IUVCR, dropping frames after ~40min - was working 1 month

[tyrotim]

My system:
AOpen AX6BC
P3-550 @ 616mhz
512mb ram
40gig maxtor 7200rpm drive (for system)
Fastrak 66 controller with
2, 30gig maxtor 7200rpm drives
ATI TV-Wonder PCI
ASUS V7100pro (64meg)
SB Live
Windows 2000 pro SP3
IuVCR

video source - satelite using S-Video cable

I have been recording using IUVCR to do recordings at
480x480 (NTSC @ 29.97fps) with PCM audio (44khz 16bit)
using huffyuv codec for about 1 month now with no dropped frames for 1 hour shows. CPU utilization hovers around 30-50%.

Each day I would wipe clean the 60gig drive (2 30's) and do a new recording. Now it seems after about 40-50 min iuvcr starts dropping frames steadily until the cpu utilization goes down to about 5-10% and of course the recording is uselsss.

I have tried everything under the sun I can think of... defrag, other programs. different settings in iuvcr etc etc etc.....

Please help me, i'm about to crack! Thanks a bunch

[FiEND]

if they are blank partitions you are capping to, try deleting the partitions rather than formatting or defragging, then remake them and do a quick format. shouldn't take more than 5 min without having to reboot.

if you are capping to 2 separate partitions and have iuvcr set to spill the video onto the second partition when the first is full. watch to see if the problem starts when it switches to the second drive or just whether the first drive is fine and the second drive is bad. if this is the case, swap the primary and secondary capping partition and see what happens.

if you're in winxp, try disabling dma mode for all your IDE channels, reboot then enable DMA again and reboot. winxp can drop dma modes if it encounters errors until it gets down to PIO mode, which could be the problem on one of the capture drives.

what defrag programs have you used?

in BIOS, check to see if S.M.A.R.T. drive monitoring is available for your computer, this will enable internal hard drive monitoring and will tell you if you're drive is having problems or is dying.

dunno what else I would check at the moment...

[tyrotim]

Thank you for the suggestions...

I forgot to mention that i have the two drives in a raid-0 config (striped)

I remembered reading somewhere that the SBLive Value is not a good soundcard for recording. I tried disabling the audio and can record for 3 hours no prob... I'm assuming the problem is somewhere here...

Does it matter if the soundcard and TV card share the same IRQ ? I would not have thought so...

[snowmoon]

How aoubt a more mundanr question? Have you checked your system for spyware or trojans lately? The often activate after inactivity and go to work. This might be waht's throwing your system over the edge all od a sudden.

[offline]

tyrotim,

I have had the exact same problem in XP and Windows 2000. No matter what the source capture, 20 - 50 minutes in, the frame rate begins to crash. Before everything worked for several months.

The problem may lie with Microsoft's ACPI support and how it
handles IRQ sharing. It is my hypothesis that windows does
not allocate IRQ bandwidth nicely, and can attempt to share
too many devices at once. ACPI is automatic and us, the users,
are not directly informed of any changes if they are made.
This can lead to multiple devices sharing the same IRQ. Normally
this is not a problem but unlike just about all other devices, a capture
card requires a constant stream of data and can not make up for
lost time (aka burst mode) like hard drives, video cards etc.

To fix, on some mainboards you can disable ACPI (under cmos)
as well as disable plug'n'play os support, reboot windows, shut
down again and re-enable plug'nplay as well as ACPI. This should
refresh the IRQ list.

On other mainboards, you could try deleting ACPI and IRQ
steering under mycomputer/hardware/device manager/system
devices - but as I have not tried this I would only suggest it
as a last resort.

Perhaps others more advanced can suggest an alternative answer
to this problem?

[tyrotim]

I have checked my system for spyware and viruses, found a few things, but nothing had any effect.


Offline,

In my cmos I can turn off ACPI but windows won't boot at all. As soon as the first progress bar finishes, the system just reboots. I tried safe mode but that does not matter.. Is there a way in win2K to turn off ACPI support ?

