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As I have mentioned a number of times previously I do gaming related videos providing real life and other computer issues are not getting in the way but I thought I would share a couple of things in case any of you also have issues like the ones I am going to talk about. As a further note, I am currently using Windows 7 RC 64bit with latest versions of all codecs and software at the time of typing this up so problems may or may not be present for you but at least you know of possible solutions.

Picked up the Blackmagic Intensity Pro capture hardware last year some time and is a lovely bit of hardware, in fact I think I made a post about it. My first problem came about with a slight limit on my hardware setup, HD capture would result in sound falling out of sync. A lovely bit of free software called Virtualdub is able to compensate for any momentary delays and so keep everything in sync and for the most part is not noticeable with how it compensates.

When I started capturing from my 360 I soon came against my first problem, when I would play back the video it would look like it had a bad interlacing problem and I would be capturing at 720p! Processing the videos even in this state resulted in some horrible results. I soon tracked down the issue to the mjpeg codec that ffdshow uses and a prompt disabling of these fixed it all up.

Before

Disabling MJPEG

After

Next up I started on some retro compilation projects which are now primarily known as ‘Mashups’, a lot of this is done via emulators and a lovely little program called ‘Fraps’, enter the next issue. Playback of the captured video would be very slooooooow, not a case of it couldn’t handle it, a case of the timing was completely gagged. Enter ffdshow again, it has a decoder for Fraps which I had to also disable, but this wasn’t to be the end of it all.

Fraps Disabling

So I sorted out ffdshow to stop it interfering in my work but when I came to importing the video’s into the editing software all was still not well. In the case of the Fraps video footage I would get no sound, no strange encoding or anything like that, even though it knew sound was present, it just wasn’t seeing it. Which is strange as it all worked in the 32 bit XP setup. Also some of my raw captured 360 video footage would also play with incorrect timings.

One very simple solution to these two issues and probably others that I have yet to encounter and I can only think the reason it fixes up might be down to something with the headers in the files themselves. Load the files into Virtualdub, make sure both video and audio options are selected to direct stream copy and just re-save. Sorted, both problems were solved and the videos imported fine into the editing software.