DV to Harddrive - blank parts being dropped frames?

[Olliver]

Newbie again,

I seem to drop frames in whatever software I use, not many, best was 140 frames on a 1h tape.

I have closed all other softwares, dedicated a separate harddesk and defragmentedit - as read somewhere else in this forum.

Is this kind of drop-rate acceptable, does it really have a quality impact if low, or is there any way to a zero drop-rate?

Saludos from Spain

[tWoSour]

The number of dropped frames that is acceptable to me is 0

[petar]

From the topic title I assume you're capturing with a DV converter. If so, there's no reason why the number of dropped frames shouldn't be zero. The converter does all the work, your PC only saves the stream in an AVI format. The only thing that matters is the DV transfer rate of 3.6MBytes/s. If your PC can handle it you shouldn't drop any frames. Several tools, like Pinnacle Studio or ScenalyzerLive, can test the transfer rate.
What system do you have and what converter do you use?

[sitlet]

whats your computer specs?

[Olliver]

specs:

Pentium4 2,8
512ram
for capture using 120gb harddrive (for file storage only-not system), ca 35gb free

[Olliver]

Now closed absolutetly everything down, used ScenanalyzerLive to do a "hard-desk write speed test" with result >11 times realtime, should be more than enough.

Still dropping some Frames, not so many but annoying.

Have installed latest version of DirectX, saw somewhere that might make some difference.

Achieved best result with MainConcept but it freeze's up when I stop capturing.

Any input would be appreciated!

Saludos

[sitlet]

your computer is plenty capable of capturing w/o dropping frames. what exactly are you transferring? dv camera to computer? analog to dv converter? and what software have you tried? i would try windv or dvio if you are capturing from a camera. they are both free and work great.

[Beavis]

I've captured DV through firewire on an old 500 Mhz machine and had essentially no dropped frames.... so you've got something weird going on.

[Olliver]

Transfering DV to hard-drive (DV AVI) and then later compress to MPG/DVD, have tried most softwares out there;

WinDV, DVIO, Mainconcept, ScenanalyzerLive

all dropping frames, just taking down Adobe Premier Tryout to test.

Have also used Ulead and Mainconcept for DV to MPG on-the-fly but cant then do the DVTimeStamp in order to make the date/time visible (can only be done on DV-AVI).

???

[sitlet]

are you sure you have nothing else running when you are capturing? remember to close down any internet connections, antivirus software, andything else that windows doenst need to run

[Olliver]

Newbie,

I may have figured something out. I happen to see it during DV to Harddesk transfer when the tape came to a short unrecorded sequence (screen being blue in my case).

If there are blank spots on the tape (wife messing around with the camera), it seem that these spots (frames) are not recorded - being droppend frames.

Could that be so?

In that case I assume quality is not affected in any way?

[sitlet]

i see what you're saying. my camera does that every once in a while. if there is a short pause on the tape where nothing was recorded, it might drop a frame or two. as long as your final video looks ok, and the audio is in sync with the video, you should be fine