Capturing puzzler.....

[Slowburn]

Using an ATI AIW 9600Pro card to capture satellite programming. I've captured many files with great results......until last night. Using Win98SE, P4, gig of ram and lots of room in the partition I'm using.

Started the capture after setting up the location and the file name and returned in an hour to check out the results. I expected to see a new .mpg file of the show I had just captured.

When I checked the file out, it started playing the program I wanted, then about a couple of minutes in, switched to a file I had captured TWO WEEKS AGO! Needless to say, I don't have the program I tried to capture last night.

What the hell happened? I set the capture up with a different file name so as not to interfere with previous files. I've never seen the like of this before.

Can anyone share any advise or experience to avoid this type of thing in the future?
The show I want is being rebroadcast again tomorrow night, so will try it again, but in the meantime, would like to attempt to prevent this from happening again.

[neomaine]

slowburn,

I'm guessing that since you are using Win98 and your file size limit is 2gb, that your new captured file went OVER that 2gb and file pointers are now messed up. Though, I wouldn't have expected that until you hit the 2gb mark in the new capture.

You may want to do a search on the forums as I vaguely remember this type of thing being metioned before.

[jameshgross]

It seems to me that you went to a lot of trouble to get a really nice computer and then put one of the worst operating systems made on it.
W98 SE was never made to operate on a system like you have.
I have had several experiences with w95 and w98 mixing up files.
Do your self a favor, get Wxp SP2 and update the file system to NTFS.

[Slowburn]

98SE has worked like a champ for years and I built this computer to include it along with XP Home on a separate physical drive. Never had 95, 98 or 98SE mix up any files before and that goes back 10 years with heavy computer usage.

I'm just trying to figure out what caused this. Never a problem before capturing hundreds of files and burning successfully to DVD. The file size for this screwed up file was .99GB, so well within the Win98 range.

Another thing I forgot to mention. Along with this file cutting into an older file, it also displayed the main menu of a program I made to include this file into. Like a .tda file from DVD Author (which I use). I wish I'd taken some screen shots.

neomaine: I wouldn't have a clue what to search for in the forums to try to solve this. Any suggestions from anyone?

[Nelson37]

While this is not that common, it is not that unusual, either. This is the same way many files are corrupted, except with video you can actually SEE the problem, most files just won't open.

Lots of possible causes, run a scandisk and be alert for "cross-linked sectors". Could be a one-time shot or could be a badly damaged FAT table. Re-format is the real solution, I delete and recreate the partition in such cases where feasible. Only takes a few seconds, and if you are going to recreate the drive, do it from scratch.

Running a defrag wouldn't hurt, either.