Computer Crashes while Capturing

[jdefensor]

I borrowed a friend's capture card (Flyvideo 98 FM) and am trying to capture videos with it.

I say "trying" because I've only been able to capture 6 minutes at most before my computer hangs. I have a 1 G Athlon and 2 40 gb 7200 rpm Maxtor drives, both formatted in NTFS, connected to separate IDE ports. My OS (XP) is on one drive while I capture to the other. I capture with VirtualDub using the generic Conexant drivers from SourceForge.

Could it be the card itself or something else? Resolution (tried everything from 160x120 to 640 x 480) or compression codec (tried Huffyuv & MJPEG) doesn't seem to matter as it still hangs eventually. I tweaked the settings according to those recommended by Luke's Video Guide. The captures (which I manage to recover after rebooting) work fine though. But I really need to be able to capture longer clips (or at least not have my computer totally freeze on me all of a sudden with no warning). Help!

[jdefensor]

I just tried capturing with Adobe Premiere 5.1 and it crashed after around 6 minutes too.

[fmctm1sw]

Is that a PCI card? I had an IRQ conflict that caused all kinds of havoc with my computer. Lots of crashes and spontaneous reboots too.

[3dcandy]

could it be something related to heat? If you're pushing your pc hard in other applications does it crash, or is it stable? A few more details of your system should help!

[jdefensor]

I can capture up to 35 minutes before crashing now! I did two things that seemed to help. First I captured to another partition on the same drive as my OS (it didn't seem to like my other drive). Next, I used Virtual VCR. Great program that one! 0 drops, good synch. 35 minutes may not be perfect, but it sure beats 6 minutes. I just spliced the clips together at strategic spots with Premiere. Am currently cleaning up my caps in vdub with the awesome fxvhs filter.

[Bel]

Crashes + Spontaneous Reboots = Heat or bad power supply

[jdefensor]

Well, it doesn't exactly 'crash', it doesn't reboot either. The most accurate word would be 'hang'. It can't be heat, my sensors show the temperature to be well within the limits. Could be power, but to help prevent this I disconnected all unnecessary peripherals from the power supply before capturing. 35 minutes is acceptable, but I'd still like to know what's causing the hanging though.

[Bel]

Probably not the power supply if you're getting consistent time limits before it crashes, plus you would notice wierd errors and stuff outside capturing as well. Don't know what the problem is, but if it's consistent then it probably isn't your power supply. The fact that it would crash quicker when using another hard drive, does make me suspect the power supply, however, as the power demands would be greater as both your os drive, and the capturing drive would need to be spinning during the process. If you have a bad power supply, I would recommend spending the 40 bucks and getting a new one, bad power can be detrimental to the entire operation of your system, as well as possibly damaging components.

[kayfam]

jdefensor,
Are you running anything to monitor your CPU temperature in real time? The older Athlons weren’t known for running all that cool in the first place and if anything can bring a system to halt it's an over heated processor. The only thing that's gets me to thinking in this direction is the fact you mentioned changing your capture drive to a partition on your main drive. This would take some of the stress off of your CPU since your not moving anything across the IDE interface slowing down any heating that might be occurring. Just something you might want to look at.