Still getting dropped frames!!!!

[mikeveli]

I've become very frustrated when trying to capture my VHS tapes to my computer. I recently shelled out over $300 to get myself the datavideo TBC-1000 in order to get rid of the dropped frames that I kept getting when capturing because they were causing my A/V to lose sync.

So my first test was on a VHS tape that I had previously tried to capture with just my datavideo DAC-100 which had resulted in a few dropped frames. Now even though this isn't that much, I was getting a gradual A/V sync loss over the 90 mins tape. So I recaptured once I got my TBC-1000 and the result was no dropped frames and no sync loss so I was very happy. Then I went to capture another tape which had previously given me dropped frames, but I still got dropped frames! Even though the capture with the TBC-1000 gave me less dropped frames, I still got the A/V sync loss.

The thing I don't understand is that these source tapes aren't even in bad shape. When I watch them on the VCR I see no visible evidence that I would even need a TBC in the first place to capture them but since I was getting dropped frames I decided to get one just to be sure I could eliminate them, but low and behold I am still getting them.

I have a relatively fast PC too (P4, 2.2GHZ, 512mb RAM, 200GB HD). I have been using Adobe Premiere 6.5 to capture so maybe that is the problem, I really don't know anymore. Please help

Thanks,

Mikeveli

[pyrohydra]

Yeah you could try different software and see if that resolves the problem. What sort of capture card do you have? Try Virtualdub if you can get Vfw drivers to work with your cap card. Virtualdub handles dropped frames well so A/V sync won't be lost because of this.

You may also be capturing 48 KHz audio and your sound card is having problems at that sample rate (mostly cheap ass integrated audio chipsets have this problem). Try capturing at 44.1 KHz and see if that helps.

One more word of advice is to capture to a different (physical) disk that sits on your secondary IDE controller. This will reduce dropped frames even further. Much more info (and the source of much of mine) here.

[Josef K]

I have a relatively fast PC too (P4, 2.2GHZ, 512mb RAM, 200GB HD).

I would say that this is one area that you might want to make sure about: hardware. Specifically your hard drives. What you must ensure is that your OS is installed on one partition/drive and you capture/transfer to the other. Essentially, minimise the chance of anything being written to or read from the disk (not just the same partition) that you're concerned with. Further, you should capture/transfer to the fastest drive and, if it's partitioned, to the partition nearest the front of the disk.

You're using WinXP according to your Computer Details so all you need to do is run Computer Management and take a look in Disk Management. In the graphical layout at the bottom, you will see which partitions are at the front of the disk because they are displayed at the left-hand side. Apologies if you know all this stuff already but I tend to gabble a bit.

I keep one partition at the beginning of one of my fastest drives free of any other files and once I'm done with capping/whatever, I format it ready for the next time to ensure minimal fragmentation.

[mikeveli]

My 200GB is split over two drives: a 80GB w/ 2MB cache and a 120GB w/ 8MB cache. My OS is on the 80GB drive and that was the drive I was capturing to because I thought that since it was my primary drive that it would be faster. I'm going to try and capture to the 120GB drive and see if that makes a difference. I also read that having your network running can interfere because of all the open ports so I'm going to try disabling the network when I capture. If there are still problems after I try this then I'll post again. Thanks.

[amongthedead]

turn off every other program you're not using. That was giving me serious dropped frames... anti-virus included