QUESTIONS ABOUT FRAME DROPPING

[MCD]

I have been having trouble with dropping frames, which to me seems to be excessive. Out of a 30 min clip off a sony dv cam through fire wire to my sound blaster audigy card I dropped 123 frames. Is this normal? It sure seems high to me. I just bought this cpu last week. It is win xp home 2.8 with 1500 ram, two 120 gig hds. There is no way I am under powered. There is nothing loaded but studio 7 and ulead movie factory. Tried both software and same results. This all brings me to my question. Is it possible that the sound blaster audigy card is bad when it comes to capturing. I never dropped a frame with my old win 98 with the pinnacle studio capture card. So if it is the audigy card that is causing the problem, can I put the pinnacle capture card in the new system? Can 2 firewire cards coexist in the same cpu? Or will they interfear with eachother? Please help.

[cdcox]

make sure that you have DMA Enabled on your hard drive in your properties. This was causing my frame dropping problems. As far as running 2 different cards it may, it may not casue a conflict you would have to try and see.

[MCD]

Thanks for responding cdcox. I checked that already and both harddrives are set with dma enabled( sorry I forgot to mention that in previous post) I wonder what would happen if I tried it without dma. I guess it would be even worse. I just can't beleive this is even a problem. I should have enough power to run the planet, let alone capture a small video clip. Maybe I just need to make short captures and join them together. I am seriously considering moving that pinnacle card into this cpu and trying it. Im just afraid it will really screw things up if the two cards don't like each other.

[Petco]

Check that your hardware is running properly. Having to many peripherals in a system with many integrated peripherals often results in an interrupt conflict in your system. Also, check the speed of your hard drive if its 5400 then thats your problem. When I upgraded to a faster hard drive 7200 , I no longer had frames dropping.

[Nelson37]

Make sure you are capturing to your D: drive and not C:. You should not be dropping frames with that rig. Try turning off audio synch. Try reducing frame size or adding compression to lower throughput, this will help locate the problem.

I think you can disable the firewire in the SB card, adding the other card should not be a problem and may be the solution.

[Petco]

In case you don't know how to check your computer. Right Click with your mouse My computer and go under Peripherals --->Properties---> Device Manager (not sure what your system is - play around). Look for an excalmation mark "!" that shows there is conflict in your system. Resolve conflict by disabling device, by either pulling cards out or going into your BIOS and releasing some interrupts by disabling your integrated periperals. Reinstall the drivers and reboot. Good Luck! Not very descriptive, but is the short version of resolving hardware conflict.

[Megahurts]

Hello MCD

If you are creating a DV file created with the CAMERA and have frame drops, then disregard the rest of this post.

From your previous threds, you stated you are capturing VHS tape through your camcorder with mid-streem field order switching problems, and droping frames. Sounds like you should try a TBC.

A vcr tape outputs a sloppy timed based signal, but a tv can correct for it in real time. A tape recorded in SP is less sloppy than recorded in EP. A second generation tape is even worse. Some capture cards are less forgiving than others, but not as much as a TBC.

I have a TBC and have never droped a frame and I have less than half the horsepower you have. While recording, you can even stop the tape and still record (it will keep recording the last full frame) and start the tape again and never drop a frame. A TBC will not improve a bad video, but some will allow you to adjust contrast, color, tint, and brightness. Some, maybe most, will eliminate macrovision.

PCI TBC's can be found for less than $300 USD, more for a stand alone. If you're a serious vhs downloader then a TBC is a must. That's what they're made for.

Any questions, any comments?

Chas