Video Capture Card Trouble Shooting

1. If you are getting this error when you try to capture video, it means you have an IRQ conflict between your capture card and another board installed in your computer.
2. Try going back into the set up menu and trying a different interrupt.
3. If none of the available interrupts work, you may need to ‘move’ one of your other cards (i.e. sound card, modem, scanner etc.) to a different IRQ.
4. If you know that you have IRQs available, but you still get this error message, then your system may be locking out the upper IRQs (10-15) for PCI or plug and play cards. You will need to go into your computers bios and make an IRQ available for your capture card. Look for a section called PNP, Plug and Play, PCI or Bus. You want to either disable Plug and Play or enable a specific IRQ for the card. You may want to call your computer dealer or manufacturer for tech support.

1. You must use the correct video compression.
   With our cards the only video compression method that will allow playback to tape is the specific compressor of the capture card. So for our analog MJPEG cards you must use the vendors MJPEG CODEC. Likewise our DV card require you to use the DV CODEC.

   If you are sure you are selecting the right Codec, but the video still won't play out of the card, you may have a conflict with your graphics card and Win95. This is usually caused by one of the new display technologies, such as Direct X, Direct Draw or Active X. In this case you will need to call the tech support line for the video capture card to confirm the conflict and find a solution.

2. Double check your wiring.
   Make sure every cable goes between an input and an output, and make sure you use the same color cable between video in and video out.
3. Make sure the recording VCR is in LINE, AUX. or VIDEO position. NOT channel 3 or 4.
   
4. Check for a bad cable.
   Hook-up your camcorder directly to the VCR and test each cable separately.
5. Use Y/C (S-VHS) cables instead of regular video cables if you have S-VHS or Hi8 equipment.
   Mixing S-VHS and regular equipment may result in a black and white image.

Do not throttle back hardware acceleration. Make sure that you do have your graphics card set on full. Go to Control Panel>System>Performance>Graphics You will see a slide bar to adjust the acceleration of the graphic card. Set it to 100%

My transitions are jittery and blurry
This problem is caused by not having the correct data rate and quality settings when you make your finished movie. You need to have a data rate equal to the data rate you captured the video at. By using a consistent data rate, your rendering will be much faster. Use the table above as a guideline.

My animations look jittery/blurry
Our cards do a great job with animations, but you need to take a little extra time to get them perfect. If you try to import animation files directly into your timeline, they will often render poorly. I recommend creating a timeline for each animation and rendering them individually without audio. Use the same data rate for each animation and the video you have captured. Now bring in each animation as an avi file into the timeline. Add your audio to the timeline. Render the new movie, complete with all animations, video and audio. It takes an extra step and a little longer, but the results are well worth it.

My audio is garbled or out of sync
This will often happen if you have not used the same exact setting for your sound card in Win95 and your capture and editing software. This is especially true with DC30 and AV Master. Choose the audio quality you want to use. (ie 44,100 Hz, 16 bit, Stereo). Select it in both your video capture and editing software. Next we have to make sure Win95 uses the same settings.
Go into >Control Panel>Multimedia>Audio>Customize>44,100 Hz, 16 bit, Stereo

Don't select "Optimize Stills" box in the Premiere Compression dialog box.
Checking this box speeds up rendering, often at the expense of video quality. If you are making a video out of still image clips, or adding grabbed frames to your timeline, DO NOT CHECK OPTIMIZE STILLS. In fact, I haven't been able to find one example when using this feature does anything but cause dropped frames or jumpy images. Just another example of how using common sense can work against you. This important tip was submitted to me by a fellow digital videographer. Thanx Pat!!!

Timeline Playback

1. Use your cards presets.
   Only change the data rate. For timeline playback to work properly all clips must be captured and then rendered out using the same exact settings. If the video clips have different settings, timeline playback will not work and you will be asked to 'make movie' instead. I recommmend using a data rate 10% higher then what you used to capture. (eg if you capture at 3000 kb/sec, use a data rate of 3300 for the project)

2. Render out still image, animation and heavy FX sequences into avi files first, then import them into your timeline.
   Not only will this make timeline playback work better, it speeds it up dramatically and results in better overall video quality

3. Title sequences can mess up timeline playback.
   If your titles aren't coming out correctly, or timeline playback is giving you problems, follow the tip above and render out the title sequence first as an avi file

4. Keep your soundtrack simple.
   If you try to create multi-layered audio tracks for your video, the odds are timeline playback will not work smoothly.

5. Watch your throughput, especially if you use a single eide drive for storing the video.
   As you get to the inner tracks of a hard drive, the throughput can drop dramatically. If your drive is filling up, then the transitions/effects that are rendered into the temp files may end up on a much slower portion of your drive. This results in the video looking great, but poor quality or dropped frames on the rendered portions.

Making Better Movies