Bug Report Extremecap U3 freezes

[Darksim]

The U3 will freeze on a frame at seemingly random times, usually several hours apart, once within 5 minutes of each other. This never happened to me when the U3 was the only video device connected to my computer, so I would assume it has something to do with either the C920's or the BMI Shuttle.

My current use of the Shuttle is solely as a splitter/distribution amp, due to it liking to randomly freeze my entire computer upon starting a stream in obs and having such an inconsistent framerate when it's working that I doubt it even averages 30 fps. The Shuttle can however accept 480p over component and output 480i over composite and s-video while also outputting 480p over component and hdmi, which is perfect for streaming smash. What I've been doing currently is turning on the Shuttle's passthrough by opening Blackmagic's Media Express, and capturing it's hdmi passthrough with the U3 since the U3 has awful looking component capture, but doesn't freeze my entire computer and actually maintains 60 fps the majority of the time, though still drops pretty routinely.

In this particular log after the U3 froze I closed media express and loaded the shuttle in obs directly without stopping the stream, which surprisingly enough worked, though normally I don't use the shuttle in obs at all. I also recall the U3 never freezing when I only had one C920, though in the stream this log is from I only used one C920 and it froze anyway so I don't think that should have anything to do with it.

Writing this did give me the idea to try using virtualdub or something else with very low cpu usage to activate the shuttle's passthrough, since media express being the awful program that it is likely has something to do with this issue.

Also interestingly enough, the U3's framerate is perfect in virtualdub and in VLC for whatever reason, even though it stutters in Avermedia's own software (both RECentral and the Sony Vegas plugin). I wish they had forum like this for me to go complain on.

 

[paibox]

Sadly, the U3 has some rather overbearing issues, it will for instance sometimes glitch out for a frame or two, and like you said it can never maintain a steady frame rate in RECentral. VirtualDub has some very sophisticated frame buffering code in place, which evens out the frame rate quite a bit but unfortunately can't be used reliably for live h.264 encoding due to the frame rate discrepancy.

Any stuttering in OBS is most likely caused due to the preview not updating on time, if you check your recorded files it should be fine most of the time, except for when frames are actually missing from the capture device.

I never had it actually freeze on me during the time I had it for testing, but if the C920's are on the same USB bus as the U3 and it's not an Intel or Renesas USB controller, they may be a problem.

 

[Darksim]

Any stuttering in OBS is most likely caused due to the preview not updating on time, if you check your recorded files it should be fine most of the time, except for when frames are actually missing from the capture device.

I never knew this, cool. There is of course still some stuttering here and there but it does look much better than the stream preview does.

I never had it actually freeze on me during the time I had it for testing, but if the C920's are on the same USB bus as the U3 and it's not an Intel or Renesas USB controller, they may be a problem.

The C920's are on a separate usb 2.0 bus. I'm pretty sure my laptop has two usb 3.0 buses as it can run a 720p60 feed from the Shuttle on one of two 3.0 ports grouped together and a 1080p60 feed from the U3 on a separate port at the same time, but if I put both on the two ports grouped together it crashes instantly. I always keep them separated like this even though two 480p60 streams should be fine on one bus.

 

[paibox]

Yeah, and the Intensity Shuttle can be more finicky than most. I actually had the drivers for it bluescreen my computer several times while I was trying to figure out why most people couldn't manage to get any video output from Black Magic devices, and their drivers are to blame for a lot of things.

It could technically be possible to make a Black Magic-specific plugin to avoid most of these issues using their SDK, but it would take a good chunk of someone's time, and I currently have none of their devices to test such things with.

 

[Darksim]

I feel sort of bad for reviving this thread, but since this issue I bought an xcapture-1 and have yet to ever have a problem with it.

My issue now is actually with the Shuttle, which due to not freezing like the U3 I deemed good enough to run a 60 fps camcorder into with hdmi, except that it now freezes in the exact same way as the U3 did. I updated to blackmagic's latest drivers since they apparently actually support modern usb 3.0 chipsets now, and haven't had my entire computer freeze or any problem other than the video feed freezing in obs. The freezing is really random too, I ran a 6.5 hour stream with no problems but then the next day it freezes in 15 minutes, and I've had it freeze somewhere over an hour into a stream before too.

http://www.twitch.tv/sigmelee/b/568685633?t=15m10s is an example.

 

[Lain]

Wow I watched a good portion of that video expecting it to freeze, and then didn't realize that the camera itself was what froze. Hm. I have no idea. It doesn't say anything in the log file. I wonder if maybe the USB connection died or something? On my old computer I had this one USB port that would reset the connection if it just so much as wiggled. Not entirely sure if that's the case here because I doubt you guys are messing with the cables or anything with this setup though.

I also really need to make sure it has better detection of when the signal gets disconnected, though DirectShow isn't very helpful in telling you when such things occur to the transmission.

So I suppose I don't really have anything useful to suggest, just sort of taking note it and scratching my head here. Maybe I should make a "reinitialize" button in the properties just for weird cases like this.

 

[Darksim]

This was actually very useful advice, I didn't realize that I would be able to unfreeze the capture card by just stopping and starting the stream. With the U3 I think the actual driver had an issue, since it would be stuck on the same frame even in other programs.

Anyway, at this point I'm fairly certain I can say the problem was a crappy usb cable. I tried using different usb ports and still had freezes, and then tried swapping in a new cable without restarting my computer or even closing obs and have yet to have a freeze since.

 

[CohhCarnage]

Darksim, out of curiosity, did you every find a fix to this issue? I'm using an ExtremeCap U3 as a card myself and still getting these seemingly random freezes (anywhere from 1-5 hours). A restart does fix the issue (after unplugging the ExtremeCap U3 for a few seconds and plugging it back in) but I really don't like that I have to drop the stream to do this.

I've tried multiple units, computers, etc... All the same issue. My next stop is trying it with Xsplit but I'd really like to stick to OBS.

 

[aisight]

Any chance we could get that "re-initialize" function added in? Seems like a useful thing to have regardless.