Newbie needs help with dropped frames.....please help!!

[davidvignola]

Hello everyone. I am a newbie to making dvd's on my pc and I am trying to take footage form my sony dv handycam and make a dvd on my pc. Let me tell you my set up and then my problem.

I have a Sony Vaio Laptop with XP professional, a P4 2.80 ghz processor with 512mb ram and a 80 gig hard drive. It has a dvd burner it it as well (model U50A). My sony handycam is a trv38. I am using TMPGENC 1.5 to author and windv to capture / trnasfer the footage form the handycam to the laptop.

Ok, here is the problem I am having. When capturing using windv I am getting lots of dropped frames. I have read the on line giude on this site to make sure I am using all the proper settings etc..but still many dropped frames. I have read in one of the threads that sony dv cam's do ot work well with windv..is this true? If so which software can I use to solve this problem? I don't mind pay money for a good stable software that will work well. It does not necessarily have to be freeware like windv is. Can anyone help me? Thank you

[indolikaa]

Is your HDD controller running your hard drive in DMA mode?


That's the only thing I can think of right away that would cause dropped frames on that powerful of a laptop. Even with other background services running (like anti-virus and firewall) my Athlon 1200 rips DV.avi files from my Digital8 cam and doesn't drop frames.

Have you also run Disk Cleanup and Defrag lately?

ScenalizerLive and DVIO are two other DV transfer programs. You might try DVIO first (it's free) and the ScenalizerLive (trialware) and see if you have any better luck...

[GKar]

Have you checked Lord Smurfs guide on the DVDHelp front page yet?
" How to avoid dropped frames while capturing by lordsmurf"

Here:

https://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?guideid=635#635

[vanhao]

Please correct me if I'm wrong ...

All along, I thought transfering video from dv cam to PC is a file transfering process, hence there would be no dropped frame. If this premise is wrong, can you please tell me which app that you are using to capture the video, and how to determine the number of frames dropped. Thanks very much in advance.

Cheers.

[Beavis]

All along, I thought transfering video from dv cam to PC is a file transfering process, hence there would be no dropped frame. If this premise is wrong, can you please tell me which app that you are using to capture the video, and how to determine the number of frames dropped. Thanks very much in advance.
Cheers.

It's copying in the sense that the data that ends up on your disk is exactly the same data that was generated on the tape by your camera. But when you do the firewire transfer your camera's sending the data in realtime and your PC has got to keep up.

[sitlet]

have you defragmented your hard drive lately?

if windv doesnt work, try DVIO, its also a free program.

[thor300]

DV is not that high bitrate, any old bad harddisk can keep up with that. No way a Vaio will drop frames when transferring DV unless your disk is seriously fragmented and close to full and you run other processes in the background. WinDV is not the best performance, it is harder on the pc than most other DV transfers i tried, so defrag and free space is important.

[davidvignola]

i did defrag my harddrive, but it does not help. I actually have 2 hard drives in the viao laptop. The C drive has all the other programs on the computer and the D drive is for the dvd burning. Right now the D drive is 98% free so there is nothing on it, but I did run the defragement on both drives. I downloaded Divo, but I can seem to figure out how to get ti to work. I open the program and click on "capture form dv camera" and it askes to choose a file. So I click on browse and go to my computer, to see if I can choose the dv camera coming in form the fire wire, but I can't see it.....help!!!

[thor300]

never tried Divo, but a qualified guess would be that its asking you for the OUTPUT file.

[vanhao]

It's copying in the sense that the data that ends up on your disk is exactly the same data that was generated on the tape by your camera. But when you do the firewire transfer your camera's sending the data in realtime and your PC has got to keep up.

Thanks for the info Beavis.

Can someone please advise me on a program that would tell me the number of frames dropped. I'm using Windows Movie Maker and it doesn't tell me whether any frame was dropped. Thanks very much.

Cheers.

