PC crashes whilst capturing DV tape as DV-AVI file

[uksdsgl]

My 7 year old 1.47GHz AMD Athlon XP SP2, 1GB RAM PC crashes whilst Movie
Maker (version 2.1.4026.0) attempts to capture a 1 hour DV tape from a Sony
camcorder via FireWire cable to the 320GB secondary internal hard disk (F,
as a DV-AVI file.

AVG software ensures the PC is free of viruses and spyware.

I have Ccleaned, error-checked and defragmented both primary FAT32 C: and
secondary NTFS F: hard disks. Both hard disks have more than 75% free space.

However, Microsoft\Movie Maker\MEDIATAB0.DAT is 11 fragments.

Before capturing, the screen saver is disabled, System Tray applications
(including AVG anti virus software and ZoneAlarm firewall) are closed /
exited and Task Manager shows System Idle Process is approximately 95% of CPU.

We have 5, 1 hour, DV tapes and I have successfully captured 4, each to
approximately 12GB .avi files. But the 4 successes were from 9 attempts and
all 5 failures crashed the PC leaving a corrupt 3 to 8GB avi file.

I’ve unsuccessfully attempted to capture the fifth tape 6 times now and the
PC has crashed every time.

Can you help?

Thanks in anticipation,

Steve
London.

 

[LVTravel]

In Tools, Options, General tab, where is your temporary
storage area? It should be on the NTFS drive. If WMM
attempts to create a temporary file during the capture and
the temp location is set to a FAT32 drive and the temp file
exceeds 4 GB for any reason, the capture will fail with
unpredictable consequences (possibly a system crash.) Why
do your have your system drive (C as a FAT 32 drive? It
would be more reliable as an NTFS drive and you wouldn't
have to worry about temporary files exceeding the 4 GB limit
of FAT32..


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[uksdsgl]

Thanks for your reply.

The WMM temporary storage area is on the NTFS drive (F:\temp\). The FAT32
4GB restriction caused one of the first crashes.

Do you have any other ideas as to why Movie Maker crashes the PC whilst
capturing DV tape?

NB. My system drive (C came as a FAT32 when I bought the PC.

 

[LVTravel]

Just to be on the safe side, I would consider converting the
FAT32 drive to an NTFS drive using the convert command
(START/RUN/CMD Enter, Convert /? for help) which will remove
any possible issues with any file over 4 GB on the computer.

Also, I would recommend going to Papa John's web site
http://www.papajohn.org/, check out the Problem Solving,
Crashes and Hangs in the left column for other excellent
advice.


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[Graham Hughes]

Doesn't normally crash the pc, but does your tape have timecode resetting to
zero in places?

Other thing to look at is overheating of the cpu.

 

[uksdsgl]

Thanks, I’ve now captured the DV tape successfully.

I studied the Problem Solving, Crashes and Hangs http://www.papajohn.org/
page.

As a result, I:
1. renamed claud.ax, the only problematic codec on my system identified on
this page
2. disabled the only 2 filters on the Movie Maker Options Compatibility tab
3. logged on to a different user account
4. captured the DV tape to a different (NTFS) folder

This was a success, the PC did NOT crash. I now have a 12.5GB .avi file.

I’m now considering converting my FAT32 system drive.

 

[LVTravel]

Great, glad you got it working. PapaJohn is one of the
really great gurus (I'm just a mediocre one.... that posts
to this site. His web pages have helped many and I'm glad I
could point you in that direction.


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[PapaJohn]

thanks LV...

codecs are more and more in the limelight and I'm busy updating my Import
Movie Source Files > Video > Video Codecs page.... part of the update is
adding info about Vista.

website references are to www.papajohn.org

PapaJohn