Horrible Frame Drop Problem!!!!

[ace6227]

Recently I've recorded a vacation to a standard 8mm camcorder tape. I pretty much just wanted to get it on my computer so I could edit it and burn to dvd. Well the capture device I'm currently using is the Plextor PX-AV100u

If no one is familiar with this its a USB 2.0 external capture device. Similar to the Dazzle but "supposed" to be better. I've used three different software titles all producing a horendous amount of frame loss. I'm talking like 150+ frames within 30 seconds. So obviously video playback of such a recording is choppy and terrible. At first I thought it was MAYBE because I had the capture device plugged into a USB hub...EVEN though it is 2.0. So I switched it so its just in its own port. Which is a 2.0 port that is on the motherboard. As far as software goes I've used Pinacle 9, Cyberlink Power Director, and also InterVideo.

While trying to capture I have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING RUNNING. Only thing running are the bare essentials for Windows. My specs are as follows:

Windows XP SP2
MSI K7 motherboard
AMD Athlon 2500+ clocked @ 1.84Ghz
Radeon 9800 Pro
Sound Blaster Audigy 2
1GB DDR RAM
30GB WD HDD
100GB WD HDD
120GB WD HDD
TDK 880n DVD-RW Drive

The computer itself runs excellent. I built it a little while back and love it. Very very fast. Especially helped with that gig of ram.

So basically... I just want to know what is causing so many frames to be dropped! Does the plextor device I'm using suck??

Heres the funny thing....If I plug in the camcorder to the device and basically put it in record mode... so I'm using it like a webcam....it records fine. I didn't see ANY dropped frames. However, if I put it in play mode and try to record from the 8mm tape...then I have all this frame loss. So I don't understand it. The tape is fine, the camera is fine... it all plays back perfectly on my tv.

Thanks for any responses,
Josh

[heman28]

Hello, I don't know much about 8mm films and I am sure its analog and the best for analog to digital transfer is a Time Base Corrector and it will do wonders for dropped frames. I have really no dropped frames when using a Datavideo TBC 1000 on my Hauppauge win pvr 250 card and that is coming from vhs though but I am sure it would do the same for the 8mm film you have to transfer. Are you using RCA jacks for the video and sound into your USB device? If so then that is what you would need to make things come out better. That is all I could offer for advice. Lordsmurf would have many more things then what I could let you know about anyways cause he is the expert around here.

Eric

[thecoalman]

Have you tried a different tape, how about a different device such as a VCR.

[normcar]

I would also try high quality cables like Monster cables. I don't know what the capture device you are using, but the Hauppage USB2 device is a very good device to capture to MPEG. Use MPEG if you want to do only simple editing, but use low compression AVI to use for complex editing.

[pfh]

The problem with that particular ConvertX (av100u) is, it is not a hardware encoder capable device. Thus your computer is stressed to the max because it has to do ALL the work.
For now, your best bet is to lower the capture rate settings until you get to a rate you can live with. And as always, defrag, separate drive, blah, blah but it sounds like you've done some homework already..................
The 402 convertX units don't suffer from much frame loss due to the hardware encoding they are capable of. I've capped Hi8 stuff with a 402 and had no frame loss and my computer specs out similar to yours.

[ace6227]

Well thanks for all of the replies! I may end up looking into a different device that acutally does have its own hardware encoding. I definitely understand my computer would be stressed majorly while trying to perform such a task... but my computer is in great shap. By great shape I mean not full of..."crap" we'll say. I'm actually a computer technican and you'd be surprised at the "crap" people have on their computers and wonder why in the heck they can't perform certain tasks...such as video editing. Like 50+ things in the msconfig startup and such. lol. So I was just really surprised to see it lose that many frames. Like I said all my programs did it...and it was like 150 frames lost within a 30 second recording. I'm currently just using plain 'ol RCA cables... nothing like Monster. Monster definitely is a lot better cable. Their shielded a lot better and do give you the very best quality possible. But I'm basically playing back from the camera. And this particular camera uses one 8mm out-put which is your video and both audio channels. On the other end it splits it out into 3 rca's which go to the capture device. So finding a cable like this made by Monster would be hard. I know we don't carry them at my work. But that probably wouldn't help my frame rate too much. I'm sure it is just because the computer is so stressed. Like I said though, I was just surprised because hardware/software wise this unit is in tip-top shape and this is the only task I've had troubles with. I play HL2 constantly producing like 80-100 FPS. But oh well. If anyone else has any advice let me know! I'd like to know other people's experiences with external capture devices and what their current specs are.

Thanks,
Josh

[piano632]

Have you defragged your hard drives? A fragmented hard drive can easily cause dropped frames.

