Frame Dropping, plz explain

[Dance4Me]

I know what it is, at least I think I do, but some of you make it sound worse than it is. Reading the boards, some people say they have 1 frame drop in 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or even 1 minute. Now as I understand it, movies usually run a 30 "frames" per second. That's 1800 frames in one minute. Now please tell me what's the big deal with loosing 1 frame out of 1800 in a minute of video? Actually another good question is how did you even notice it, or for that matter how do you know exactly how many frames you lost if it's so small?

[offline]

It depends. You can crack the frame, chip it, and even send wood shards
into the painting itself and damage it.

[Mirror_Image]

Any capture program worth its salt tells you if frames have been dropped. Dropping a couple of dozen frames at the start of a capture is no worry; you just trim that off. However, in the middle of a video, even single dropped frames are noticeable (to me at least).

[KingJohn]

Frame drops can also cause problems with later conversions, lip-sync is common on playback if the capture is a mpeg1 and is placed straight on a VCD

[ViperXT]

with VDub you don't need to worry about sound sync problems. Small frame droppages are automaticially compensated for if that option is selected. I usually get maybe 3 dropped frames for a 22 minute capture(typical Simpsons episode) which is not noticeable to me. When you drop alot of frames at once like 3 or more in a second in can be noticeable as jerky playback. Generally if you are dropping less then a frame every 10 seconds it should not be terribly noticable.

[KingJohn]

Thats the trouble, people play them back and see no problems, but close inspection frame by frame would reveal a terrible mess, a lot more than you think you have.

Mpeg1 capture is even worse, play back an mpeg1 and it shows it perfect.... until its on a VCD