WinDV dropping frames

[2Bdecided]

I previously used WinDV successfully for several years.

For the last couple of years, I've only been using HDVsplit. It's not always captured properly to my SATA drives (I think the drivers for the SATA PCI card are suspect), but is happy capturing to my IDE drives.

Now I've returned to WinDV to archive some older tapes, I can't get a complete tape captured without 2-4 dropped frames somewhere. Somewhere in the middle of a tape, not at a scene change, it reports a couple of dropped frames. The WinDV preview also freezes briefly quite often, but not usually causing dropped frames.

I've disabled my virus checker, killed loads of background processes, etc - but I can't avoid these few dropped frames.

In "the old days" (on the same PC!) I'd only get dropped frames when WinDV tried to recover after a section of blank tape. Now the dropped frames occur in the middle of continuous footage.

Since I last used WinDV successfully, I have "upgraded" to XP SP3, and added this SATA card - but when the SATA problem appears (more under SP2 than SP3), it's not subtle - I get hundreds of dropped frames, not a couple.

Any suggestions?

I know it's most likely to be a software issue, but I'm almost wondering if my PC is wearing out - or just overloaded.

Cheers,
David.

[edDV]

I run WinDV almost continuously during the day to cap CNBC from the cable box via my Canopus ADVC-100. Even though this generates large files, I like to scan/scrub through to find stories of interest. DV format is lightening fast for this.

So when I stress the same computer in other ways, I can see the effect on the WinDV captures. WinDV will freeze the preview window to favor stream capture. This happens when the CPU is 100% busy on other tasks such as video encoding + web page decode or during heavy disk activity. Even when copying large files to or from the DV capture drive, I rarely get dropped frames except when the drive gets near full. In that case, sector seeks get extreme causing eventual frame loss.

I too have a mix of ATA100 and SATA300 drives. I see little difference in performance for DV capture.

So it appears something is wrong with your disk drivers, or some other application is operating on the same drive. It is possible a frame drop could be tape related but when using the camcorders I find frame drops are very rare except at the ends of the tape or when the heads get dirty.

[danno78]

Try also working just for capture in safe mode. So you get lighter Windows enviroment. DVIO is also a alternative with no preview window. Maybe your drive is fragmented.

[2Bdecided]

edDV,

That's exactly how it used to work for me - WinDV only dropped frames when you really pushed the system. Whereas now the CPU isn't going above 10%, but still they happen!

Anyway, I figured out a "solution" last night: years ago, when it worked, I didn't have broadband internet access. Now I do, and it doesn't.

So I disconnected from the internet. Problem solved! Two tapes captured without problems.

I wonder what's "phoning home" when I'm on-line? I'll do a malware check, as my virus checker and windows update were disabled when capturing.

But - problem solved!

Cheers,
David.