Anyone able to capture with HP DV7 laptop?

fherr wrote on 1/29/2010, 7:36 AM
Got an HP Pavilion DV7-3080ca laptop, plenty of horsepower for my needs but I've just discovered that it can't capture properly (from my Canon HV20), regardless of whether I try capturing with Vegas or another program. Capturing DV results in lots of dropped frames (despite the 7200rpm hard drive), and capturing HDV fails altogether.

Dug around the 'net and there's speculation that the problem is the DV7's firewire port, possibly because it shares IRQ16 with several other ports or functions. One person said they even tried getting a firewire ExpressCard, but it didn't solve their problem because it too shares IRQ16.

I can capture perfectly with my old Dell Inspiron 9100, and even with an old Celeron eMachine for goodness sake - no dropped frames whatsoever.

Just wondering if anyone else has figured out a solution for the HP DV7 ... before I stop trying to capture with it.

(Please note the incredible restraint in the above post, no ranting about how or why anyone would bother offering a firewire port that doesn't actually work ... sigh ...)

Comments

rs170a wrote on 1/29/2010, 9:06 AM
My co-worker told me that a lot of the newer on-board firewire cards are using a different chipset than they used to and that this is causing all kinds of grief for folks like us.
Even if you use an external card of some kind, it still routes it through the on-board chipset so you're still in trouble :-(

Mike
fherr wrote on 1/30/2010, 6:17 AM
What's so puzzling about that is, don't they have engineers who test the firewire ports before releasing the product, to see if they actually work? You mention the problems for "folks like us", which I agree with, but isn't that everyone? Or are there other uses of a firewire port that don't require it to be able to transfer data quickly? Surely someone at HP's QA department has a camcorder they could test it on?

I was hoping that this was a problem that HP would have realized by now and perhaps fix with a new BIOS release, but I just tried flashing mine to the latest BIOS and it didn't help.

Anyway, thanks for the response; guess I'll head over to the HP forums and ask the same questions. And capture video with another machine in the meantime ...
rs170a wrote on 1/30/2010, 6:32 AM
What's so puzzling about that is, don't they have engineers who test the firewire ports before releasing the product, to see if they actually work?

It's just a theory of mine so here goes.
The engineers say "This firewire chipset isn't as good as the one we used to have and some users will complain".
Marketing says "Let them complain. It's 5 cents cheaper and we're talking several million units so the savings are substantial".
Guess who wins the argument?
We lose but marketing doesn't care.
Keep in mind that the average home user will never notice a difference.
We will but we're a very small portion of the overall picture so we don't really count :-(
My co-worker told me that high-end DAW (digital audio workstation) suppliers are having a really tough time finding laptops that don't have a crappy firewire chipset in them as it's causing them all kinds of grief.
A friend of his bought a custom laptop (can't remember the vendor) a few years ago that he runs with along with a 16 channel firewire interface for on-location recordings.
That particular laptop is no longer available due to the issues discussed here.

Mike
Cohibaman wrote on 1/30/2010, 1:02 PM
I've got a HP DV7 3074ca laptop, which is similar to yours, other than it has another separate hard drive built in. I have captured standard mini DV from my camera via fire wire (1394), using Vegas Pro 9 capture utility, without any issues (dropped frames etc.)(Don't have a HDV camera).Any video I capture from my camera, is setup to store on the other hard drive, where I keep it until the project is finished. I have captured up to 1 hour of video at one time with no problems. Are you using a separate hard drive to capture your video to? If not this could be part of your problem. GL.
fherr wrote on 1/30/2010, 8:45 PM
That's encouraging news, thanks for letting me know. Do you mean an external hard drive? If so, yes, I do also have an external hard drive connected to my laptop via USB2, but unfortunately, capturing directly onto that external drive also gave me dropped frames.

