Dropped Frames

[donsing]

I am trying to capture Hi-8 and VHS videos to VCD using ADS Instant Video (USB device) and ULead Video Studio 6SE Basic. I have shut down everything except explorer & systray, installed/reinstalled hardware/software, enabled DMA, defragged HDD (20GB/11GB free), and even cursed a little. MY PROBLEM is a 20%to25% dropped frame rate that results in a useless video. My processor is PIII @ 1ghz with an Intel integrated motherboard.
ANY SUGGESTIONS?

[CogoSWSDS]

I've had problems similar to yours, and this is kinda drastic and I might get "yelled" at by other members of the forum, but I have worked around dropped frames this way in the past (I have a PCI based capture card not a USB based device, although I considered one):

Capture at half the frame rate! Call me crazy but this can have you end up with a reasonable looking video (better than dropping 20-25% of the frames at random intervals, that's for sure). If your system doesn't like 29.97fps and you've tried tuning it (see the Tuning guide, I think it's under the "Capture" part at the left) for optimum performance, then this might be a reasonable compromise. OK sure, this way you're throwing away 50% of the frames, but 1) they'll be evenly spaced, and 2) you may not notice half the frames are missing when you play it back.

Radical? Sure. But it worked for me!

CogoSWSDS

[donsing]

Hey Cogo
Thanks for the response. I have printed out the Tuning Guide and will proceed from there. If that doesn't solve the problem or help, I will try your suggestion. There is so much to this video stuff that it is mind boggling.
Thanks again.
Don
P.S. My hard drive only turns 4500 RPM. Could that be a factor also?

[snowmoon]

First off a USB based device will be a handicap when capturing, so will a 4500 RPM drive.

You will need to figure out where your bottleneck is. I assume you are not running a preview/overlay window while capturing as this can eat bandwith.

For the one with a PCI card their is no reason to half the frame rate to capture. All you need is an appropriate setup and codec. You too need to find out where your bottleneck is. You may have trained youeself not to notice the dropped frames, but once you start capturing them again you will realize what you have been missing.

[BuckWheat249]

If you are capturing to the drive your OS works on that can be a HUGH problem. With bandwidth already tight and the OS tries to cache to the hard drive, ugly things happen...

[CogoSWSDS]

Snowmoon,
Thanks for the suggestion about the codec. I'd been capturing in 24-bit RGB at 14.99fps (half the 29.97fps NTSC rate) and last night I downloaded the HuffyUV codec and installed it and voila, I could capture at 29.97fps with no dropped frames.

Long live HuffyUV!

CogoSWSDS