Can't capture DV or HDV on new machine...

teaktart wrote on 2/21/2006, 8:56 PM
Got my new HVR-A1U , shot some footage and went to capture using ConnectHD (Cineform) before moving over into V6d. I have a brand new editing computer and I haven't been able to capture without huge blocks of mosaic pixels and glitchy audio using Cineform HD (one weird anomaly is that the video is longer on the timeline than the audio that goes with it, you can actually see the difference in length for each clip)....same scrambled pixel blocks when I tried using Vegas HD capture.... completely useless.

This same machine absolutely will not recognize my other SD Sony DCR-HC1000 when I plug in the firewire and try to do a regular capture into Vegas. Tried a third SD Sony TRV38 and tried regular capture (into V6d) and got an average of 100 dropped frames per minute. Drives are de-fragged, have plenty of memory, swapped different FireWire cables, etc. I have my older computer (with V6d) right next to new one and tried swapping cameras, Firewire cables, etc. using both Cineform and Vegas captures and all works fine, but due to slower computer playback is very challenging....hence, the reason I invested in new computer.

In the process of trying to figure out the problem(s) new computer did freeze up big time on several occassions so bad that hitting the off button for up to 10sec was the only way to shut down and reboot.

I had loaded V6d earlier in the day and all seemed to go as expected, no problems. I even did another fresh download and install of V6d with fingers crossed but no change or improvement....

I'm baffled as to what might be causing the new computer to not want to capture any kind of video be it DV or HDV without major problems. I moved the firewire around to different FWports on new computer and problem still persists. Also, can't figure out why the HC1000 just doesn't get "seen" by Vegas capture despite rebooting camera, computer, and reconnecting FW several times to see if I could get it to be "seen" by Vegas capture app. I've gone into Device Mgr and don't see any yellow triangles or indication hardware is not working... This computer was built by a company specializing in editing machines so all configurations were made by builder with editing in mind....

How can I determine whether this is hardware or software problem?

I've been editing on my new machine for about a month and its been fast and fun, so its really frustrating to not be able to work with my new camera and this new (to me) HDV format.

By going over to my old computer I've verified that the problems are NOT with:

the camera(s), the tape(s), the firewire(s)

Any ideas on what to try next?

Thanks for your help.... Teaktart

NEW CPU:
AMD4400+Dual Core ,2M cache, 4GB DDR400RAM,74Gb SATA 10K RPM 4.5ms, 1 TB SATA II RAID 5, 400 GB Removable SATA, DVDR/W 16xDual Layer, (2) nVidia 6600PCI Exp16x, Thermal Fan Controller, 460WSilent Power Supply, XP Pro sp2, etc

Old CPU
Dell 8400, 2.4 Ghz, 1 GB Ram, XP Home, and several external Maxtor HDs, etc.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 2/21/2006, 9:11 PM
Be sure DMA is enabled.
Be sure firewire card isn't sharing resources, esp w/sound card or vid card.
Check that no anti-virus is running.
Got Service Pack 2 installed?
Using INTERNAL Capture for HDV and EXTERNAL capture app for DV?
Capturing to second drive, not boot drive?
What is running in background of new machine?
johnmeyer wrote on 2/21/2006, 11:17 PM
Almost certainly your disk drive setup or else an amazingly ill-behaved background application. Use MSCONFIG to kill all the startup programs (don't touch the processes). Get rid of indexing. You should never drop even a single frame. I still capture with my 450 MHz P3 computer and it has never dropped a frame in the last five years. I would also disable all anti-virus software.
Spot|DSE wrote on 2/22/2006, 6:55 AM
In a different forum, Teaktart says Norton is running. I'm amazed you can capture at all with Norton on your old machine. Disable it.
FWIW, many of us don't run anti-virus at all. Norton is the worst of the lot, IMO.
teaktart wrote on 2/22/2006, 10:32 AM
I just did some quick test captures with and without Norton's. I think that may be part of the problem. I have to get to work so will experiment some more this evening.
On one test I used Veg capture and it appeared to work (rendered down to 1080 60i) but I noticed with that I'm getting very slow fps preview....will check it out some more.
I also tried to capture reg DV w/o Norton's and am still getting tons of dropped frames...
To be continued this evening...

