lots of dropped frames (newbie please help)

[todd h]

I am trying to edit and convert my wedding videeos from Digital 8 and high 8 to DVD. I am capturing off my sony DV camcorder to a pcmcia firewire card and have about a 10-20% frame drop.

I am using a Dell Latitude C600 Laptop, 750 MHz with 256 Meg ram. 10 GB HD unused and a 80 GB USB (IDE) HD. I have tried ulead studio 7.0, WinDV(better but still alot of dropped frames), and DVIO. I am running Win 2000 pro. I have defraged with diskeeper. I have set to DMA if aviable on the IDE ports. and killed all processes I can.

Thanks,.

Todd

[Tommyknocker]

Did you all clear out all your unused registries?

[ggrussell]

Your hadware may not be fast enough for DV capture. 750Mhz what? Pentium 2? 3? Plus most laptops use 5400rpm hard drives. I just wouldn't think the combo would be fast enough without 'some' dropped frames.

10gig free space is not enough either. DV AVI uses about 12-14gig per hour. If you are trying to capture to MPEG, that eats up CPU cycles to convert the DV AVI to MPEG on the fly. Again that would cause dropped frames because the CPU just isn't fast enough to do all that at once.

[todd h]

Tommy, No I havent where can I find information on how to do this???

GG, Sorry it is a p3 750mhz.

I am not trying to capture it all at once. I know that wont be able to do that. I am capturing part of it putting it together and then fade to black. This is where I will start a new segment. The first 12 Min came out fine. I am trying to do more now. This is whthin the first 1000 frames! Capturing at NTSC 29.97(?) FPS

[Tommyknocker]

Tommy, No I havent where can I find information on how to do this???

GG, Sorry it is a p3 750mhz.

I am not trying to capture it all at once. I know that wont be able to do that. I am capturing part of it putting it together and then fade to black. This is where I will start a new segment. The first 12 Min came out fine. I am trying to do more now. This is whthin the first 1000 frames! Capturing at NTSC 29.97(?) FPS

Try this link.

[todd h]

Ok, I was able to get to my wife away from my desktop and used this underpowered machine. (PII 450MHz 512 ram) But from some of the video I am able to get 10 + minutes(only taking samll bits here and there from the video) with 0 dropped frames musing DIVO. But I have this one part that I get 40 dropped frames almost instantly! Any ideas? should I copy the tape to VHS(it is hi8) and back to a digital 8 tape? is there a chance that there is a bad section of tape???

[DVD_Ripper]

Are you transfering the video to your computer as AVI files or are you converting on the fly to MPEG2?

[todd h]

I am just using the AVI file. I figured that converting on th efly would use too much system resorces

[Richard_G]

If you are playing the Hi8 tape in a D8 camcorder and going straight to your computer over Firewire, you shouldn't have a problem with dropped frames. Assuming the tape is playing correctly and doesn't have any glitches in it. DV avi is, as has already been said, about 13Gb per hour. This works out to around 3.6Mb per second. Even the slowest 5400rpm laptop drive should be able to cope with this if DMA is turned on. I notice you said you have a USD hard drive. You aren't trying to capture to that are you? Your laptop only has USB 1.1 and that would be where the bottleneck is.

[todd h]

Richard_G:

I am playing this on my DV but playing on the TV I dont see any problems with the video on the TV when played there... Could there still be a problem with the tape that the computer is seeing???

And the video I am captring in RAW avi format but not capturing all at once. I am capturing a portion of it editing it and then saving it to the external USB 80 GB HD.
Now I do have DMA turned on but in win2k it sayd DMA if aviable. How can I comfirm it is in DMA mode?

Now I have cleaned my reg out but have not tried to burn since then do I need to compress it once it is cleaned? or will it automatically do that??

[todd h]

OK, I think I have figured out that hard drive on the laptop is not fast enough to capture from the firewire port. I hae also concluded as said before by Richard_G that the usb drive is too slow to capture too also. BUT my OLD PII 400 MHz system is capturing with almost no dropped frames using DIVO. So capture I must with the old system, edit on the laptop, and burn to DVD on a friends powerbook!..All while transfering to and from the USB drive to move the large files around! Boy I wish this was easier! But once it is done it is done....