Hello everyone, how are you?
A while ago, a long time ago actually, I bought an AV.io HD and only tested it recently.
I’m having a big problem with frame drops in the capture every 5 seconds. The capture is at 60 fps and every 5 seconds there’s a small drop and then it goes back to normal, and this happens all the time.
I’m capturing from an old computer, an Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB DDR400 and the video card is a Geforce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB. My recording computer is an Intel i9 9900KS 5GHz, 32GB 3600MHz and a Geforce RTX 4080 SUPER, on which I record 4K videos smoothly without frame drops. I use Windows 10 Pro x64.
At first I thought it was OBS, but I left all the settings at very low quality and it stayed the same. By the way, OBS shows that it is at 60FPS all the time, without any frame loss in the recording, which shows that the problem is not with it. I tried Xsplit Broadcaster and had the same problem.
I removed all USB peripherals from the motherboard, a Gigabyte z390 Aorus Pro, and left only the AV.io HD on the USB 3.1, unfortunately the problem persisted. The board’s light is solid blue and when it is capturing it starts blinking.
I installed the configuration software, updated the firmware, tried with performance mode enabled and disabled. I noticed that after these procedures the performance got even worse.
I tried several configurations on PC Retro. Initially I left the CRT monitor as primary on the VGA output and the AV.io as secondary on the DVI output, cloning the image, then I switched the outputs. I tried using split VGA to use only the VGA output of the FX 5950 Ultra. I tried leaving only the AV.io as a monitor, both on the VGA and DVI outputs, also without success. I tried another DVI and VGA cable, but nothing worked. The only thing I couldn’t do was use another USB 3.0 cable.
Another thing, regardless of the resolution or FPS I capture, the drops continue. For example, if I set it to 50 fps, the drops are below 50, if I set it to 30 fps, the drops are below 30. It’s a slight slowdown for a second and then it goes back to normal.
On the recording PC, I tried many different OBS and Xsplit settings, I turned off G-sync, turned on vertical sync, set it to 60 hertz, left it in maximum performance mode, etc., all without success.
I recorded a short video and uploaded it to MEGA. If you can post it so people can see what happens, let me know.
Can you please clarify if you connect a different video source, like a modern day computer or video camera if you see the same issue? Is the frame drop always seen in the recordings or can it be seen in monitoring the capture without recording in OBS or an equivalent program?
I am not sure I understand what you mean by MEGA - can you please elaborate?
Hello, Ryan. How are you? I had given up on the AV.io HD, but today I decided to resume the journey to make it work correctly. Sorry for the English, I’m using Google Translate. I meant to say that I can upload a video to MEGA or Google Drive to show the problem if you want. Regarding the other questions, yes, this happens regardless of whether it’s a computer with VGA/DVI output, camera, or laptop. I’ve already tried other capture programs and the same happens, both in the preview without recording and while recording. I have another USB 3.0 capture card, specifically a Fifine Ampligame, and none of this happens with it. Any idea what might be going on?
Sorry to hear you’re still running into this issue. We don’t have other reports of this issue so I am not certain what might be happening here.
If you can send me a video of what you’re seeing, as in the raw recording made with the AVioHD, we can take a look but please note that we can no longer make any changes to this product as it was deprecated several years ago.
Please provide a public google drive link with your recordings - thank you!
Hello my friend. How are you? Sorry for the delay in replying. I just uploaded two videos to my Google Drive.
Recording of a Max Payne segment:
Recording of a Counter-Strike 1.6 segment:
In Max Payne, the slowdown starts at 00:28 of the video and ends at 01:17. Note that the video continues at 60 fps; only the capture has a low FPS even though the game is also running at 60 fps.
In the Counter-Strike video, the slowdown starts at 00:52 and ends at 01:41.
Some acquaintances said it could be the USB ports on my motherboard that might be the problem, some inconsistency in the speed of the USB ports when constantly using something at high speed. I’ve already disconnected all other USB devices and left only the AV.io, and it didn’t help at all. This happens in any recording software, whether capturing or not, even in the preview screen. With the buffer on or off, nothing changes either. But as I mentioned before, this doesn’t happen with my other capture card.
Thank you - I found it very hard to see on the Max and Counter examples but NFSU2 was easy to see when the lower frame rate occurs. It is hard to say why this is happening, normally it is performance of the computer capturing the image. The AVioHD does transfer uncompressed video to the connected computer, so the data is quite large compared to cheaper capture cards that may encode the image. This larger data stream can be more taxing on a computer, for sure. Other thing to consider is power usage - the AVioHD can use almost your entire USB3.0 power bus depending on the resolutions being captured.
One thing you could try is ensuring you are passing the exact resolution output from the game console or computer to the capture card is being requested in your capture program. If the resolution differs, the AVioHD will scale the image on chip which, while I am not aware of previous issues, could in theory result in issues as the chip then needs to process the data before sending via USB.
Could you check to see if a straight passthrough works?
Ex,
1280x720 → AVioHD → capture program request 1280x720
Also,
If you use a DC powered USB3.0 hub in between the AVioHD and your computer, does this improve performance?
Hi, brother. Unfortunately, I’ve already done all possible tests, including passthrough with the same resolutions and hertz, and still nothing worked.
I believe the PC setup isn’t the problem: Core i9 9900KS, 32GB DDR4 3600, RTX 4080 Super; maybe it really is a USB power issue, as they said. I bought a high-end StarTech PCI-E USB card to connect the AV.io and see if it fixes the problem. I’ll post the results as soon as I test it. Thanks!