Advice on dropped frames in pinnacle?

[slnorth]

First I want to thank so many of you that have made forum so great. While enjoying it, I'm now swimming in information overload and am having a bit of a time keeping it all together with as slow as I am these days. I'm not sure what to do with some trouble I'm having and hope some simple light can be shed on it.

I just captured a youth football game from a Panasonic PV-DV701 to Pinnacle DLx8 using the firewire and loading it on a band new secondary hard drive dedicated to video work. I noticed after cutting/editing and burning to DVD that there are colored rectangular spots periodically showing up on the screen every now and then throughout the shooting. But I didn't notice these spots showing up while playing the tape from the camcorder to TV.

I decided to capture it again but first I used a tape cleaner in the camcorder, unplugged all the wires not in use including audio and ran the firewire so no magnetic fields like speakers/monitor telephone etc weren't near it. Not sure how much of this was practical or superstitious.

I deleted the previous AVI and all other related files and started capturing again and it seemed there are more of these spots showing up like bricks in a wall. I then noticed a "dropped frames" I think it was called, just under the preview window. This number was in the 200's only seconds in to capturing.

Miraculously there doesn't seem to be an A/V sync problem like I've been hearing so much about with pinnacle.

Is the DVD I already made the best quality I'm going to have now since it seems the tape may be having problems?

It seems this spotting happens when capturing. Is it the hardware, software or tape that is the problem and will one of those many programs I've started reading about be able to correct it?

What are these spots really called?


Thank you,

[BobK]

This won't be much help, but the colored spots may not be there until you burn the disk. Did you compare the original captured avi with the final DVD? Windows Media Player will play it- the spots aren't in the avi file then they're probably not being caused during capture. Then they're probably being caused by the burn software of the media (my guess would be the media- especially if you're using cheap disks).

[j1d10t]

If you're using firewire to transfer the video you aren't really "capturing", your doing a transfer from one digital source to another, so you should be getting the exact same video/audo from the DV tape loaded on to your computer. So I agree with BobK, check the AVI file after you load the video on to your computer, and compare it with the DV tape, then it if looks the same (no blocking) check it with the created DVD. Also check the MPEG file you author the DVD from. When you say "colored rectangular spots", is it something like micro blocks caused from a low bitrate when converting to MPEG? What program are you using to go from AVI to MPEG? What are the settings you use in that program (i.e. video bitrate, audio bitrate, video size, etc.)? If it's there on the transferred AVI file, but not on the original DV tape then (I think) it would most likely be hardware, or cabling. Give us more info, and we'll try to help

Good luck!

[slnorth]

Wouldn't you know it, just as I thought I could include all of the relevant info in the first post I still left things out?

First I should probably mention that things worked fine with the off the shelf version purchased in Feb '03. Even after we moved things went ok. It wasn't until I finally registered the product and updated the drivers to 8.10.4.0 that these problems surfaced. One other major problems with this "upgrade" is I can't add MP3 or other audio and the sound effects file is now missing. I remember noticing that Studio 8 had thought my XP was now a NT and it insists upon making files in a shared section of the directory instead of where it was working from before within My Docs.

The Pinnacle DLX8 uses a PCI card with 2 firewires, blue breakout box and studio 8 software. I can't find the manuals since our move last month so I'm winging it as I go. I'm using Fuji and TDK DVD+R disks. I don't know how good of quality they are though.

When capturing, at least that's what pinnacle tells me I'm doing, I hook up the firewire, set the capture source as DV firewire and the capture format has several windows that are gray accept the one that lets you select the format. Interestingly the only format available is "Full DV quality" whatever that means.

The grayed info is:
720x480
Framerate 29.97
Data rate button selected at 3745 Kbps,
Audio settings are gray and read
PCM compression
16 bit stereo channel
Sample rate 48 kHz

The file made is an AVI and a .scn companion file is made. From windows properties list of the avi file I get this info.
IMAGE 720x480
AUDIO
Bit rate 1024kps
Sample size 16
Format PCM
VIDEO
Frame rate 29/sec
Video sample size 24 bit
Video compression DVCodec

I take it that the info in the grayed boxes is the actual settings.

The spots aren't showing up at all on the DVC nor when playing through it on the TV (good news there). They do show up on the AVI created by the capture/transfer onto either hard drive and of course later on the DVD. Even without even the transfer when previewing the tape through studio 8 software the blocks show up. So there is probably something wrong with the cabling or hardware as j1d10t mentioned.

As far as the conversion from AVI to MPEG/dvd (pinnacle calls it rendering but I gather now that most people refer to it as encoding) here's the info.
OUTPUT FORMAT=DVD
VIDEO QUALITY/DISC USAGE="best video quality" (8000Kbits/sec is grayed out in the window)
Filter video and MPEG audio is NOT selected
I guess this is all moot at this point since the AVI itself is bad.

The blocks actually look like groups of pixels so they appear like small brick shaped colored pieces showing up in various places on the screen. Each showing also brings in static on the audio.

I test the data rate for the hard drive before each capture. Here are some results:
C:\ (main drive) is read=25367 kbyte/sec write=34288 kbyte/sec
E:\ (new HD) read=37190 Kbps write=41420 Kbps
I did 2 capture tests from the same tape on both drives. One at the start of the tape then 10 min into the tape.
C: test 1 length in frames =1:00:19=228 dropped frames
C: test 2 length in frames =1:00:15=246 dropped frames
E: test 1 length in frames =1:13:27=258 dropped frames
E: test 2 length in frames =1:00:18=155 dropped frames
E: test 3 length in frames =1:00:23=186 dropped frames (same tape positions as E: test 2)

The sound on the recording of course seems over done with all the noise from the game and when it gets onto the AVI and DVD it's even worse. The background and interviews I do become what I call over driven like the speakers are blown out or there's too much power going through.

I think there are programs to separate the audio, smooth it out and put it back in the video, any ideas on that?

I'm using the sound drivers from the k7s5a motherboard, would getting a 5.1 channel PCI card make a difference?

I'm going to post this now and keep working on the problem.

Thank you,