xp laptop shuts down when capturing video from camcorder using movie maker at high quality (large)

[MrJims]

Hello,
Situation:
My laptop shuts down without any messages (even after reboot) when I
try to capture video from my camcorder using Windows Movie maker. At
first this was happening only when I used the high quality (large)
video setting instead of the recommended setting, which is pathetic
video quality. Anyways - I tried my first tape which had about 20
minutes of recording at the recommended setting and it captured without
any issues. After that I tried it with high quality setting, as I wasnt
happy with the video quality and poof the laptop just shut down. After
that I started looking the problem up and saw a bunch of references to
similar problems. But none that helped me because they were mostly
hardware specs related, one aspect I think I am covered on except for
the video card which I doubt is a problem - details of the hardware are
below. I dont get any error reports even when I reboot the laptop -
dont know what the problem is but need to figure out how to stop it
from happening - or my HDD will be toast at this rate.

Hardware specs
Laptop - Toshiba Tecra M2, Centrino 2Ghz, 2GB RAM, 80 GB HDD (25GB
free), NVIDIA GeForceFX Go5200 64MB
Camcorder - Panasonic PV-GS200
Video input - DV tapes from camcorder using DV cable (IEEE 1394)

Thanks
Omer

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Probably overheating. Toshiba notebooks are good at that.

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

With digital video, you might be running into overheating because you're not
only capturing, but building a WMV file from the temporary DV-AVI file being
built during the capture...

Capture to a DV-AVI file so the CPU isn't running extra to build the WMV at
the same time.
--
PapaJohn

Movie Maker 2 and Photo Story 3 website - http://www.papajohn.org
MM2 Tips and Tricks: http://www.simplydv.co.uk/simplyBB/viewtopic.php?t=4693
Online Newsletters: http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/PapaJohn/Index.aspx

 

[MrJims]

What do you know it worked when I tried the DV-AVI mode. Only problem
is it took up almost 12GB of space (gulp). Any pointers on how to
reduce the space but still squeeze in quality and not crash my laptop.

Thanks again
Omer

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

Once you have the DV-AVI file from the camcorder, import it into Movie
Maker, put it on the timeline and save the movie to whatever quality level
you want.... even the highest wmv quality will give you a file that is less
than 10% the size of the DV-AVI.

Glad it worked... enjoy!!
--
PapaJohn

Movie Maker 2 and Photo Story 3 website - http://www.papajohn.org
MM2 Tips and Tricks: http://www.simplydv.co.uk/simplyBB/viewtopic.php?t=4693
Online Newsletters: http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/PapaJohn/Index.aspx

 

[MrJims]

Thanks a lot for your help. We had our baby this Feb and I am just now
getting to convert all the video taken so far so I can share it with
family. I am sure I am going to need more help and I know where to go


Omer

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

a great thing to work on... lots of luck...
--
PapaJohn

Movie Maker 2 and Photo Story 3 website - http://www.papajohn.org
MM2 Tips and Tricks: http://www.simplydv.co.uk/simplyBB/viewtopic.php?t=4693
Online Newsletters: http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/PapaJohn/Index.aspx