Capturing problems

[timcs]

I have a Creative 3d personal Cinema card and have been trying to capture video with the PAL DVD settings but I am getting lost frames.
My PC consists of the following:

AMD Althon 1ghz
Jetway 867AS motherboard
256mb (also tested with 512mb and 1 256mb+ 128mb combined)
IBM deskstar 60gb 7200rpm
Maxtor 40gb 5400rpm

I have the 2 hard drives currently on different IDE chains as I have been informed that having them on the same chain can cause the faster hard drive to slow down to the slower one.

Both drive are formatted under NTFS and I have also tried the IBM with fat32. Is this a processor issue ?

[timcs]

I am puzzled that no one has replied to my post. If any more information is required then please let me know.


I have already asked Creative on this and also have had no reply. I wonder whether they have under estimated the required spec needed to capture at MPEG-2 quality.

One thing I didn't mention is the software that comes with the card is WinDVR. I would prefer to stick with this due to the ability to control the software via its remote control.

[ricardo2]

Hi timcs.

Please give some more information.
At what resolution are you trying to capture?
Are you trying to capture directly to mpeg2 on the fly?

Edit:
Sorry,i did not notice the words "PAL DVD".
So,the answer is that capturing 720x576 directly to mpeg2,means,that you need alot of prosessor power.I lost frames with my Athlon 1333(1 gig ram),when capturing directly to mpeg2 full PAL DVD.Then i got Athlon XP 2000+,and now it works perfectly.

[timcs]

ricardo2, thanks for replying. I did wonder if more Processor power was needed but I didn't know what spec to go for.

I am considering to buy a Althon 2100+ with 256mb DDR pc2100 on a MCI 6590 motherboard. Would this be enough to do the job or would I need more memory?

Also can I get away with having my Maxtor HDD 40gb (5400rpm) as the primary on the same chain as the IBM HDD 60gb (7200rpm) or would this cause problems?


The IBM HDD is only used for the capturing

[ricardo2]

If you are always capturing to mpeg2,then it's only cpu and the memory,because the amount of data written to hard disk is not very huge.But if you sometimes wish to capture uncompressed avi,then it's only hard disk that matters(mostly).If you can afford some more ram(512mb),then buy it.

[Fozzee]

I have a slight flicker at 720 x 576 Mpeg2.
I have a Athlon 1700+ O/C 1667mhz

Would a faster processor cure this problem?

It's perfect at any lower resolution.

Fozzee

[timcs]

Well I took your advise ricardo2 and I went for 512mb ram still running at pc2100 thought I hope this is enough