Suddenly I'm Dropping Frames
by TDillard
on
Nov 25, 2005 at 1:24:24 pm
Starting about a week ago, I was trying to record something using my Panasonic PV-GS200 and Serious Magic's Visual Communicator Pro. During the recording process it was obvious to me that the program was not running smoothly, and was dropping frames. This was confirmed when I attempted to play back the video I had created.
Yesterday I was using my ADVC-100 to capture a couple of minutes of analog VHS video, and it started dropping frames like crazy (over 1/3 of the frames were dropped).
The only thing I can think of that has changed recently is my McAfee subscription expired, and I've heard that anti-virus software can affect other things on your computer. I have since renewed the subscription, disabled the software, reenabled it, and tested in between, but I'm still dropping frames really bad.
I have an 80 gig hard drive with 17 gig free, and only want to capture 2-3 minutes of video. I had done it successfully with my current setup many times previously. My ADVC-100 and my camcorder are both connected through my firewire card.
Does anyone know what I might try to keep from dropping frames? Thanks!
Re: Suddenly I'm Dropping Frames by Thomas Leong on Nov 25, 2005 at 5:36:25 pm
Frame drops while capturing are due to a few things, so you whould check off -
1. A low Drive speed due to fragmented drive since video capture needs contiguous/continuous? space on the drive to write to without hunting for space here and there while writing (since the input never stops nor pauses to wait for the hunt...even in milliseconds).
2. Disable your anti-virus and other transient resident programs in the background. You don't need them for capture. Anti-v programs are most likely to interupt the capture process since they probably check the input before permitting a write.
3. Try to offload some of the old and big files from the harddisk to another storage medium, i.e. increase disk space for the capture. Could be that as it fills up, it is slowing down due to centrifugal force - which is the end parts of the hd spin at a slower rate than the early parts (outer spinning slower than inner, or is it vice versa?...I failed my physics).
4. Lastly, not sure about this as I have not used the ADVC-100 before (I use DVStorm instead), but connecting 2 firewire devices to the one card could be pushing the card's processes a bit too much? But if this is how it is supposed to work, and has worked in the past for you, then ignore this point.
Re: Suddenly I'm Dropping Frames by TDillard on Nov 25, 2005 at 8:44:01 pm
Thomas,
Thanks for your response, but none of those have helped.
1) I forgot to mention that I defragged last night. It did help a little bit, but I'm still dropping WAY too many frames.
2) I have never had to do that in the past, and everything worked OK. However, I did disable it and try again -- no dice.
3) I'll try this, but there's not very much I can get rid of. My habit is to only keep the video on my hard drive that I need to work with, and offload the rest to DVDs.
4) My firewire devices are only on one at a time. They're both connected, but either I have my camcorder on and the ADVC-100 off, or vice-versa.
I somehow feel that it might be my anti-virus, since I can pinpoint my problems happening at about the time my virus subscription ran out. I'll try that again.
In the meantime, if you or others have any suggestions other than these, I'd be happy to hear them. Thanks!
Re: Suddenly I'm Dropping Frames by Thomas Leong on Nov 26, 2005 at 9:29:02 am
TD,
Go with your gut feeling - the anti-v. Only you would know your system best, and the update may have changed its behaviour - eg. calling home for updates on a regular basis? Check its settings.
After disabling, did you reboot?...or at least CTRL-ALT-DEL into Task Manager and stop all processes related to the anti-v? You may want to go into Run > msconfig and prevent the anti-v from starting again on the reboot. Then try a capture.
Re: Suddenly I'm Dropping Frames by mike velte on Nov 26, 2005 at 12:26:55 pm
Check your drive controller's transfer mode. Should be UDMA 5 or 6. In Device Manager, expand IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and right click on Primary IDE channel and choose Properties, then the Advanced tab and what is the "Current Transfer mode" for both devices??
