DV Transfer and "Dropped Frames"

[HRMaddie]

Until I installed a Highpoint Raid card and a card reader I would never get a dropped frame with VS8. After reading lots of threads I went and purchased a separate IDE hard drive, Maxtor 250gig (which is configured to DMA and no disk compression). I have tried shutting down my antivirus and other background apps and I am still dropping frames, not as many though. The firewire is on a card reader connected to a PCI USB/Firewire card. I tried connecting directly to the card, unfortunately that didn't work either. I run a clean system with nothing running in the background except for Nero InCD, Pc-Cillin and all of the XP crap, nothing else.

I would like to try WinDV to see if that would help, but for some reason I keep getting an error when I click on capture, I just can't seem to get that to work. Not sure why WinDv is not working?

Any suggestions that I might be able to try?

[GeorgeW]

UNINSTALL any packet-writing software

[HRMaddie]

Can you explain packet-writing software?

[junkmalle]

Can you explain packet-writing software?

InCD.

I'd shut down PC-Cillin while capturing too.

A lot of people have problems with video capture and RAID.

[HRMaddie]

Would this work? Could I purchase another XP Home, load that onto my separate 250 gig hard drive, change to ASUS Bios to boot from it and capture? I think I have narrowed it to the Raid card. I have tried every suggestion I have been able to find.

[Richard_G]

If you have two drives, you can load two instances of Windows and choose which one you want to use on boot up. They are both the same installation so you don't need to buy another copy. Alternatively, set up two user profiles, one for capturing and one for everything else.

Alternatively, do away with the RAID card and go back to everything working as it did. Is there any particular reason why you got the RAID card. Your profile says you have 2 80GB drives and you mention a 250GB drive. What are you trying to use on the RAID card? I would use (and do, in fact) one of the 80GB drives for operating system and software and the 250GB drive to store video on.

[HRMaddie]

I originally got the raid card after a severe hard drive crash and I lost three months worth of pictures of my daughter, my fault because I wasn't backing up immediately. After I thought about it, I decided I would rather have a constant backup than have to reinstall everything. I have around 200 CDs I ripped, freeware downloads, etc. I then added the 250 gig hard drive for dv capture (the main reason) and just having an extra drive to goof around on. I only purchased the 250gig Maxotr, because is was on sale, for $100. The 250 gig is definitely overkill.

My last thought is to dismantle the raid and have Nero do a nightly backup (if changes are made) to certain folders (pics, videos, music, etc).

[junkmalle]

Are you capturing to your raid array or to your other drive?

[HRMaddie]

Capturing to the other drive, which still drops frames, not as many as if I capture to the raid array though.

[HRMaddie]

I disconnected my raid card from the pci slot, connected my o/s hard drive to the motherboard and all of a sudden no dropped frames (I didn't have to close any applications, too). Not sure what my solution is going to be, either purchase a new motherboard for a faster PCI bus with a 1394 connection, hardware raid card or just forgo the raid.

Any thoughts on a semi-cheap resolution (under $150 is okay). Wife is starting to get a little agitated over the recent upgrades.

[ofbarea]

Try blocks of 64K for the raid card. A while ago I had a Promise raid 66 card and it worked better for video capture with large blocks.

Also use diferent IRQ (interrupts) for the firewire and raid card.

[junkmalle]

You could try Acronis's True Image software. It can back up your boot (or any other) drive to one big file on another drive. It supports incremental backup and you can mount the backup file as if it was a drive and access its files.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

I've used it in the past (although not in exactly this context) and was quite happy with it.

If you want to go the free route just use Windows' task scheduler to scedule a batch file that copies all the files the files from the drive in question to a backup folder on another drive. Something like:

xcopy /e /d /y c:\ D:\BackupC

/e copies subdirectories including empty ones
/d copies only files that are newer than equivalent files in the backup
/y continues copying after an error (ie, a file is in use)

You can also just click on the batch file to run the backup manually at any time.

You may still have to reinstall Windows with this technique though. And if you delete files on the source drive they don't get deleted on the destination drive. So manual cleanup of the backup may be needed now and then.

I use this technique to backup folders from one computer to another across my network.

[KenJ57]

The firewire is on a card reader connected to a PCI USB/Firewire card. I tried connecting directly to the card, unfortunately that didn't work either.

This card may be a problem because of I/O congestion. It's best to have a single purpose I/O card. I'm running Adobe Premiere Elements and the installation document clearly states that it supports only ONE Firewire connection and no chaining of devices. Just because you can buy a 'does it all' I/O card doesn't mean you would want to actually use one. Video I/O is very demanding of computer resources. Simplify! Buy a Firewire card with as few ports on it as possible. If you also need USB 2.0 then get a seperate card.

I have an external Firewire hard drive and the throughput on it suffers by 40% when my A/D converter is turned on. So, I only power up and use one device at a time.

[edDV]

Rather than separate instances of Windows XP, you could try separate hardware profiles and user accounts. I do this on my PIII notebook and turn off everything including anti-virus, networking, modems and USB.

Capture goes much more smoothly and with predictable reliability.

Also, it sounds like you are using RAID 1. This is not a good mode for capturing.