Mosaic block problem with firewire transfer.

[Scobo]

I have an intermittent problem transferring DV from my camcorder via firewire. I get multi-coloured mosaic blocks at random frames in the AVI. Sometimes this is only a couple of frames per half hour of video, other times every two or three minutes but never more than one or two frames in a row.
I also get this with AV-DV pass-through suggesting its not dirt on the heads as my manual suggests.
I don't see the blocks on the camcorders LCD or when playing back on TV.
I've used various capture programs and DV codecs to no effect.
Could it be a faulty firewire card ? It came with the camcorder and (if it's anything like the supplied software) may be poor quality. Having said that, I only started to get this problem recently and had no probelms for the first month or so.

Spec :-
AMD Duron 750mhz
Jetway 663AS Pro with VIA KT-133 chipset
32MB Cougar Video edition PCI graphics card
Creative Labs Sound Blaster PCI
384MB PC133 SDRAM
13 GB ATA66 H/D (2 partitions)
Newsoft firewire card
Canon MV500i miniDV camcorder

[vhelp]

scobo,

Yes, it could be a faulty firewire cord.

However, did you try firewiring using the same miniDV tape, and same
scene, to see if it's the miniDV tape that is cheap or worn in a certain part
of the tape??

...else just go out and purchase another cord, and again, try that same
miniDV tape. You need to do this so that you can safely rule out that it
was the miniDV tape or the firewire cord.

-vhelp

[Scobo]

Vhelp,
Thanks for the reply but I get this with all my tapes Sony and TDK and also with AV to DV passthrough (with no tape loaded).
I can download a scene and get blocks then re-do it and get none !
So I don't think it can be a tape issue.
I think I will try another firewire card though.
Can any one suggest one that works well with Canon miniDV cams.

[vhelp]

afternoon scobo,

well, I forgot to mention that it could also be your FW card too.

In any case, brand X of these cards don't really matter - really!!

Anyways, I've tried and still have the followging:
* Studio DV (pinnacle)
* Pyro
* SIIG (currently in my system) (but I'm don't do any more FW stuff)
I capture via my ATW analog capture, hooked up to my Canan ZR-10
via S-Video and/or RCA (composite) It just depends on what I have
connnected to each other, and what/where I was last in the wires being
connected what ever. I have so many connections, and run so many
capture projects.

I use my ZR-10 as a mini TIVO, utilizing the miniDV tapes. I have almost
50 or so, so far, of these tapes, cause I buy them cheap, in pack of 6
for $29 bucks, when I get the chance. Having a bunch of these little guys
laying around helps me out a lot. I can always say, "aah, i'll tape over
this one, cause I don't really need" or something like that. But, for the
most part, I can just pop in a tape, record the one hour TV show or 2 hour
movie and forget about it, move on to the next tape, and do the same
thing again, recording all day long. Later, or the next day/week, I'll encode
them according to my leasures, etc.

All three putout the SAME quality. So, please don't waist your monies on
a so-called, "X" brand as being the best. It's all digital and that's that.

So, if you can find one even cheaper than the above 3, then by all means,
go out and get it. I mean, all's you're trying to do is rule out the possibility
that you card is bad. But, you hope that it is tough, cause if it ain't, then
you're in for some more figuring out.

-vhelp

[Art]

Hi Scobo

I have exactly the same problem. And asked for help in this forum, but nobody has a strait answer for this. Some people told it’s a fire wire card, some of them told its the cable fault, others opinion is that my hard drive is slow and so on. So far I couldn’t solve the problem. I am using JVC mini DV camcorder and program is Premiere 6.computer is Pentium 3 550 MHZ and HD is 60 Gig. I will be looking for new people to show up with their suggestions and solutions, but if you get one, let me know. Thanks

[waldok]

Hi,

I have the same behavior now, with grey blocks showing from time to time, random place in the picture. My setup was working perfectly before, I never had any such effect, so I guess the FireWire card (Belkin) is OK. My Hard drive is clean and defragmented (dedicated to video capture files).
The only thing that changed on my setup is that I installed WiN2000 service pack 2.

I think if we share our experience about the problem we will soon discover common points that my explain it all.

OK ?

Waldok

[sajidvk]

Hello...

Couple of days back I got a fireWire Hard disk.
I have a PCMCIA-FireWire card with two ports one connected to
Camcorder and one Connected to external Hard disk.
I am getting this block noise only when I write the capture
video onto Firewire hard disk. I got this hard disk because I do
not have enough disk space in my internal hard disk to
capture video for more than 5-6 mintues.

When I capture to my hard disk there is no such noise or
dropped frames. When I capture to external hard disk
I get this block noise every 5-6 seconds for one/two frames
at two/three places in the frame and no dropped frames.

Anyway I can move something from my internal hard disk to
external and freeup some space on internal hard disk for video capture.

regards
-Sajid.

[sajidvk]

Hello....

I was able to fix problem with my system.
1. swapped the ports/cabled for Camcorder and external hard disk
also I swapped pcmcia card for FireWire Card and LAN card.
2. windows98SE said it found a OHCI--IEEE1394 ... new hardware
and did some driver updates ?? (I dont know why, it was already installed)

I tried capture for about 5-6 minutes to my external hard disk and this
time it is working fine.. no dropped frames and no noise...

so the problem may be that out of two ports one port overrides the
other one and probably there is no error - correction in connection
to dv-camcorder (just a guess)

I have seen that if my internal hard disk is fragmented i get lot of
dropped frames, but i never got block-noise during capture...

may be there was some kind of collision between the two hardwares
during data capture.

I think the problem I was having is different from yours,
anyway I though I will share it with you because symtomps are similar

-Sajid.

[Art]

Hi guys.

Did you try to record back the captured file after editing, without fixing those bad frames with mosaic? Just ignore them. Do you see these blocks or mosaic on the TV when you playback the move. The thing is that many of them are simply gone when I am watching them on a TV screen. Maybe it’s a computer monitor’s fault.
Any results. Response please.

[waldok]

Art,

Thanks for the suggestion, but it appears my grey blocks are really there in the digitized file and I can see them at playback time too/



Waldok

[Scobo]

I think my problem may be tape related after all.
DVdoctor.com has many posts on this subject and it appears Sony tapes are a common problem. The first two tapes I bought were Sony and I have been using these since I got my camcorder in May this year.
So I bought a head cleaner. After using the cleaner a couple of times I transferred about a half hour of AVI from a TDK tape and the blocks became fewer and fewer.
I then captured about 40 minutes from old 8mm tape with passthrough mode without a single block.
When I tried a Sony tape again the blocks became more frequent.

Does anyone else have a Canon MV500i or similar model and what brand of tapes do you use ?

[Art]

I have JVC GR DVL 300 miniDV camcorder and using maxell and recently TDK tapes.

[Scobo]

Aaaaaargh !!! !!!
The bloody blocks are back on passthrough too.
Art, I don't know about you but this is doing my head in. Have you tried firewire transfer on another PC ?
I've tried another firewire cable with no luck.
I'm turning my attention back to my system setup. I've suspected the shitty VIA chipset on my motherboard to be the problem from the outset as this has been the source of many problems with this PC.
So far, I've spent several hours tweaking the BIOS and swopping PCI cards around without any success.

[Scobo]

Hallelujah, problem fixed !

On checking VIA's website it turns out motherboards with certain VIA chipsets have a known problem with the PCI bus.
I downloaded the recommended PCI latency patch and now all my tapes and AV-DV passthrough produce 100% block free AVI's. Even the Sony tapes.
It also seems to have fixed a problem I had now and again where my PC would lockup or reboot during capture.

www.viahardware.com/