Dropped Frames?

[Art Wakefield]

I'm a newbie to video capture. Here's my setup:

Athlon 2500+
512 MB DDR 400
260 SATA RAID(0) - 1 120 GB drive, 1 160 GB Drive
ATI AIW Radeon 9600 Pro

I capture from a Sony analog camcorder. If I capture MPG2 it shows about 2
dropped frames per second. Is this normal? I thought with the RAID I could
eliminate the dropped frames.

I am using Pinnacle Studio 8 with the latest updates. Any help is
appreciated.

Art

 

[D'n C]

I'm a newbie to video capture. Here's my setup:

Athlon 2500+
512 MB DDR 400
260 SATA RAID(0) - 1 120 GB drive, 1 160 GB Drive
ATI AIW Radeon 9600 Pro

I capture from a Sony analog camcorder. If I capture MPG2 it shows
about 2 dropped frames per second. Is this normal? I thought with
the RAID I could eliminate the dropped frames.

Raid is faster at READING from the disk, but is often times SLOWER to WRITE
to the disk. Howerver, unless you have something seriously wrong with your
Raid array, I doubt that this is the problem. I have no problems capturing
MPEG2 from an Analog source with a 1600+ to an 80gig ATA100 drive with an
AIW7500 so your setup should have no problems doing it.

1: Do you have anything running in the background while capturing? Even
such apps as e-mail, instant messangers, virus scanners, etc. can suck
enough cpu cycles to cause dropped frames.

2: Are you doing anything else while capturing?

3: Have you defragged the drive(s) lately?

4: How much free space on the drive(s) you are capturing to?

D'n C

 

[Bilar Crais]

I have found third party capture software to be very demanding when set
with HQ settings. For example, I can't capture mpeg2 in Ulead Studio
above the CPU setting of 92% before I start dropping frames.

Why not just use MMC and record from the composite or s-video in? Mpeg2
capture is "hardware assisted" in MMC.
That is, "accelerated", I believe. I can use 100 percent motion
estimation even with my lowly Duron 1600. At DVD bitrates, MMC does a
fantastic job...especially if you "record interlaced".

 

[ChipHead]

Probably the most important requirement for video
capture to work without dropping frames is, making
sure your AIW is not sharing an IRQ with another device.

I found this out after installing a new PCI device. ACPI
of course reassigned my IRQ's and stuck my AIW with
a one of my network cards. I was getting an average of
10-15% of frames being dropped on every video capture
I tried. After I did a bit of card position swapping, I was able
to get the AIW back to the state of having it's own non-shared
IRQ, and hence video capture was perfect again.

Not sure what OS you are running but try running MSINFO32.EXE,
and look at your IRQ's under the HARDWARE RESOURCES to see
if your AIW is sharing an IRQ. If it is, then I'd give that as a highly
probable
cause of your dropped frames during capture.

 

[Bilar Crais]

IRQ, and hence video capture was perfect again.

Not sure what OS you are running but try running MSINFO32.EXE,
and look at your IRQ's under the HARDWARE RESOURCES to see
if your AIW is sharing an IRQ. If it is, then I'd give that as a highly
probable
cause of your dropped frames during capture.

Of course, if you're using XP, not much you can do about it, unless you
do a fresh install and disable APCI during the install process.

 

[Art Wakefield]

Thanks for the help so far. Here's what I've figured out. I can capture at
SVCD resolution, no dropped frames. But everytime I capture at DVD
resolution, dropped frames and lagging audio at the 6000 kb quality setting.
But in the read/write test my machine scores 7100 kb.

If I capture and send to SVCD quality but burn to DVD will the image still
fill up my TV screen? Or will it be "small".

Art

 

[Art Wakefield]

No IRQ confilicts and I am running XP. Should I disable ACPI? Would a
faster processor help with the problem? More RAM?

Art

 

[Bilar Crais]

No IRQ confilicts and I am running XP. Should I disable ACPI? Would a
faster processor help with the problem? More RAM?

Your CPU and RAM are far more than adequate. Don't disable ACPI.
Modern hardware and ACPI are fully compatible. What parameters are you
using for your mpeg2 encode? I'm not familiar with Pinnacle, but if you
tell me the particulars, I'll understand them.

 

[Art Wakefield]

MPEG2, 740X480, 6000KB/sec, audio, 48khz.

I'm just reading of the settings tab. Does that all make sense?

Art

 

[Kirby Crosby]

Pinnacle is lousy at real time encoding unless you are using a pentium 4.
I have the same problems so i always capture with MMC.
It works great and you can set it up to custome settings or it has several
DVD templates.
Zero dropped frames and it barely uses 40% cpu on my XP3200+.

 

[Art Wakefield]

Forgive the stupidity, but how do I capture in MMC? Is that under DVD
player? I can't seem to find it on the toolbar.

Art

 

[Kirby Crosby]

open your tv application.
then open settings. its under personal video recorder.

 

[Art Wakefield]

Thanks Kirby.

When I render, will it play full screen if I render to VHS quality but burn
to DVD? The capture in MMC is not dropping frames but after editing in
studio 8 and rendering to 720 the result is really herky jerky.

ARt

 

[Spud]

Thanks Kirby.

When I render, will it play full screen if I render to VHS quality but burn
to DVD? The capture in MMC is not dropping frames but after editing in
studio 8 and rendering to 720 the result is really herky jerky.

ARt

Stop with all the conversions in Studio. Capture with MMC to mpeg2 and
render it to mpeg2.

 

[Kirby Crosby]

if you want to do serious editing then you need to capture to avi.
Edit in Pinnacle .
Then render to DVD (mpeg2).
If you want straight capture , if u use dvd settings in MMC it is already
Mpeg2.
Just use your favourite authoring software ( i use TMPGenc DVD author which
can do som ebasic cutting as well)
Try www.dvdrhelp.com
great info there.

 

[Mart]

I'm a newbie to video capture. Here's my setup:

Athlon 2500+
512 MB DDR 400
260 SATA RAID(0) - 1 120 GB drive, 1 160 GB Drive
ATI AIW Radeon 9600 Pro

I capture from a Sony analog camcorder. If I capture MPG2 it shows about 2
dropped frames per second. Is this normal? I thought with the RAID I could
eliminate the dropped frames.

I am using Pinnacle Studio 8 with the latest updates. Any help is
appreciated.

Art

My captured footage was extrememly jerky using a Sony
camcorder with a USB connection. I bought a PCI Firewire
card and hooked it up to that and the capture is silky smooth.
Maybe you could try that.

My specs:

Athlon 1.2Ghz
768MB PC133 SDRAM
Pinnacle 7
Radeon 9600

Mart.