Why does your system drop frames?

MYoung · Member Joined: 02 Jan 2003 Location: Madison, WI

Dunno if this has been mentioned or if it is relevant, but doesn't IRQ sharing in Win2K play a role in dropped frames? I got an Osprey 200 cap card and it shares IRQs with lots of other devices and I'm getting probably 50% dropped frames. I heard that there's a way to install Win2K to not use the IRQ sharing feature -- install it as "standard PC" or something like that. That way the cap card (and any other items of hardware) would be on their own IRQs. Though if people capture just fine on PCs running Win2K/XP with IRQ sharing, then maybe this isn't my issue?
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Capmaster · Posted: Jul 25, 2004 16:26

Interesting. I wasn't aware that the type of PC selected in this setting did anything to the IRQ handling. I had always disabled IRQ sharing through CMOS setup.

I'd like to know if this is true for XP as well, or if IRQ sharing is "hard-wired" into XP like I've heard.
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racerxnet · Member Joined: 06 Nov 2003

You can force a IRQ change in XP thru the MB bios. The DVRex was on a IRQ shared with many other devices which I disliked. I am running the Soyo Ultra Platinum with the latest bios which is capable of the IRQ changes. One way to free them up is to disable the com ports, and use a USB mouse. There you have 3 open IRQ's for other uses.

XP pro SP1

MAK

canvangelist · Member Joined: 05 Jan 2005 Location: LA

Hi all, I'm new to Pyro and new to this board.

I bought a new-condition used Rev. A Pyro (with the dip switches accessible) off eBay recently ($81!) for the purpose of transferring VHS to DVD using Mac OS-X and iMovie with iDVD or similar on a dual 450 G4, 1 gig RAM and capturing via FireWire to an external FireWire hard drive (7200 RPM). I have two overall questions:

1) How do we define "dropped frames", and how are people counting them?

My problem so far is that the video input window in iMovie will briefly go blue (with "Camera Connected" visible) every few minutes before the video signal is recovered. On certain tapes at SP speed (dubbed once, VCR-to-VCR) the problem will occur either at the same spot each time, or at different spots. One tape I tested at EP speed (with material captured directly from TV) did not exhibit this dropout at all over a test period of several minutes. I assume the problem with the SP tapes is that they were dubbed. I still need to test a clean store-bought tape to help narrow down the cause.

Am I experiencing the infamous "dropped frames" problem, or is this some other loss/interruption of signal due to poor quality tape? My VCR is a Sony SLV-677HF (hi-fi stereo).

BTW, when the captured video is viewed in iMovie, there are no ugly gaps where signal was lost--just clean cuts that look like the original camera was stopped and started again.

2) I understand the latest ROM C rev of the Pyro addresses the dropped frame issue. Since my unit is used, how is that repair handled (cost, etc.)?

Thanks,

canvangelist
www.canvangelist.com

bezhan_o · Member Joined: 13 Dec 2003 Location: cali

very nice thread indeed. Anyways i am running xp pro /AMD athlon 1800+ with a crappy 60GB harddrive that i have split into two partitions. i have used nero vision 3 many tims to capture miniDV directly into dvd compliant mpeg 2 with only 10-15 dropped frames for an hour worth of video many times. not too shabby i would say. anyways, sometimes when i do drop frames, what i do is stop the capturing process as soon the dropping begins, wait a few minutes and start capturing the rest of the video. Then i glue the feeds together. works fine for me.
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Bubblevision · Member Joined: 17 Jul 2002 Location: Phuket, Thailand

I run Sclive on a variety of laptops and desktops, always capturing to a seperate drive and I abuse it really badly, running loads of other apps at the same time and deleting files while it captures. It NEVER drops frames. Great piece of software.
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boombastic · Member Joined: 11 Aug 2004 Location: Brazil

I suspect that I'm having dropped frames but I'm not sure. I'm using digitalfaq.com tutorial to capture. The tutorial I mean is the one using PowerVCR II with the hacks.

Can anybody post a link to a small mpeg with dropped frames? I'm capturing from a VHS tape that was made from a VHS-C tape. My VCR is kinda new and I believe that it's not dropping frames from any kind of tracking issue.

Another problem is that on the tutorial it says that PowerVCR II has audio sync issues and to use PVAStrumento to correct it. But my captures are always on sync and I don't need PVA to do anything. When I try to use PVA it makes my sound really bad. So I don't. But when I demultiplex it, my sound lenght is approximately one minute longer than the video. Does that mean that it's dropping frames? Why on the original mpeg it plays perfectly? I believe I read somewhere that PowerVCR writes the headers wrong, making the sound out of sync after demultiplexing. How can I correct this without using PVA (because for me it doesn't work).

Thanks

lordsmurf · Posted: Sep 14, 2005 13:38

boombastic · Member Joined: 11 Aug 2004 Location: Brazil

- Why does it play perfectly on the MPEG and not on the demultiplexed version?
- If my system didn't drop any frames, does it mean that when I demultiplex, the audio and the video file have to be exactly the same lenght? (I know it sounds obvious, but what I mean is if the difference is 1 or 2 seconds does it make any difference on the final file?)

