Bad video transfer results? Cant find cause - HELP!

[turfitz]

Hi All,

I've been trying to get some miniDV from my JVC GRD70 onto my pc and its
just not working. The PC is a Xeon, 1GB Ram, 2GHz chip, I've got a baracuda
120GB 7200 rpm disk on what I thought was a IDE expansion but boots up as a
raid card, running Windows XP Prof.

When I try to bring the footage in, using either movie maker or moviestar or
any one of a number of things the footage is really bad. I've been talking
to some people who are telling me that while in edit mode it only shows
every second frame but if I produce the clips out to any format the footage
is missing frames compared to what I see on the camera.

Can anyone help me out with a path to follow to track down the problem and
get it sorted?

TIA

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[turfitz]

Thanks, I've tried that, really useful.

As it runs through the capture it seems to drop more frames than it
captures, and it gets worse as it goes on. I've already defragged the disk
a couple of times.

While the capture is going on I do have some other apps running but the CPU
is working at 30% while mem is only about 400MB.

If DVIO is reporting dropped frames, can it tell me why?

thanks, turlough

 

[PapaJohn]

Your computer and connection are basically having problems keeping up with
the flow of data. It has to come in at real time because the camcorder sents
it that way.

I've seen quite a few reports of the firewire cable being the cause of the
problems, being resolved by getting a new one.

Your hard drive is the other part of it - having to store the data as
quickly as it flows in - or else it'll drop frames and info as needed to
keep up the pace.

At least you kind of know where your issues lie and can deal with them.

PapaJohn

 

[Tim Mitchell]

Your computer and connection are basically having problems keeping up with
the flow of data. It has to come in at real time because the camcorder sents
it that way.

I've seen quite a few reports of the firewire cable being the cause of the
problems, being resolved by getting a new one.

Your hard drive is the other part of it - having to store the data as
quickly as it flows in - or else it'll drop frames and info as needed to
keep up the pace.

At least you kind of know where your issues lie and can deal with them.

I'm not sure about XP, but in other Windows versions the hard disk has a
"DMA" option (control panel -> system). DMA needs to be enabled for
successful capturing.

And as a rule you should shut down all other applications when
capturing, virus checkers and system restoration progs can cause big
problems.

 

[turfitz]

Hi,

I just tested the setup with a load of monitoring turned on in perfmon and
trie dwriting to another drive with DVIO and there was a perfect transfer,
zero frames dropped. So the problem is the disk.
So I guess I'll have to dig into that.

thanks for the help

 

[Tim Mitchell]

Hi,

I just tested the setup with a load of monitoring turned on in perfmon and
trie dwriting to another drive with DVIO and there was a perfect transfer,
zero frames dropped. So the problem is the disk.
So I guess I'll have to dig into that.

Is this disk your system disk or a separate one?
It's not usually recommended to capture video onto your system disk as
windows tends to suddenly access it at inconvenient moments (e.g. for
the swap file or other system functions). This can mess up your capture.
It's best to use a separate disk for capturing video.