areas including USB and video capture. If
USB is otherwise working correctly but, not as fast as you would expect, try
the patch from VIA Hardware
o Download PCI Latency Patch"

The file from that web page, is stored here. But this one won't unzip properly.

http://web.archive.org/web/200304031...tency_v019.zip

A couple of hints at the bottom of this page:
http://www.hauppauge.com/html/sw_pvr_pci.htm

"VIA 4-in-1 driver update will often fix compatibility problems with the WinTV."

And more fun and games tuning a VIA chipset here. The author of the last post
doesn't say whether he is using something like WPCREDIT/WPCRSET or something similar.

http://www.sudhian.com/index.php?/fo...wthread/17295/

Instructions on WPCREDIT here:

http://www.overclockers.com/tips280/

KX133 PCR is here. Still cannot seem to find WPCRSET. (I presume
the PCR is only valid for one chipset type, so you might eventually
want to check what chipset is actually used on your board :-) )
http://web.archive.org/web/200302070.../download.html

WPCRSET is at the bottom of this page. Support was stopped by H-ODA
some time after this. I don't know which OSes this would work with.
http://web.archive.org/web/200005111.../download.html

So your choices are to wade around in some techie nonsense,
or try another machine with a better PCI bus :-)

Paul

I have used various Winnov cards for years with great results.
I'm doing 704x480@29.97 almost every day (we do pipeline
video inspections and this is how I archive them).

Things to check:

Make sure your HD is running DMA5 (or the highest it will run).

Use the card's built-in hardware compression - it works GREAT
and drastically reduces the rate of data transfer. There is no reason
whatever to capture uncompressed, despite what others will tell you.

Because the Winnov card is a VfW device, you will have the
"2GB limit" issue. Therefore, I use Markus' AVI_IO to capture.
Try the trial version and see if things improve.

http://www.nct.ch/multimedia/avi_io/

Let us know how it goes.

"net" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:46750503$0$30324$(E-Mail Removed)...
> maybe someone with experience of Winnov Videum 1000 AV cards can help me...
> I have a PC based on a an AMD 1.2G cpu with 1Gb ram on a Biostar motherboard
> with Via chips, and windows xp sp2. During capture this card is dropping
> frames like crazy, I'm capturing PAL video using the composite port. I've
> found the only way to get a decent recording is to capture at 160x120 (tiny
> window) at 15 frames per second. This is well below the performance I was
> hoping for. I'm using driver v2.11.3617.1, date 05/05/2002 which I
> understand is the latest.
> It occurrs to me that my PC might be to blame. Past experience has taught me
> that some things just do not like AMD processors, and other things do not
> get on with Via chipsets but I don't know if this is really the problem.
> Maybe there's some patch or whatever that might improve the performance of
> this card? Thanks for any pointers.
>
>
>

alas it seems this old computer of mine just can't do it anymore. I made a
mistake about the card, it's not a 1000, it's a Win-97 which makes it a
discontinued left-over from the NT4 days. Not good news.
Nevertheless I tried the card in a different more powerful PC, a P4 3G with
2G ram on an Abit motherboard full on intel chipsets and the difference was
huge. On this faster PC I was able to capture at 640x480/25fps with no
trouble. Nice clean audio and good lip sync, even tho I was using a
different audio input source. I suspected the former PC I tried was past it
and I think I was right - the playback audio on it was 'bubbly' and the lip
sync was out at res's above 320x240. What puzzled me was - even on the
faster PC the capture program showed a very high frame-drop-rate during
capture, and yet the playback was as smooth as anything. Strange.