Help recording from VCR (1 Viewer)

[nayborbob]

MediaPortal Version: 1.1.3.0
Windows Version: WXP Pro SP3
CPU Type: AMD Athlon 3000+ 2GHz
Memory: 1GB
Motherboard: MSI 6741
Video Card: GEFORCE 6200
Sound Card: Extreme Sound PCI Audio
1. TV Card: ATI TV Wonder 650 PCI

It seems like I can record normal Cable fine, but when I hook up my vcr to the TV tuner, set the channel on MP to 3 and try to record, the recording is not smooth, there are sound and video dropouts (?), like the PC cannot keep up w/ the video input or something.

I tried to close down some apps thinking maybe I was overloading something (but why will it record normal cable ok?).

Not sure if I need any special settings, I messed around with the setup on the MP, tried different screen resolutions and different types of recordings (for high quality, lower quality, etc), nothing seemed to help. I am not very smart on codecs and all the different filterings, etc, I pretty much used the default setup.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

nayborbob

 

[mm1352000]

Hi nayborbob

First, welcome to the forum!
Okay so I think the first question would be: how much CPU is being used when you are creating the recordings?
I don't *think* your tuner has hardware encoding chips. If that is the case then your CPU is being used to encode the VCR/analog video, and I don't know if it would be up to the task. So please check your CPU usage while attempting to view/record from the VCR input...

mm

PS: You've posted this thread in the support section. If you read the support rules here you'll see that we require logs for all support threads. Next time please remember to post them. It saves time for both of us (for example, I would be certain whether your tuner uses hardware or software encoding, and I would know which encoder was being used if I had logs now). Getting logs is *really* simple. Just use the watchdog, for which there are excellent instructions in our wiki -->here<--.

 

[nayborbob]

Thanks for the kind reply. You are probably thinking....typical American.... ready...shoot...aim. Nothing like diving right in. I will try to get the log. One further Q tho, and you can probably tell me where to read about it, but when I start MP in regular mode, I cannot bring up any other apps on top of it (like the task mgr to monitor cpu usage... is there a trick to that?) First time up I lost track of the exit button and had to log onto another pc and find how to do it in the guide... you are probably howling by now....

Thanks
nayborbob

 

[mm1352000]

Thanks for the kind reply. You are probably thinking....typical American.... ready...shoot...aim.

Not at all - many people "forget" to post logs, so it is a trial for my patience sometimes, but absolutely not limited to Americans.

I will try to get the log.

Thanks

One further Q tho, and you can probably tell me where to read about it, but when I start MP in regular mode, I cannot bring up any other apps on top of it (like the task mgr to monitor cpu usage... is there a trick to that?)

A good question. You can't bring other apps on top when MP is in full screen mode. However you can change to windowed mode by pressing the alt and enter keys at the same time. That should allow you to view task manager and MP side-by-side. You can get back to full screen by pressing alt+enter again...

mm

 

[mbuzina]

Another one: Disable MP Allways on Top in Configuration -> You can have your task manager on top of MP.