Frame drop with new and fast HDD

[Greycat]

Hi! This is my first post to this forum.

This is what I have:

- CPU: P3-1GHz
- RAM: 128 MB
- OS: Windows 98 SE
- Capture card: PV-BT878P+ TV tuner
- HDD: Maxtor 8 GB 5200 rpm (ATA66)
- Sound card: Sound Blaster AWE64
- DirectX 8.1 (4.08.01.0881)
- Motherboard: Soyo SV-7VBA133U

With this machine I used to capture using VirtualDub
in 352x480 at 30 fps, real time compressing with DivX 5
(100 % quality-based), audio 22K/16/mono uncompressed
and *always* dropped only 1/1000 frames.

Then I bought a Maxtor 80 GB 7200 rpm HDD (firstly
installed as slave) and also increased RAM to 256 MB.
The motherboard set ATA100 for the new HDD and ATA66
for the old one; DMA is on for both; Connection made
with that 80-wired flat cable.

Well, capturing with the *same settings above* and
using now the fast 80 GB HDD, it's dropping 5/1000 frames!
I tried to reduce settings to 320x240-30 fps and I
still get the same dropped frames.

The new HDD has passed easily in VirtualDub's benchmark
tests (no frame drops even in 640x480-30 fps), and says
that it's about 2.5 times faster than the old one with
a sustained write up to 39 MB/s (Windows buffering
disabled) while the old HDD gets only 12 MB/s.
Other disk benchmark softwares confirm it's really faster.
So, what's wrong?

Then I put the fast HDD as master and the slow one as slave
(the other IDE interface is currently occupied by two CD-ROMs).
I reinstalled Win98 SE and all the rest

Result: negative, I still get too many dropped frames
with the fast HDD and *less* with the slow one (?!?!?!)

- I turned audio off: same thing.

- I installed VIA 4-in-1 drivers: same thing (do these
drivers really make any difference and for what after all?)

- I tried others codecs (they all worked well with the old
HDD) like Picvideo MJPEG, huffyuv and even uncompressed:
same thing.

- Another thing has changed: CPU usage reported
by VirtualDub seems to be now higher than it used to be.
There's no new program running in the background AFAIK.

The whole thing doesn't make any sense and could be resumed to:
"Slow ATA66/5200 rpm HDD captures with better performance than
a fast ATA100/7200 rpm". I even tried Adobe Premiere 5 and
also the capture software that came with the TV tuner card
(which BTW sucks) and the problem persists.

Thanks for any help, sorry for the long post (I'm desperate)

[kayfam]

Ok first thing first. I didn't see it in your post unless I missed it, but what drive are you capturing to? If you have your OS installed on the same drive/partition your capturing to this will most definitely cause dropped frames. Also slaving a slower older drive to a faster one will cause the faster drive to clock down. At least this used to be the case especially on VIA based chipsets. My recommendation would be to replace that old drive of yours with a new one and use it as a dedicated capture drive.

[Mirror_Image]

When you are capturing, take a look at your CPU usage % in task manager, and see what approximate % it indicates.

edit; Ah, 98SE, you'll need to use that utility available in the accessories - system tools menu to see CPU %.

[Greycat]

kayfam:

I'm capturing to the faster drive which also has the OS installed (only one big partition), and I had planned to use the slower one just as a backup driver... Now I was wondering if I move the slower driver to the second IDE (removing one of my CD drivers ) and then create two partitions on the faster driver (e.g., 4 or so GB only for the OS + applications and the rest just for captured files) should help...

I think I'll have to do this anyway, re-installing everything since it's the only way of testing it.

-------------

Mirror_Image:

I can't find that utility -- what is it?.
If VirtualDub's "CPU usage" info that appears when it is capturing is the same thing, then it shows from 5% to almost 100% (using DivX 5), and of course it depends on the scene motion. I may be wrong, but it seems that after adding the faster driver this CPU % has increased a little.