3.40 Gig computer lockup during Sony Vegas 6 Capture

[2prfm.com]

Hi everyone,

I Don't know if this has been covered before, but I don't know if I've bought a dud computer, or if I'm just expecting too much from it.

Had several frame dropping problems with my old 1.7 gig gateway computer, so I've purchased a new Mediom Titanium Box MD8383 tower which has been specially design for video capture. with the following specs:

Pentium 4 - 3.40 Gig
Western Digital 250 Gig hard-drive
512 RAM Memory

I'm using Sony Vegas 6 to catch Pal Standard Video (720x576 at 25 frames per second). After starting a video capture, everything works fine, including no frame drops for about 25-30 minutes.

This is were the fun begins

Frames start dropping around this time period. (about 500 within a ten minute period) Vegas automatically stops capture with the message, "Capture stopped - error unknown". I click out of capture dialog box, and the computer hangs. I can't do a thing. At this time of the computer freezing up, I can hear a "tick tick" sound about three seconds apart. This happens about three times. It sounds like someone tapping the bottom of a metal coffee pot with a spoon.

I've only got windows, Vegas and Nero on this computer, as I'm using this one specifically for video capture, and don't want to crowd the system with all the other stuff.

I'm not running out of hard-disk space, as there is still 239 Gigs left. I checked for hard-drive spindown through power options, and that's turned off. I've also checked if time-capturing is on in vegas, and that's switched off.

I've got my computer sitting close to the window, where it's about 18-20 degree celsius on the outside, and about 23 degrees inside the room. sorry, don't know what that is in fahrenheit. Do newer computers carry a function to see if your processor is overheating???

Computer is only three days old, would it be that badly fragmented already?

Sticky noted that you should have your op-system on a seperate drive. Will partitioning it be O'Kay. I'm not to good with playing with the insides.



Apologies for all the info, but just wanted to give all the info that was available, together with what I've already done.

Many thanks in advance

[TBoneit]

When they say seperate drive they mean a physical drive, Partitioning would have no benefit as it would still be only one physical drive. a different drive for OS and capture drive is so that the heads of the drive are not seeking all over the drive. Two partitions would not help that. OS & Swap file on one drive and captured data to another, if they built this machine for video work they should know that.

All that aside, if it is only three days old, time to go back to the seller and have them get it right.

Don't make the mistake of trying to fix it yourself and waste time until you can not return or get warranty.

I personally am not sure SATA drives are good for capture and you don't say what kind of drive it is.

Going further new does not eliminate a bad drive. See what brand drive it is and go to the makers website and run their drive diagnostic on the drive.

www.wdc.com for western digital and look for their data lifeguard drive diagnostics. @ http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

For those with other brands Seagate = www.seagate.com Seatools @ http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

and Maxtor = www.maxtor.com Maxtools @ http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.8db0c3d6932ced37294198b091346068/?ch...ndMax%20Family

That noise sounds like it could be the drive. Other thing to check would be CPU temerature.

Good Luck

[BogieV]

1.7 GHz or even 800 MHz is OK to capture miniDV format video! I don't expect your processor is the issue here.

It is generally good to have different OS and capture drives but I have captured on a slow 5400rpm drive without problem. On 500MHz laptop
with 4200 rpm drive I had few droped frames but using external 5400rpm drive with the same machine was no problem.

The clicks you heard might be really due to hard drive problem so get your PC checked!
Also is the partition NTFS? 20 minutes are exactly on the 4 GB border (60 min tape is about 13 GB dv.avi)

And finally it is good to have separate partition for the OS (about 20GB is enough for WinXP and bunch of software and temp files needed from the aplications). I'm capturing without any problems on second NTFS partition where the first partition is OS and third partition is My documents. Just makes your life easy if you have to reinstal Windows and to organize your stuff better, defrag faster, etc.. It will not help if physically your drive fails though so beware.
Hope that helps!

[2prfm.com]

thanks TBoneit for the info, i'll give that ago, i've also just found that my hybernation thing was still switched on. I switched it off the other day, when I took it out of the box, but for some reason it was switched back. Now that it's switched off, the freeze up problem has gone, but now notice after 30 minutes, I'm loosing over 9,000 frames within a 30 minutes period.

Going through the manual, it says "Western digital - S-ATA 150 interface - 8MB Catch - 7200rpm" besides the 7200 rpm, the rest is double dutch to me.

You noted that it could be overheating. Sticky also noted this, hence the reason I'm downloading speedfan at:

http://www.download.com/SpeedFan/3000-2094_4-10432092.html?tag=lst-0-1

Before I do anything, would i be okay to put my fans up to full throddle. I don't care about the noise, if this will ultimately kill the frame dropping problem! Don't know if this will void my warrenty?

[2prfm.com]

Yep, the tink tink tink problem was definitely caused by the hybernate function. I've switched it off, and it's gone.

I suspect now it's just overheating, so i'll just turn up the fans.