CAPTURING AND DROPPED FRAMES

[VIDEOHOUND]

Does anyone know if using a larger and faster HD improve capturing ability. Say if you upgrade from a 5400RPM HD to 7400RPM, would that alleviate frame drops. Would it also improve encoding speed and quality.

[Dman65]

Hello VideoHound,

It might increase your capture ability and reduce lost frames. It all depends. Are you planning to capture uncompressed? Huffy? MJPEG? How fast is your current hard drive?

The best thing to do would be to use the benchmarking program from VirtualDub and see what your data transfer rate is currently. To see how much speed you need consider this formula:

Resolution Width X Resolution Height X 2 Bytes/Pixel X 30 frames/sec = Bytes/Second

Example:

For 640x480 capture in YUV at 30fps

640 x 480 x 2 x 30 = 18432000 byte/sec or 18.432 MBytes/Sec

If you are using Huffy you can divide that number by about 2.5.

Also allow yourself room for the audio portion.

[cotzrock]

7200rpm drive is needed if you want to capture at high resolution/quality (e.g 480x576/huffyuv codec) with an older drive you will get frame drops.
but it won`t improve encoding speed and quality of the encoded video stream.