Dazzle DVC II stalling during capture

[omro]

Hi Everyone,

I have a Dazzle DVC II capture card using MovieStar 4.24 for Windows XP. My recording source is a digital sattelite box via SVHS cables.

I have plenty of space and I set it to record more time than I need, yet it always cuts out mid recording. It's totally random, sometimes it stops recording straight away, other times it stops recording after an hour, sometimes after some minutes. It's very annoying.

Does anyone know why the card keeps stopping during capture?

Thanks

Owen

[aldus4]

Without giving the forum more details - for example what software are you capturing with (Moviestar, TWNH etc.) and what machine you have (Processor, MB RAM etc.) one can only generalize:

First of all make sure that you (or Windows) are not running any background programs (Virus etc.) that could disturb your DVCII capture.

If you are positive that this is NOT the case - could it be that should you be running Moviestar that your "minutes to record" is set properly?

If this too fails checkout SPAWNS website (http://www.spawns.dk) for the up-to-date drivers for WinXP and it may also help if you visit the unofficial dazzle forum at

http://stop.at/dazzle2

as many problems are discussed there

[omro]

Without giving the forum more details - for example what software are you capturing with (Moviestar, TWNH etc.) and what machine you have (Processor, MB RAM etc.) one can only generalize:

I have a Dazzle DVC II capture card using MovieStar 4.24 for Windows XP.

I'm sorry that I failed to mention that my PC is a P4 1.7Ghz with 120GB of hard disk space and 256mb of Ram, but if you read my post I do actually mention that I'm capturing with MovieStar 4.24 on Windows XP. Does this additional information help?

I run no other programs other than MovieStar and my ADSL is deactivated.

Thank you for your reply to my post, I will ask at the other forum as well.

If anyone else has come across this problem and knows how to solve it, I'd be grateful if they could post the solution for me.

Thanks All,

Owen

[macleod]

to put my two cents in, I hear that those dazzle products overheat very easily. There is a guide on this forum (how to capture with a dazzle product) on the left that goes through the process of capturing with a dazzle and it also mentions that they overheat and stop/drop frames. Does the unit heat up???? Do you have a fan on it to keep it cool????

[omro]

Do you mean a fan on the breakout box or the actual PCI card?

If the latter, do you mean a fan blowing at the card within the PC or externally blowing at the PC?

[aldus4]

Hi again,

thanks for the additional info you gave. Firstly I have never come across the DVCII having "overheat" problems. I have 2 DVC II's running, sometimes up to several hours on end.

Your PC system seems to be ok, but it could be that your Video Card itself is causing these problems - though I have never come across this myself I have often heard of this. What you could do is check the box in your Moviestar 4.24 software (Go to "recording", "customize") "disable preview When recording" - as this often helps when recordings suddenly stop without any "logical" reason.

Otherwise trying to get help off the "Unofficial DVCII forum" is the best solution

Good Luck

[olaf_arte]

Well, I came here searching for an answer for this exact problem. Dazzle support had me try a bunch of stuff but none of it helped. They gave up! I guess there is no immediate solution. I see it with both 98SE and XP. I thought it was heat related but adding cooling did not help. I haven't tried a different video card.

[SHS]

I have to disagree with all of you it dosen't sound overheating or Software problem.
Thing to look at
1: IRQ sharing
2: Move the card a round to diff PCI slot
Must like lee this one could be something wrong with the breakout box or the actual PCI card if self.

By the way what Video do you have any?.

[sterno]

I've been using a DVCII for quite a while, and I've seen captures just stop before. Usually what I see is that the preview window image freezes and the audio continues to play through. I've found that it almost always corresponds to a source problem - a bad spot in the tape, the noise you get when you stop a recording and then start another, noise from lightning in something taped off TV, etc. If I want to capture something and it doesn't go, I can usually switch to a higher resolution and/or bitrate and it'll work (and then I have to reencode it down to what I want, which defeats the purpose of having a real-time hardware encoder.... bleh).

When I used it in Windows 98 I had problems with the capture hanging somewhere between 30 seconds and 2 minutes, completely unreproducible and not traceable to bad input (I've seen reports of other people seeing the same thing). Since migrating to Windows 2000 the only problem I've had was that I had to apply the .23->.24 patch after installing SP3.