Dropped frames, audio sync issues with DVC-90 and Virtual Du

[jbhjlch]

Help! I am new here and am trying to copy some VHS materials to my system to burn to DVD.

I have an HP Ze4430 laptop with DVC90, AthlonXP2400+, 512MB ram, 25GB free HD space, and am using an external Memorex DVD burner over fire-wire. Also note that the laptop (apparently) did not have USB2.0 built in, so I am using a PCMCIA USB2.0 card.

Basically I can not seem to capture any length video without losing a ton of frames (>30%). I have tried to do everything I could from the capturing sticky (have not purchased extra HD yet, don't want to spend the $ if I can avoid it). Studio 9 doesn't work, VirtualDub doesn't work, didn't even have success with amcap...

What do I do next? There are several types of videos I am trying to copy. One is a 30' home movie, the other is a longer film that I want to back up to DVD.

Also, I have a JVC miniDV camcorder, but I don't think it has the RCA-passthrough capability.

Any help is extremely appreciated!
Josh

[junkmalle]

Make sure your hard drive is running in DMA mode. Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers -> Primary IDE Channel -> Advanced Settings -> Transfer Mode -> DMA if available.

Close down everything you can in the system tray while capturing. Especially antivirus software.

[jbhjlch]

I have the HD set that way...

As for the antivirus SW, I can't seem to get it to shut down completely. There are a bunch of Norton-related TSRs running that won't shut down. How can I shut these down?

[junkmalle]

I have the HD set that way...

As for the antivirus SW, I can't seem to get it to shut down completely. There are a bunch of Norton-related TSRs running that won't shut down. How can I shut these down?

Alt+Ctrl+Del to bring up Windows Task Manager. Go to the Processes tab. Figure out which ones are NAV and "End Process" them.

By the way, >30 percent dropped frames is really bad. When you checked the DMA was the drive actually running in DMA mode? Or did it just say "DMA if Available" but the drive was in PIO mode?

Any chance you have an spyware/adware infection? When you're not capturing, just sitting at the desktop, what is your CPU usage? Alt+Ctrl+Del to bring up Windows Task Manager, go to the Performance tab, look at the CPU Usage and History.

[jbhjlch]

I have tried to do the Task Manager End processes on the NAV processes, and it says that it can't do it... I believe that there is a way to control what starts up during boot.

As for the HD, it says DMA if available, and below that Ultra DMA mode 5. I don't know if this is what you mean, it is the only other thing I see...

I really need to figure this out soon as my wife is kicking my butt nightly to get this project underway. Other SW like PowerVCR states that you can capture at good resolution with PIII 650, and I have much better than that, so it should work!

[junkmalle]

I have tried to do the Task Manager End processes on the NAV processes, and it says that it can't do it... I believe that there is a way to control what starts up during boot.

Are you logged in with an account that has admin privileges? You might consider setting up a bare user account just for capturing.

You can use MSCONFIG to disable startup programs. Start -> Run -> type MSCONFIG -> OK. Go to the Startup tab, uncheck the things you don't want, reboot.

As for the HD, it says DMA if available, and below that Ultra DMA mode 5. I don't know if this is what you mean, it is the only other thing I see...

Yes, that's it. Instead of DMA mode 5 it might have said PIO. One last thing you can try is uninstalling the ATA driver and rebooting the system. When Windows starts up it will find the ATA controller and reinstall the driver. This often clears things up (although usually when you have to do this it's because the driver is stuck in PIO mode).

[cd090580]

Maybe your hard disk is too slow to get the datas in huffyuv

[junkmalle]

Maybe your hard disk is too slow to get the datas in huffyuv

At first I guessed the DVC90 was a DV-via-USB device but that doesn't seem to be the case. I suspect even a notebook drive can keep up with HuffYUV compressed D1 video as long as it's in DMA mode. Probably not uncompressed RGB though.

jbhjlch, are you using any video/audio compression codecs? Which ones?