[redwudz]

vanhao: WinDV shows you number of frames dropped, it's freeware and has a preview window.

davidvignola: I assume both drives are internal? DV is not drive intensive, so my guess is something is running that is interfering with the transfer. I run DV into my 1.5GHZ laptop and never drop frames, no defragging or worry about what programs are running, using a PCMCIA Firewire card. You may have a problem with your Firewire interface. Only time I dropped frames was when I used an external drive.

[thor300]

I just gave DVIO a try, had my DV Cam connected anyway. It also shows Num of dropped Frames, in the titlebar. I like it better than WinDV. Still use the Ulead VS that was bundled with the firewire card, i very much prefer to control the cam from the PC.

[davidvignola]

I just tried DVIO and had as many dropped frames as with winddv.....this is very frustrating becasue I don't know what to do to fix this...

[guns1inger]

Have you got two hard drives, or two partitions on one hard drive ?
If you have two physical drives, and transfer to the non-system drive, you should not have these problems. If you only have one physical drive, then it doesn't matter much which partition you transfer to.

Before transferring, disable and background utilities such as background defraggers, anti-virus real-time monitors etc. Make sure you are running off mains power and not battery. Check your power saving settings and make sure everything is always on and running at full speed.

If, after doing all this, you are still having problems, try a different firewire cable. Try transfering to a different PC if possible.

[davidvignola]

I think I may have 2 sepreate drive becaseu if I try to capture onto the C drive, I get a message saying that I do not have enough space free on the C drive. However if I try to capture to the D drive, I'm fine with space. I will check to see if there is 2 physical drives any how just ot make sure. I have now tried 3 different capture software and each one giv eme over 500 dropped frames (windv, dvio, ScenalizerLive). So now i am guessing that it is something to do with my computer, but I do not know what it could be. When I just rip a dvd onto my HD to make a copy, it works fine so maybe there is something wrong with my fire wire port or a setting or something. I am going to try a new fire wire cable to see if that helps. Can anyone tell me how to shut off all necessary applactions on my computer to make sure nothing is runing that shouldn't be? I am using XP professional.

[lordsmurf]

DVIO
AVI_IO
ScenalyzerLive
WinDV

what else is there to try ?

[junkmalle]

I think I may have 2 sepreate drive becaseu if I try to capture onto the C drive, I get a message saying that I do not have enough space free on the C drive. However if I try to capture to the D drive, I'm fine with space.

No, each partition counts as a "drive" in that sense. It's rare for a laptop to have two drives. Go to Start, All Programs, Administrative Tools, Computer Management. In the left pane, under Storage, you'll see Disk Management. Click on that and the right pane will show the drives and their partitions at the bottom.

When I just rip a dvd onto my HD to make a copy, it works fine so maybe there is something wrong with my fire wire port

Ripping from a DVD is very different from "capture" from a DV camcorder. When talking to a DVD drive the CPU is in charge of transfers. It says what it wants and when. But when you capture from a DV camcorder, once the playback has started, there is no flow control. The camcorder justs sends frame after frame. If the CPU get's busy doing something else or if the drive is too slow frames will be lost.

Can anyone tell me how to shut off all necessary applactions on my computer to make sure nothing is runing that shouldn't be?

First go to the System Tray (at the opposited end of the bar with the Start button) and shut down as many of the programs there as possible. Most of them can be closed by right clicking and selecting "Close" or "Exit". You will probably be able to close all except the Clock and the the Speaker. That might be enough, so try a capture again.

If you still lose frames, hit Alt+Control+Delete to bring up the Task Manager. Close anything you see under the Applications tab. Then switch to the Processes tab. There will be many things there and most of them shouldn't be shut down. But look at the "CPU" column. The only thing that should be using CPU time is the "System Idle Process". On an idle system that should be at 99 percent most of the time. If any other process is taking up CPU time you can try killing it. But beware, if this is some essential system service you might crash the computer. In general, processes started by SYSTEM (look under the User Name heading) shouldn't be terminated. Processes started by the current user (whatever your username is) can be terminated.

