Audio help !

[sonyhandycamman]

I have a sony hadycam (hc19e) minidv and it works fine, audio and picture is superb when played on the camcorder but when I download it to the pc the picture and audio are all stuttered, to the point of it being rubbish.

I use a firewire card and cable and have used my old but updated pc for over 2 years, editing and making our own family dvds.

I have thought it`s either down to the firewire card / cable gone wrong or its the sound card (creative sound blaster). This is where I am stuck as the sound card is on the motherboard and is not a seperate pci card (like the firewire) as I have checked. I also have access to driveragent which scans the pc for latest updates and it always finds the CSB update then when I download and start the update the install tells me it cant continue as there is no CSB on the computer ??

Though in control panel / sounds its there and when I play cd`s the sound is very good and loud.

Any advice apprechiated as I`m trying to sort out my daughters 10th birthday at west midlands safari park and she wants to see it (finished).

Thank you.

[aedipuss]

capture the minidv through the firewire card to the hard drive with windv. as it's doing it watch the display for dropped frames. if there are, something is interrupting and using the cpu or hard drive. try to isolate what it is and turn it off. hopefully you have a larger hard drive than the 40gb list. a single minidvd tape is going to use about 13gb.

[sonyhandycamman]

Thanks for your reply.

I used windv and within the first 20 seconds of recording I had 200+ drop outs I also looked at the task manager and as soon as I pressed record the cpu went straight to 100%.

So somethings obviously wrong?

I have shut everything I can down so the cpu can be used just for recording but it dont make no different.

I know I need a bigger hard drive but it has done us proud before when I have edited and made dvd`s, there not long as I think the longest I have done is like 30mins.

Cheers for any replies.

[aedipuss]

bring up task manager, click on processes, click on the little bar that says cpu twice and there should be a list of what is using the cpu in order of percentage of use. is something above windv while capturing?

are you sure you have enough hard drive space left and have you defragged it lately?

[sonyhandycamman]

Ok, I have defraged it today and it was fine, the hard drive has 29gb not in use.

There is nothing above windv when using it to record and looking into task manager but as soon as I press record cpu goes 100%.

When its all going on whatever this is in task manager - vsmon.exe - is using a big amount of cpu.

It also says it`s using - proccesses: 30.

When I turn the c amcorder on its own the cpu is 4%.
When I start windv it rises to 9%.

Then when I press play (cam) then record (windv) it goes straight to cpu 100% and the amount of frames dropping is unreal, no wonder the sound and stuff has gone awol.

I`m of soon so will reply later and thank you.

[aedipuss]

vsmon.exe - zone alarm. disconnect from the internet and turn it off if you can. nasty critter to disable once you install it. no need for it to inspect everything going into your computer but it seems to be doing that to your firewire transfer and slowing it down too much.

[gadgetguy]

Disconnect your internet connection and disable ZoneAlarm while capsferring and see if that helps. (vsmon.exe is the guts of ZoneAlarm).

Edit: aedipuss beat me to it.

[sonyhandycamman]

Cheers guys but this is doing my head in now.

I have shut everything possible down, zone, internet, etc.

Within the first 10 seconds of recording the cpu went 100% and windv dropped 196 frames.

This is in task manager svchost.exe and is using quite a lot of cpu 14,447k do you know what it is please.

Thanks.

[aedipuss]

a lot of programs load as svchost. you'd have to know how to track it through it's pid to figure out what it is.

any other anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-anything running might be doing it.

recall anything you installed after the last time it worked? start there.

also, make sure you don't have the ms windows xp firewall running, in sp2 it is on by default. it might help to turn off drive indexing in the hard drive properties, and any auto drive backup apps.

[SanderMan]

You can also check if your hard disk is in PIO Mode instead of DMA. This could also be a cause of your problem.

To enable DMA mode using the Device Manager

1. Open Device Manager.

2. Double-click IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers to display the list of controllers and channels.

3. Right-click the icon for the channel to which the device is connected, select Properties, and then click the Advanced Settings tab.

4. In the Current Transfer Mode drop-down box, select DMA if Available if the current setting is "PIO Only."
If the drop-down box already shows "DMA if Available" but the current transfer mode is PIO, then the user must toggle the settings. That is:

• Change the selection from "DMA if available" to PIO only, and click OK.
• Then repeat the steps above to change the selection to DMA if Available.

[sonyhandycamman]

Hello, thanks for all the advice but none of it has worked I have shut everything I can down did what sanderman said but the first seconds of capturing the cpu went 100% then 20 secs later windv had dropped 375 frames ... unbelivable.

Do you think this could be an issue with the firewire card and lead?

Thanks anyway.

[gadgetguy]

Try moving your Firewire card to a different slot. (Not slot one if you have a AGP video card).