Dropped frames, how is it possible?

[Stile]

Hello!
I am capturing with Hauppauge WinTV PCI FM and VirtualDub and I have about 25 frames dropped on 7 minutes of video.
Specifications:
- Athlon 850MHz
- 128MB RAM
- Seagate Baracuda 40GB, UDMA100, 7200rpm (D:\), VirtualDub is on the C:\
- DMA switched on on HARD
- YUY2, huyyuv codec, AVI
- captured resolution 352x288, 25fps
- CPU Usage is about 20%

What is wrong? Maybe memory? It shouldn't be a problem. Please, help me.
Thanks...

[TheInformer]

Are you previewing the video while capturing it?
If so, then don't

Another possible problem might be your sound card. Some sound cards cause frame loss. I wish I could tell you why, but it does happen

[Stile]

Thanks, but I have On-Board sound card. This should not cause a problem or?

[TheInformer]

I tried using onboard sound during my first attempts at capturing, and didn't have the greatest luck.... sync problems, frame loss, etc. I don't know what the problem was, and never found out because I bulit a newer system with an audigy card and haven't had a problem since.

You might want to do a search of the forum for onboard sound and see what other's experiences are.

[binkyaut]

On-board sound is generally not recommendable since it can be taxing on your CPU. Not quite sure how much on the newer, faster CPUs (1.6+) but I know with the old P3s and Athlons, it could be up to 8%-10% of the processing power - which would definitely cause dropped frames. The problem lies in the fact that most cheap onboard audio, is really more of a software solution than an actual specific hardware decoder (even though there is probably a chip on the mobo, I think it's unloading a bulk of the work on the CPU).

Also - depending on what OS your running, you might want to up your memory to about 256MB minimum - though it's getting less cheap by the day...

[Bstansbury]

I'm sure that if you've read several other posts on this forum, you will know by now that there could be 100's of things that could cause you to drop frames. Since your CPU was at only 20%, it is probably not that.

It could be your sound card sharing and IRQ with your Video card, this will really cause you to drop frames. It could be all kinds of stupid things running in the background,... like if you have a ink jet printer, it will go out and test the printer now and then just to see if the ink cartridge is low,.. so it can tell you to order more ink,.... really dumb,... but true.

If you have time to do a little heavy duty reading,... go to the User Guides section in VCDhelp and look for a post I made called "How to tune your system for ATI capture".

Hope this helps