Fire Wire Dropp frames-how this is possible!!

[arvin]

HI folks,
this is my problem, recently I have a Fire Wire card, I dont know the manufacture, and I conected Sony Mini DV video camera with the Fire Wire card, and trued to capture with Adobe Premiere 6.5, using DV/IEEE1394 capture option, Microsoft DV PAL.

I trued to capture for a 1 minutes and there was a dropped frames- for a 2:54 secunds of captured file there was 15 dropped frames reported, but I think tere is more that 15, I captured 2 smalled files and in the one about 25 secunds, with the scene car passing by-the picture almost stoped. result, the video was very jerky. I trued to uncheck |Prewiev video during capture" options in Premiere but results was same. An in just a second, there was a blink of different color squares on the replayed vide, like bad broadcasting.


Does anyone knows what the problem is, I thouth, just buying FireWire will do the job good. Maybe I need another Fire Wire-if that makes sense.

My Comp config is:

AMD Athlon XP 1700+
256 DDR RAM 266
MB Epox KT 333
HDD MAxtor 30GB 5400-with Writte cache enable -UNCHECKED (because its better to capture analog video)
SB Creative Live 5.1
Leadtek TH 170 Pro ViVo 64DDR
DVD Burner
CD burner

Windows 2000 Professional with SP 3


QUESTIONS:

1.) I dont know what else is importand, but please, help me to solve this, because with analog capture in 720x576 with my Leadtek I dont have dropped frames but captureing with FireWire I have dropped frames-Maybe I have to try another software for capture in DV material-and which one?

2.) Does FireWire have field order-do I have to check before FireWire capture to set upper or lower field first?

3.) Can I see the result of captured file thry FireWire using ADVC 100 on the TV? DOes ADVC-100 have hardware preview on TV as Matrox RT2500 (I dont mean "clone" settings on my GF4 card)


Thanks

[Tommyknocker]

Is your camera PAL as well?

[Metaluna]

Hi Arvin,

It's not clear from your post if you're using an ADVC-100 or not, but I too have had some dropped frame problems with my Firewire/ADVC-100 setup. In all cases it turned out to be devices conflicting with my Firewire card. The first time, it was the onboard Ethernet NIC on my motherboard. It turned out to be a PCI bus hog that was not only causing the ADVC-100 to drop frames, but was also making my sound card stutter and my TV tuner drop frames as well. I disabled it and put in a 3Com network card and the problem went away.

Then, just recently, I started having the problem again. This time it turned out to be my USB inkjet printer. I have a combo USB/Firewire PCI card (Adaptec DuoConnect), and I had both the printer and the ADVC-100 plugged into that card. My printer is an old HP Deskjet 895, which was one of the first USB printers. It's USB interface has never really worked that well, especially in Win XP. It must have been interfering in some way, because when I moved the printer cable to one of the motherboard USB connectors it fixed the problem. My printer works even worse now but that's a different story.

1) In your case I would be suspicious of your Soundblaster Live. That card is known to be a PCI bus hog. I would try unplugging it and see if that helps. Then I would try a different Firewire adapter if you have access to one. The Firewire port built into the SB Audigy/Audigy 2 works pretty well with the ADVC-100 for example.

2) Firewire doesn't have a field order per se, but DV does. I believe it's "Bottom field first". At least that's the setting that works for me in TMPGEnc.

3) I've never used them, but the ADVC-100 does have analog video outputs. I believe you can use these to monitor the video during the capture. What I'm not sure of though is if the video outs show you the video after the ADVC-100 has captured it, or if they just pass through the signal from the source.

[arvin]

TOmmyknocker

the camera is PAL

METALUNA:

I dont use ADVC-100 I have plan to buy one, but first I bought PCI FireWire with 3 input connectors,

For video output:

when you capture something with Matrox RT2500 in Matrox compression, later when you click on that file, it automaticaly goes to TV out-by Matrox hardware, and when you press pause on such file, on TV you see flicker-tahts real preview with fields, and that is very different from captuing something with ViVo card, and then activate TV out, or Clone and play that captured file on TV-in this second case, you can not see if you maybe mixed fields during editing, but in first you will see.