You can also watch the Task Manager while capturing to see what other programs might be active while capturing. For example, an antivirus program may be examining data coming over the firewire port (because it can be used for networking) and it might only be active while you're capturing.

[davidvignola]

Thank you for all the instruction......I will try that tonight and see what the out come is. If that does not seem to work, I'll post back and maybe the group can think of something else.....I really appreciate the help. Thank you

[davidvignola]

Well I tried everything you all suggested. I brought up the task manager and nothing is running that is using the cpu expext the "system idel process" which is 99%. There are no applactions running expect the winddv I am using to capture from the sony dv cam. I also disabled my anti virs, pop up blocker program etc but I am still getting 100+ dropped frames with ni the 1st 10 min of trying to capturing. Any other suggestions? I am totally frustrated because this should work, should it not?

[vanhao]

May be you should check the IDE Primary Channel settings in the Device Manager and make sure that it is set to DMA and not PIO. Good luck.

[DVD_Ripper]

As everyone denoted above you've got smokin hardware (I was capturing on an old P3-650 laptop before upgrading and never dropped frames)

So, check (Control Panel / System / Hardware / Device Mgr:

1. Disk Drives / Properties / Policies - make sure write caching is enabled.
2. IDE Controllers / PRimary IDE controllers (should be DMA and ideally Ultra DMA mode 5)

If those are ok run a defrag of capture drive....

Also, your final destination is MPEG2 for DVD Burn if I am not mistaken... what you may want to consider doing is look at on the fly DV to MPEG software transfer / conversion.

I've been using Main Concept MPEG Encoder... very powerful... has powerful conversion tools PLUS a DV capture to MPEG...

You bypass that long post editing conversion..

Now many Videophiles on this board will say NO ... don't go that route as quality suffers... I have not seen that as of late.

Best of Luck

[davidvignola]

I will try your suggestions "dvd-ripper" and let you know if it helped. Unfortunely I do not have the ability to try capturing onto another pc. I only have my sony lap top, but I have been told by many people that my laptop has way enough horse power to author my own dvd's, and as I said in a eailer post, when I just rip a dvd onto the hard drive and make a copy, it works with no problems. The onlt issue I am having is trying to transfer for my dv handycam to the pc without any dropped frames. However, I did not try going from VHS to the laptop yet. Maybe I'll have the same issues

[johns0]

May be you should check the IDE Primary Channel settings in the Device Manager and make sure that it is set to DMA and not PIO. Good luck.

I would look at this advice first!

[davidvignola]

I checked my IDE primary channel and it is set to DMA. anything else?[/quote]

[golftee]

I use my TRV38 & windv with no frames dropped, i do both vhs pass through & dv tape capture....

[junkmalle]

I hate to suggest it but have you tried capturing with Windows Movie Maker? It will save as DV AVI files.

[davidvignola]

I did try using movie maker and had the same problem.....I am going to call Sony to see if they can help me.....thank god I didn't sell my stand alone dvd recorder, because I may be going back to that..

[sitlet]

what kind of firewire card are you using? go to control panel-system-hardware tab-device manager and see what brand your firewire card is. i would suggest you track down an updated driver/firmware for the card.

as we all said, your system is highly capable of capturing dv files. the only other thing it could be is the firewire port, or something in the camera itself.

[davidvignola]

here is the info on my firewire port.

manufacture - IEEE 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller Vendor
device type - IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers
location - PCI Slot 5 (PCI bus 0, device 10, function 2)

I copied this form the device manager

I tried to update the driver but it said I had the most updated driver. I may call sony to see if they can help becasue the laptop and camera are both sony products, so they should support their products.

[redwudz]

It sure looks like you've tried every common solution. I hate to say it, but it seems to leave either your Firewire hardware or your camera. Some strange incompatibility problem? If you have tried the camera elsewhere, maybe a PCMCIA Firewire card? They are about $30US. A long shot, though. Maybe Sony can sort it out. Good luck, let us know.