Dropping Frames when capturing to external drive

[nadmik]

Hardware:
Maxtor external hard drive PS5000dv, USB 2.0 & FireWire – 7200rpm
Dazzle DVC 150, USB 2.0
IBM PC 1.4GHz celeron, 256MB RAM
Sony Digital Handycam, DCR-TRV520 – w/DV FireWire in/out
SmartDisk USB 2.0/FireWire PCI Card
Sony DVD/CD Rewritable Drive, DRU-510A

Software:
Dazzle SW: MovieStar 5, DVD Complete, etc..
Sonic MyDVD
DVD Xcopy Gold
TMPGEnc – trial version
WinDV


Hello, this is my first post here in this forum and I’m pretty new to capturing video & authoring DVD’s. As you can see, I’ve purchased a lot of technology so I can convert all my 8mm and high8/digital8 home movies to DVD. In addition, I want to covert some VHS material to DVD as well.

My problem(I think) and thus questions is with video capture. Using WinDV, I captured a minute of video from my Dig8 Camcorder to my Maxtor external hard drive(connected via FireWire). After 8 seconds of transferring, I noticed I was dropping frames like crazy…not good. I then decided to capture directly to my PC’s hard drive and the transfer went fine…not a frame was dropped. Any idea why I can’t transfer to my external drive? It’s connected via FireWire…should I connect via USB 2.0 instead?

Thanks in advance for your input.

Nad

[macm]

I had exactly the same problem.

And my only solution was likewise. I turned tu HD internally (took the HD off the external case/assembly and plugged it to IDE 1 Master).
So the problem was gone.

I researched all over but got no answer for this. I think it is some speed/performance issue...

[redwudz]

Firewire is generally faster than USB 2.0 and more universal. You may have problems with your external drive, your firewire card or your interface software. DV is not that drive intensive, at least not as much as capturing with a video card. You might try this software: http://www.sisoftware.net/index.html?dir=dload&location=sware_dl_x86&langx=en&a=.
It's a benchmarking program. It should work to measure the speed of your drive, among other things. Why it might be transferring slow, I really don't know. It should transfer without dropping frames. I suspect a problem with your firewire card.