Capturing from miniDV camera with Premiere drops frames!

[sjaguar13]

I'm trying to capture video from a miniDV camera. After about 20 seconds, all the frames get dropped. I get maybe 2 a second that are captured. The computer is new. No other programs are running. Also, I can't see the video play. I can only see it when I hit play then record. I don't know what that has to do with dropping frames. I have the preview button checked, but still see nothing. Any suggestions?

[mkelley]

This may be a conflict between codecs -- are you using Premiere 6.5? If not, I'd strongly suggest upgrading, as the capture drivers were improved.

If you are using 6.5 then I'd want to know more about your system -- are you capturing to a separate hard drive with lots of space, how fast is your CPU, what OS... need more specifics.

[sjaguar13]

System specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2.2Ghz
Asus A7V333 Mobo
512mb PC2100 DDR RAM
180gb 7200rpm 8mb cache HDD
ATI Radeon 8500 128mb
Imation LS-120
HP 200i DVD Writer
Windows XP


I only have the one hard drive, but the only thing on it is Windows XP, Premiere 6.0, and Dazzle MovieStar 5.0. I have plenty of room on it.

I used my camera at school and it worked with their Premiere 6.0, but they had Windows 2000. I installed the lastest drivers for my Radeon and VIA chipset (VIA 4in1 drivers messed up Windows and I had to get the XP CD to repair it). Will Premiere 6.5 fix my problem? I can't use any capture program. The two this site mentions in the capture section do the same thing and so does MovieStar.

[mkelley]

It's possible there is a contention in the capture drivers between your Dazzle and Premiere. 6.5 shipped with vastly improved drivers in this area and if you can afford it the upgrade is well worth it (actually it's worth it alone for the MainConcept encoder).

Your system specs are certainly good enough. If I were you (and didn't want to spend $150 to upgrade Premiere) I'd definitely visit Adobe's support site and explain your problem there, as they might have more ideas for you. You might also try adding the following to your Prem60.ini file:

[Override]
PreferDSCodecs=1

which solves some problems with codec contention.