Thanks

[snowmoon]

Turn off ACPI, re-install W2k.

IF you had a FAT boot partition their is a convoluded way of replacing the HAL, but it's not pretty.

[offline]

tyrotim,

read the link below to create two hardware profiles and let
us know if it does the trick. Removing devices in this fashion should be
another way of taking some control back from ACPI.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/81808.php

luck!

[FiEND]

i have a SBlive value.. no probs at all with it. well, the drivers suck of course, but no problems when capturing.

System Information report written at: 9/18/2002 11:57:14 PM
System Name: FIEND
[IRQs]

Resource	Device	Status	
IRQ 9	Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System	OK	
IRQ 9	ATI TV Wonder BtCap, WDM Video Capture	OK	
IRQ 9	Creative SB Live! Value	OK	
IRQ 9	Intel(r) 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2442	OK	
IRQ 9	Intel(r) 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2444	OK	
IRQ 5	NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500	OK	
IRQ 5	S3 ViRGE DX/GX	OK	
IRQ 10	Creative PC-DVD Encore ( WDM )	OK	
IRQ 10	Intel(R) 82801BA/BAM SMBus Controller - 2443	OK	
IRQ 0	System timer	OK	
IRQ 8	System CMOS/real time clock	OK	
IRQ 13	Numeric data processor	OK	
IRQ 6	Standard floppy disk controller	OK	
IRQ 4	Communications Port (COM1)	OK	
IRQ 3	Communications Port (COM2)	OK	
IRQ 1	Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard	OK	
IRQ 12	PS/2 Compatible Mouse	OK	
IRQ 14	Primary IDE Channel	OK	
IRQ 15	Secondary IDE Channel	OK

as you can see, IRQ sharing is not a problem.

as for what else it can be, sorry my problems always tend to be software related, not hardware so it's nothing I have experienced before.

[offline]

as you can see, IRQ sharing is not a problem.
as for what else it can be, sorry my problems always tend to be software related, not hardware so it's nothing I have experienced before.

??? <sigh>

You know I am really frustrated by those few who don't have the 1st clue about the answer to a problem but are happy to provide some misinformation to
confuse the situation, just as long as they come out of it seemingly knowlegeable.

[tyrotim]

Well I've tried creating a hardware profile as suggested, does not do a whole lot except for re-allocate the irq's so that they are all using 7 instead of 9.

I'm going to re-install disabling ACPI and see if that works.

I think there just is too much on 1 irq.... Geforce2,Firewire,SB,TVWonder,Network... etc etc...

thanks for the great suggestions. I will update you tomorrow...

[offline]

tyrotim,

I don't suppose you have known good system restore do you?
Have you tried this?

[tyrotim]

you mean, at windows startup ? "last know good config" ?

Hmm... I don't think this would work since I've rebooted many times.... Doesn't windows store the last know good conifg each time a successfull boot happens ?

i wish i had done a ghost when the thing was working right....

[offline]

goto

Start>All programs>accessories>systemtools>system restore

see if you have a restore on a date you know things were ok.
start again,
go to system restore, save a restore point now.
start again,
do a system restore from the earlier ok date. if works keep it, if not
you can restore your current settings.

It is always a good idea (of course) to back up data files if you are doing
this kind of thing.

[tyrotim]

I don't think this option is available on Win2K...

[tyrotim]

offline,

Looks like you were right....

I turned off ACPI, in my bios, re-installed win2k, turned off PCI Steering and made sure my capture card and sblive card are now on different irq's ..... et voila, capture problems solved....

WOOOHOOOOO!!! Actually I can now be doing a capture, playing mp3's, doing a build in VStudio all at the same time WITHOUT DROPPING FRAMES..... ( i normally don't do this, just a test)

Thank you for the great suggestions everyone !!!

[offline]

tyrotim,

glad you got things working again. Now if I may make a further
suggestion:

SYSTEM BACKUP!!! ..hehe

[tyrotim]

Every step of the way !

Thanks again !