Still, if you can get it to work, maybe I'll try capturing to another hard drive. All my drives are 7200rpm, so they should all work equally well, but clearly there's a mystery factor that I haven't lucked upon yet. Interesting that you've have success.
baysidebas wrote on 1/31/2010, 8:40 AM
I don't think that throughput on the firewire is the problem. The original 1394 spec calls for 400mbps, DV maxes out at about 25mbps. This barely scratches the port's capabilities. The relatively low demands for DV is also why, with the original 1394 spec instituting a 16 foot maximum cable length for 400mbps devices, I am currently using a 125 foot firewire cable to one of my cameras and successfully recording to the laptop's hard drive using OnLocation and Scenalyzer Live.
Porpoise1954 wrote on 1/31/2010, 10:29 AM
I would expect the drive to be the issue.

Most? (a lot of?) guys working with HD will be capturing to RAID devices to maintain "sustained throughput" rates. There is no way in hell that a laptop 5400rpm drive is going to manage "sustained HD data rates" particularly when that same drive is being used for everything, including the OS, programmes, etc.

Even a single 7200rpm might have issues (depending on quality and interface) for video capture, forget USB - it wasn't designed for video sustained data rates - use an external drive via firewire (preferably RAID). There should be no problem with the CPU etc., as it's not a CPU intensive activity - it's the drive that's the bottle-neck when it comes to capture.

EDIT: For info., G-TECH make some excellent external HDDs specifically designed for video work.
Laurence wrote on 1/31/2010, 11:19 AM
I have a similar HP and can capture SD but not HD over the firewire connection. Yeah it sucks. Let me know if you figure out any way around this. I've tried five or six different capture programs and none of them work. It's something about the HP firewire chip. I imagine it would work with a SxS firewire card, but I hate to have to do that.

Right now I am getting around this by shooting to CF card on my Z7 or by capturing to an old P4 family computer.
fherr wrote on 1/31/2010, 12:52 PM
> I don't think that throughput on the firewire is the problem.

> I would expect the drive to be the issue.

Actually the firewire port is almost certainly the issue. The hard drive on the DV7 is 7200 rpm, which has always worked for me before, on several other laptops and desktops.

This firewire port doesn't even seem to recognize the connection type properly, let alone transfer data properly. When I connect my HV20 to an old desktop using a good firewire port, the camera's LCD screen says "DV Out", as it should. When I connect the same camera with the same settings to this DV7 laptop with the faulty firewire port, however, the camcorder's LCD screen says "HDMI Out". Huh??

I'm finding more mentions on the web of an inferior Ricoh chipset that these HP laptops apparently use for their firewire port. Prevailing wisdom is that you should avoid the Ricoh chipset altogether and always look for a laptop that uses a TI chipset for its firewire instead. Had I known this before, I wouldn't have bought this HP. Pretty good laptop otherwise, but part of the reason you go with a laptop is to be able to go everywhere and do everything on one machine. Including capture video. Oh well.
Coursedesign wrote on 1/31/2010, 1:35 PM
Have you used HP online support (go to hp.com and select your model)?

I have gotten amazingly good, competent, and quick support this way, even for very deep issues.

Use Chat rather than the other options, and you can keep working on other things while they get an answer for you.
fherr wrote on 1/31/2010, 1:38 PM
That's great to hear, thanks! I'll do that next, first thing tomorrow morning.
fherr wrote on 2/1/2010, 11:31 AM
Well, my chat with HP tech support was a lot less satisfying than yours have been. Either HP is in denial about this firewire port issue, or the tech I chatted with had never heard of the problem. Sent him a detailed description and asked specifically about fixes for the firewire port, but he wouldn't even acknowledge the port. Instead, he had me update my graphics driver and Intel chipset drivers, neither of which fixed the dropped frames problem.

I finally asked him if he knew whether an Expresscard would solve my problem, and explained that I could get one with a TI chipset (good) but it still shares IRQ16 (bad). All he could offer was that I try to get or borrow one and see if it helps.

This is all very good practice for cultivating equanimity :-)