Also, USB capture devices are notorious for producing problems. (USB uses CPU power.) A firewire connection is better or a PCI card.

[ace6227]

Oh yeah, all drives are defragged once a week. All on different days. I actually use Speed Disk which is part of Norton System Works. Its a defrgmenter much like the Windows one. I mainly just got the external one because I only planned on using it a couple times and wanted it for multiple computers. But aparently it wasn't the best choice. I got a good discount on it though with a rebate so thats another reason I got it. Was only like $30 for me. Anyone have any good luck with other external devices? Or what have you guys used as far as internal cards. I once had a cheap ATI TV Tuner VE card... it had a video input...I tried capturing from it before also but it didn't work that well. Of course it was like the cheapest version.

-Josh

[tigerman8u]

I use the ATI AIW (9000 pro) on my P4 1.7 with 512 mg ram and get no dropped frames. The AIW is a hybrid card. Uses a combination of hardware and software for encoding to mpeg 1/2 on the fly.

[junkmalle]

Check the DMA settings on your IDE ports. Make sure their set to DMA, not PIO.

[ace6227]

Alright well here is the what the properties lists under the IDE controllers:

The first channel...which is the only one that matters here because the HDD's are there. The secondary is for optical drives only.

Device 0 which would be the boot drive c: is set as follows:
DMA if available
Current mode: Ultra DMA Mode 5

Device 1 which would be my 100gb drive I'm trying to capture to:
DMA if available
Current mode: PIO


How can I change that so it is not PIO?? There is no option to say DMA only...its only if its available.

Also I am not actually familiar with PIO? What does it stand for? Why would it be in this mode? How can I figure out how to get it into DMA mode?

I know DMA is direct memory access... so obviously its going to have priority accessing the memory over a device that doesn't...

Anyway, thanks for your help!!!

-Josh

[ace6227]

I did a little research on PIO and understand what it is now. I remember studying that back in the days for A+ cert. lol. Anyway, as I said before, why would it be in this mode? Its set to be in DMA if available...so its obviously not available...

Thanks again for your replies!
-Josh

[ace6227]

Sorry to keep posting, just found this info on a site:
"

Re-enable DMA using the Registry Editor
My thanks go to my fellow MVP Alexander Grigoriev who taught me this method.

Run REGEDIT. Go to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

It has subkeys like 0000, 0001, 0002, etc. Normally 0001 is the primary IDE channel, 0002 the secondary, but other numbers can occur under certain circumstances. You have to go through these subkeys and check the DriverDesc value until you find the proper IDE channel.

Delete MasterIdDataChecksum or SlaveIdDataChecksum, depending on whether the device in question is attached as master or slave, but it can't actually hurt to delete both. Reboot. The drive DMA capabilities will be redetected.

Open Device Manager again and check whether the device is now actually using DMA mode. If so, congratulations, you've made it (at least until the next time Windows disables DMA). "


Look like this may work and possibly solve my problem??

[junkmalle]

From Device Manager you can uninstall the driver and reboot. Windows will reinstall the driver when it reboots. Also, check your BIOS. Make sure the IDE port isn't set to PIO there. In the old days, if you had a PIO device and DMA device on the same cable both would be foreced to PIO. Modern computers shouldn't have that problem -- but you never know...

[ace6227]

"-but you never know-"

...aint that the truth.

lol

Well I have some stuff transferring over to that drive at the moment. So I can't do that stuff for a while. But I certainly will try doing that. I'll also check in the BIOS for that setting. Though I don't remember seeing a setting in there for DMA or PIO mode. Of course I've never had a reason to look for that either. So we'll find out. Thanks for your reply. I'll give that a try and see if it goes back to DMA. Then I'll try capturing again.

Oh, one other thing I'll mention... I read that a drive can revert to PIO mode if it experiences like 6 write errors or something like that. That may be why. Because this drive actually did have bad sectors. I didn't feel like buying a new drive yet so I just repaired them. Well "repaired" them. Obviously not garuanteed and more bad sectors could arrise. But my last chkdsk checked out ok.

So maybe thats what happend. It just hit some bad sectors over and over so it reverted to PIO.

Anyway, I'll try this in the next day or so when I get the time and let you all know the results. Because someone else could be frustrated over this same thing as well.

-Josh

[ace6227]

Well I finally had time to try this out again. I basically removed the IDE controller driver and restarted. So Windows picked it back up on boot and reinstalled it. Now both devices are in Ultra DMA Mode. I transfered the entire movie to my computer and burnt it to DVD yesterday. Worked Great! Thanks for the help... I would have never thought to check that PIO setting!!

-Josh