Now, does ADVC-100 automaticaly transfer your video file captured with ADVC to TV, or it have option like regular Vivo cards just to activate TV out function


Thanks

PS. So you think I will have to try Audigy, or another Sound blaster, and do I get sound thry FireWire when using DV camera-withous my Creative

[psteel]

When I first installed my F/W card I had a few dropped frames.

Had to set DMA on the drives. Now I get no dropped frames.

[arvin]

Well I have DMA on my HDD drive, but still got dropped frames,

I dont remeber that I instaledd any driver for Fire Wire, I just put card in PCI slot and windows find it in device manager-without any driver, in fact I didnt got any CD with card, just "naked" firewire.

Its this right-without special driver

[mikesbytes]

You should also check that you don't have unecessary software running. Check and account for all running process's get rid of those not applicable to capture. In particular, check that the virus checker is not running.

[FL350innh]

Arvin,
Several things to keep in mind... Sounds like an I/O (Bus Input/Output) issue. I/O is I/O is I/O, What I'm trying to say is I/O is a basic performance issue with all Intel based PCs. I/O bus traffic can cause I/O errors leading to dropped frames. I think the mother board you are using has a VIA I/O chipset, Many people have found there are I/O issues with this chipset. The other thing that comes to mind is Adobes FW card issue. Adobe does not handle more then one FW device on a FW card well. Here is my suggestion. Shutdown any services that are not needed by using the services control panel. Disable your SB during the FW capture to rule out I/O conflicts. Make sure your Virus software is not running while you are capturing. Also, Adobe always reccomend you run two HDs for capture. Of course the recommend 72k RPM drives one for OS the othe for capture. DEFRAG! Make sure you have lots of free space and defrag before a capture. Use a program called DVIO to "capture" your raw DV. It's an EXTREMELY lightweight program without all the overhead of Premiere. Lastly go to the videoguys site and read there tuning guide, I've only used 1/2 of what is in it and my vid captures now rock! Here is a link...

http://www.videoguys.com/Win2K_Tweaks.html

[arvin]

Hey guys, I just sold my SB Creative Live 5.1 so i have to buy Audigy 2-is it better anyway.

1. What is FW device?

Thanks

[arvin]

FL350innh


About FW-you mean FireWire Ok.


About this Videoguys, I saw that but my English is not so good so I have to understand all, so If you , it would be nice , if you can just tell me, what settings to make on my Win 2000 I will be thankfull.

Thanks ARVIN

[MpegEncoder]

My Comp config is:

AMD Athlon XP 1700+
256 DDR RAM 266
MB Epox KT 333
HDD MAxtor 30GB 5400-with Writte cache enable -UNCHECKED (because its better to capture analog video)
SB Creative Live 5.1
Leadtek TH 170 Pro ViVo 64DDR
DVD Burner
CD burner

Windows 2000 Professional with SP 3

Definitely, turn Write Caching ON. I don't know where you heard that it's better for capturing analog video, but that is absolutely incorrect.

When write caching is off, every time any sector on the disk is changed it must be physically written to the disk. With write caching on, disk sectors that are written frequency only have to physically go to the disk once in a while (not really that long, so don't worry).

Write caching is very important. I have a 500MHz Atlon with a 7200 RPM drive (with write caching on) and I only drop frames if I try to do too many other drive intensive activities while capturing.

[FL350innh]

FL350innh


About FW-you mean FireWire Ok.


About this Videoguys, I saw that but my English is not so good so I have to understand all, so If you , it would be nice , if you can just tell me, what settings to make on my Win 2000 I will be thankfull.

Thanks ARVIN

Arvin,
FW, Yes Fire wire. Here is a link to the translator I use when I view non Enblish sites. It's called Babelfish... Just type the website in and it will translate it.

http://babelfish.altavista.com/

[arvin]

Thanks for translator, but there is no English to Serbian there, so....


Writte cache ON-Well I know it woprks better with UNCHECKED, because, when its CHECKED, my wideo card dropp frames definitelly- my GF$ VIVO, with UNCHECKED, it works THE Best- i dont know why, but do you think that is important for DV capturing using Fire Wire?


Thanks