I've been able to make great captures over a year. But since my HD crashed, I had to buy another one and reinstall everything again. All my hardware is the same (except the HD), but I never got to capture like it did before. Any ideas?

toscano · Member Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Location: Sonoma, CA, USA

Hi everyone! I just bought a new PC (AMD Athlon 64 3800+ processor) and I am capturing with an ATI AIW X600 Pro video card on an SUS A8N SLI Deluxe motherboard. I did my first capture last night with ATI MMC. I was dropping something like 10% of the frames. I've read most of the posts on this topic and I suspect it's either a) because I didn't unplug my Ethernet connection or, more likely b) because I don't have a separate sound card (i.e. I used the X600 Pro's audio in). The problem is, from what I've read, the sound capabilities on the ASUS motherboard are much better than those of a cheap Sound Blaster card. Could getting a separate Sound Blaster card really help me from dropping frames? Also, I have two dual 120GB Western Digital HDDs with RAID. I've also read this could be a problem. RAID or no RAID? Any input would be much appreciated!

skeg64 · Member Joined: 06 Jun 2004 Location: .au

do you mean 2 sets of RAID'ed HDD's (4 disks total) or 1 set of 2 disks?

RAID itself is not so much the problem, as capturing to a separate physical disk to the OS is.

If you only have 2 HDD's it would be better to have them as separate volumes, and do away with RAID in this case.

yuppicide · Member Joined: 31 May 2002

Great FAQ. Sorry I didn't read all 4 pages of posts, but I have a question. The main FAQ says to turn down resolution or change to 16-bit color rather than 32-bit.

Will this affect the quality of my recording and playback?!

waynedavis · Member Joined: 28 Feb 2006 Location: Brazil

BLACK FRAME(S)
Please excuse my possible ignorance on this matter but is a black frame in a captured clip to be considered a dropped frame?

Nelson37 · Member Joined: 14 Aug 2001

No. If it is in the captured video, then it was not dropped.

It is possible that the capture program might replace a dropped frame with a black one, but I do not know of any that do this.

slfcoff · Member Joined: 10 Nov 2005 Location: United States

Dropped Frames: Well I am a newbie... I have read all posts in this forum. I am using a firewire and can not capture video anymore. I used to use Dell Movie Studio and it worked fine; but I replaced my DVD burner after the old one broke and now when I try and caputure video it drops about 450 out of 500 frames. I guess my question is can this have anything to do with the firewire card? Should I just replace it a start from there? I am really at a loss and after 3-4 hours reading the boards I am really lost.

DarrellS · Member Joined: 28 Nov 2002 Location: United States

I hadn't been able to capture a decent AVI since I built my PC with onboard 6.1 surround and ATI 7500 capture card. MPEG2 captures were fine buy I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't capture a good AVI since I was under the assumption that MPEG2 needed more resources. Not only would I always drop frames at the beginning of the capture, the audio was always out of sync.
Two weeks ago, I decided to install an audio card that a friend had given me and it fixed my problem. No more dropped frames in my AVI captures and no more audio sync problems.

BTW, I've never been able to capture with Virtualdub using my ATI capture card. Even with all the suggestions that Phaeron gave me. MMC 7.9 seems to work the best for me with this card.

Tom Saurus · Member Joined: 17 Nov 2004 Location: Canada

I know it is ideal to loose no frames whatsoever. However I was foolish the morning and used the net while capturing a movie and I dropped two frames in a movie that is an hour and half. I tell myself that I probably would never notice two frames missing out of 150 thousand frames, but feel bad about it just the same. I am thinking of deleting the movie and waiting for it to come on again someday. How many frames should be lost before a person should try again at a later date to record the same?

I am thinking once I get my computer fixed, of getting another one and having the original one for just capturing video to, and transferring the files to another computer to edit, author and burn to DVD. I am having problems with my MMC locking up while doing other tasks on the computer while capturing, and I link it to my new mother board not matching up the FSB speed of the CPU. From advice I was given over in the Computer forum, my computer is underclocking by 33 percent. The chip has a 800mhz FSB and the motherboard has a FSB of 533mhz. Though the benifit of the underclocking is my computer is running at a cooler temperature. I really like the cooler temperature when I am using DVD Shrink.

Captain Satellite · Posted: May 27, 2007 01:20

1. Video is demanding. Multi-tasking can cause dropped frames. Either learn to do one thing at a time or buy an extra system. Close all TSR programs (like anti-virus and other items in your system tray).

Can somebody please explain how to do this? Thanks!

dcsos · Member Joined: 07 Jan 2003 Location: Y No Werk (anagram)

CTL-ALT-DELETE> TASK MANAGER
brings up list of TSR programs

Highlight undesired process and below the list window click on "END TASK"

TSR
="something-stay-resident"

FulciLives · Posted: May 27, 2007 04:45