During Capture, I am dropping frames like crazy

[Nal]

I have downloaded the latest DirectX. I have a 60 GB
hard drive and a 120 GB external hard drive. My computer
is two months old and so should be equiped with all the
latest technology. I have tried three different DV
Capturing software programs. I am using fire wire
cables.


Could someone please tell me why my system is not
capturing all of the frames????

Thanks

 

[Guest]

It is me, the one with the problem. I forgot to add that
I've disabled the antivirus software running in the back
and have NO other programs running

 

[John]

-----Original Message-----
I have downloaded the latest DirectX. I have a 60 GB
hard drive and a 120 GB external hard drive. My computer
is two months old and so should be equiped with all the
latest technology. I have tried three different DV
Capturing software programs. I am using fire wire
cables.


Could someone please tell me why my system is not
capturing all of the frames????

Thanks
.
Is there a counter that indicates the number of dropped

frames?

 

[Guest]

Hi John,

Yes. For instance, in about 10 minutes of video, about
90 frames were dropped. it doesn;t sound like a lot, but
I can see the difference in the playback.

Nalini

 

[David Waters]

I experienced a similar problem for six weeks, which is now cured, but need
more information to be able to help you.

Which programs have you tried to capture with? What kind of camcorder?

What kind of PC hardware are you using? A ready built PC, eg. HP or Dell -
if so, what specification?
Did you build the PC? Which motherboard, CPU, video card, sound card, how
much RAM?
Which firewire card - on the motherboard, or a PCI card, if so which?
How are your disk drives connected - ATA 100, 133, SATA?
What specification are the drives (not just the size)

Which operating system?

The more information you can provide the quicker we can get to the root of
the problem.

Which DMA mode is reported in device manager? If it's not UDMA5 or UDMA6
you may not get adequate performance from your disk drive. If your external
disk is USB or firewire connected, I suggest you forget it for a while, and
use the internal disk. Make sure the disk is defragmented before you
attempt each capture.

Capturing DV video demands a continuous stream of data being captured to the
disk at about 4 Mbytes per second. May not sound a lot by today's
standards, but it must be CONTINUOUS - not missing a beat, or it will miss
frames.

Please supply more information, and I will try to help.

Regards

David

 

[Guest]

Hi -
1) tried to capture with MS Movie Maker, Adboe Premier,
and I think Roxio.
2) Camcorder is a Panasonic DV202D

3) I own a Dell computer.
a. Inspiron 8500. Mobile Pentium 42.2 GHz
b. 512 MB, 266 MHz, DDR 1 DIMM
c. Video: 32 MB DDR 4x AGP ATI M9 3D
d. 60 GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive

4) I didn't build the PC
5) It's a Windos XP Pro

6) I'm not sure what you mean by specifications of the
drives. They are both formatted as ?NTSC? (NOT FAT32)The
external hardrive supprts 480MBits/sec.

7) The computer is a laptop. I am not sure about the
firewire part. It was built in when I got the computer.

Hope this helps. Need any more info? If so, can you
tell mw how to find out?

Thanks SOOOO much
Nalini

7)

 

[Nal]

David:

I will defragment.

The external hard drie is connected by USB 2.0, so I will
just use the internal hard drive to process jobs. But
can I transfer them to the external drive for storage?

Firewire:
Device Type:IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers
Man: Texas Instruments
Location: PCI bus 2, device 1, function 1


How do I find out my DMA mode?
Nalini

 

[Nal]

OK -

I discovered that my Primary IDE CHannel is in Ultra DMA
mode 5 and mysecondary IDE Channel is in Ultra DMA mode 2

Nalini

 

[Nal]

Sorry for all of teh emails. I forgot to say that the
processor is an Intel pentium 4
Nalini

 

[David Waters]

Nalini

Thanks for all the info.

Yes, you will be able to use your firewire drive for backing up, but I would
recommend against it for storing video while you capture it. It may work,
but at the end of the day you probably only have one firewire chip in your
PC which would have to work at least twice as hard if it is storing away on
one peripheral while capturing from another. Give it a try when you have got
capture to the IDE drive working, however.

Sounds like you have the hard disk on the Primary IDE channel, and maybe CD
and/or DVD on the Secondary? This is the way it should be. The hard disk
is using Ultra DMA 5 - this is fine. You mentioned that your laptop is only
a couple of months old, so I am pretty sure that Dell will have fitted a
reasonably fast hard disk. NTFS is fine for this application, because it is
more secure than FAT, and it allows files >4GB which is essential for most
video work.

Have you benchmarked your disk performance? I use SiSoft Sandra 2004. You
don't need to buy the full version to do a disk benchmark - you can download
the evaluation version for free. It produces a "Drive Index" which is a
value calculated from various measurements which it runs. It also measures
three different read and write performance metrix, and estimates disk access
time. If you run this, it may tell a tale. If you run it, please let me
know the results.

Next suggestions.

The video capture issues with my own PC were all solved when I disabled the
sound card. Although a sound card has little to do while capturing DV
(other than letting you hear what is going on), it proved to be the root
cause. I was using a Creative SBLive Platinum. I disabled it in Device
Manager, captured some video and 100% of it was there. Don't worry - all of
the sound is there also. Simply re-enable the sound after capture, and play
the captured footage. I have since replaced with a SoundBlaster Audigy 2,
and that works fine without having to disable it.

However, replacing the sound card in a laptop is not a viable solution, so I
suggest you just try to disable it in Device Manager.

Maybe there is an IRQ issue. Not an IRQ conflict in the old sense of the
expression. Windows XP is meant to have resolved this, but the fact remains
that some devices share IRQ's better than others. I don't know if you can
persuade a Dell Inspiron to move IRQ's around, but if you can it will be in
the BIOS settings. You may have to resort to the Dell Inspiron manual. You
can't change IRQ's from Windows XP alone - MS have stopped us doing that
now. It has to be done in the BIOS, and that's down to the motherboard
manufacturer. Some do, some don't.

If you run msinfo32.exe and go to Hardware Resources, Conflicts/Sharing, it
will show you which devices are sharing IRQ's with what. If you can tweak
these in the BIOS, I would try to change your soundcard's IRQ, and change
the firewire IRQ so that they are not sharing with anything.

Good luck

David

 

[David Waters]

Nalini

I meant to add that it may be worth checking that your ATI drivers are up to
date. The ati.com website should help.

Regards

David

 

[Nal]

David,

Thank you very much for all of your careful attention. I
somehow ended up working around the problem, although I
don't know that I've necessarily solved it.

The one thing that I did that I hadn't done before was a
combined turning off of any software running in the
background, logging off of the internet, and
simultatneously disabling my ability to view the image on
my monitor as the capture is going on.

That seemed to clear things right up. Haven't had any
problems since then. But perhaps those other issues you
mentioned will help as well.

Thanks so much. All the best
Nalini