A/V drop outs

debuman wrote on 6/9/2008, 7:58 PM
Hey guys,

When I start capturing after about 30 seconds the video and audio starts to drop out in as many as every other second. I know it's not the video cam I'm capturing from and I know it's not the firewire. I had this problem before and what I did was to change my ATI Radeon 1650 Pro graphics cards settings and it work the last time now chaging the settings does not work at all. If I move the Vegas capture window to my secondary monitor it stops the drop outs but 30 seconds later it starts dropping out again.

How do you guys capture SD or HD and what kind of problem does this sound like to you?.

Thanks.

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 6/9/2008, 8:42 PM
If the audio or video PREVIEW drops out during capture, it's because the computer is using its cpu cycles for the important stuff -- capturing the video and audio to disk. You need to shut down background operations during capture and/or turn off preview if necessary.

If the captured files have audio dropouts without dropped video frames, then you have a very unusual, and afaik unknown problem. Please elaborate.
debuman wrote on 6/10/2008, 12:27 PM
Thanks for your reply,

I have two exact same computers and I did what you said and the a/v drop outs is still there so I just used my other computer to capture and everything is good. No A/V drop outs. I don't understand because It's exactly the same of eveything from the hardware to software so what could it be?.

Thanks.
cbrillow wrote on 6/11/2008, 8:50 AM
You might check the transfer settings on the controller for the hard drive you're capturing to, on the machine that doesn't work. Best results are obtained when they're set to "DMA".
farss wrote on 6/11/2008, 9:08 AM
Audio dropouts are pretty common but not noticed usually. I find audio is the first thing to go. Try cleaning the heads, if that fails try another or better VCR. If that fails try capturing the audio as a second pass from the analogue outputs of the VCR/camera.

It might be none of the above. Vegas may resample DV audio and something wrong in the PC could also cause this problem I guess. Never had it happen to me but quite a few audio dropouts due to tape / head clogs.

Bob.
Laurence wrote on 6/11/2008, 9:16 AM
Are you using the Vegas capture or http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.htmHdvSplit[/link]? I always use HdvSplit with the preview window disabled and my virus protection turned off.

Some people have better luck with the Vegas capture, but on my system the Vegas HDV capture is entirely useless.
debuman wrote on 6/11/2008, 1:15 PM
Hey Laurence

I'm using the default Vegas capture. I'll try to use the HDVsplit this time and hope it works.

Thanks.
debuman wrote on 6/11/2008, 11:00 PM
cbrillow,

What do you mean by transfer settings?, and how do you set it to DMA?. Can you please give me step by step instructions?

Thanks.
cbrillow wrote on 6/13/2008, 2:06 PM
Sorry -- didn't see this question yesterday.

It's unclear to me whether your problem is a preview/visual thing, or if you are getting dropped frames, yielding bad capture files.

If your problem is dropped frames, the transfer mode could be a factor. (If the drive you're capturing to is SATA, the following does not apply.)

To check this in Windows XP, open Device Manager, then open IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers. Doubleclick Primary IDE Channel, then open the Advanced tab. If either of the devices' Current Transfer Mode reads "PIO", your capture performance will be impaired. Best results are obtained if the device is using DMA access. If you find this to be the case, you may try to change the mode to "DMA if available", but this doesn't always work -- sometimes there are hardware issues that prevent DMA from functioning and sometimes a BIOS setting must be changed to enable it.

If the drive you're capturing to is on the Secondary IDE Channel, repeat the steps outlined above to check the settings for that channel. You need to know which channel and which device is controlling your hard drive in able to ensure that DMA access is being used.
debuman wrote on 6/13/2008, 4:49 PM
cbrillow,

Thanks, I'll try it.
musicvid10 wrote on 6/13/2008, 7:44 PM
debuman,

I don't see where you have answered the question that has been asked twice now:

Are the dropouts happening in the PREVIEW WHEN CAPTURING or in the CAPTURED FILES ON PLAYBACK?

There is a big difference!
debuman wrote on 6/15/2008, 3:25 AM
musicvid,

That's a good question. I will have to do some test before I can answer those questions but for what I see the video/audio dropouts is happening during the real time capture in the preview.