Is my PC up to capturing from my camcorder?

[turk690]

The reason DV capture to an external USB2 drive is even more risky than capture to the single internal drive is the USB disk controller is a moderate CPU intensive software process that needs to operate continuously during the transfer. Any other OS or application processes can cause interruption of data flow to the external USB2 drive.

Precisely why notebooks and laptops with their single internal HDDs can NEVER be optimal for NLE.

[edDV]

The reason DV capture to an external USB2 drive is even more risky than capture to the single internal drive is the USB disk controller is a moderate CPU intensive software process that needs to operate continuously during the transfer. Any other OS or application processes can cause interruption of data flow to the external USB2 drive.

Precisely why notebooks and laptops with their single internal HDDs can NEVER be optimal for NLE.

DV over IEEE-1394 is a real time data stream rather than a file transfer. As such there exist none of the resend data packet provisions found in file copies or ethernet file transfers. If the computer can't keep up for whatever reason, pixels, lines or fields get dropped. Once the stream is captured to a file, further copies can be made without data loss. Things just slow down while data is resent.

Laptops have disk storage compromise but still can be used for NLE. They are generally slower and lack capability for multiple internal disk drives. USB2 and Firewire require software drivers. A better solution is hardware based eSATA for the second drive if you can find that on a performance laptop.

The other typical laptop weakness is the display chipset. Make sure it is HD capable if you intend to edit HD. Also look for digital audio support to S/PDIF output connectors.

[alhenderson]

Interesting that the power supply is causing this. It could be the voltage or minimum amperage do not match the original supply.

Good that it still works from battery.

Yeah, I figured it wasn't quite up to the spec of the original. As long as the battery lasts long enough for me to transfer a whole tape, I should be OK I guess..

Al.