Thanks so much for your suggestions
Teaktart (Eileen)

p.s. Got new camera Fri and Spots new HDV book Sat...great timing !and the book was very helpful... (After three days of total immersion here I'm amazed there isn't gray matter all over the walls!)
teaktart wrote on 2/22/2006, 11:08 AM
Did some sniffing around and found that new computer has "RAID 5 current Ultra DMA transfer mode 6"

(old computer has Primary IDE "ultra DMA mode 5"----- and Secondary IDE "ultra DMA mode 2")

Haven't a clue what that all means..... But ready to learn !

Thanks much,
teaktart wrote on 2/22/2006, 10:24 PM
I just ran capture tests using V6D with 2 Sony DV cams and an HDV cam with Norton" OFF
Today the "new"computer is recognizing the Sony1000, nice but both DV cams had about 3 sec. of good capture and then total pixel mess and audio junk. I took another clip of good media and on playback in "Good(auto) I am seeing 24-29pfs. When I did the same captures with Norton's ON there was no difference in results both capture or playback.

With Norton's OFF:
The HDV captured fine (V6d)and then I rendered it to 1080 60i. I used a 1 min clip and it took over 5 min to render out. Is that normal for this type of machine? (I'm concerned about the time it would take to load in a on hour live performance video...not to mention a multi-cam shoot) whew!
On playback the m2t clip on "Good(auto)" got 3-4 fps and in "Preview ( auto)" I saw 12-13 fps
On playback the rendered verson on "Good(auto)" saw 6-7 fps and on "Preview (auto) saw 15-20 fps. When I turned Norton's back ON the results were the same so I'm not noticing an difference....

I tried once again to use ConnectHD (Cineform) and it starts out with two error codes and then one more click and it will start to capture....
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
error:hr(0x80070057 the parameter is incorrect) in C:\Brisco\Apps\Capture\RTCaptureConvert. cpp at 333

error:hr(0x80070057 the parameter is incorrect) in C:\Brisco\Apps\Capture\RTCaptureConvert. cpp at 1219
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As it captures after about 3 seconds it starts to fall apart again into chunks of pixels and glitchy audio and the video is longer than its audio on the timeline. As mentioned earlier I already tried a fresh download and install in hopes of a clean start, no luck....

I don't know anything about how the brains of a computer work but I do see a pattern of my captures starting out fine for about 3 sec. and then losing it. I'm also questioning the playback performance being so slow....
I don't think I have a bunch of stuff running in the background as this is meant to be free of everything except the ability to go online for updates, etc .And I leave all the rest of the email, internet business on my old computer.
I've run virus scans, defragged and all the other "housekeeping" I can think of and have plenty of hard drive space available.

Would love to know what kind of performance others with similarly configured computers are getting... Hoping to see solutions somewhere in my future here!
Thanks much,
Teaktart
teaktart wrote on 2/23/2006, 9:40 PM
Boy, did I get a nice surprise this morning when I thought about the idea that something is "clogging" my computer from really flying, and I went ahead and downloaded and ran an anti-spyware app, that a computer repair guy put on my old computer after replacing my C drive (ouch!) , called believe it or not ,"CrapCleaner". I hadn't really done much on the web except download updates, etc but none-the-less there were hundreds of cookies and temp files that it listed and I then deleted. I immediately hooked up my SD DV cams and captured some footage and VOILA' the dropped frames stopped and I got good captures. What a relief.
Meanwhile, I can also capture the HD stuff using V6 capture but the last hurdle remains getting the Cineform to work without the blocky pixel and audio problem. I still have that going on even though I experimented with every possible combo of options in their preference window.

So, my firewire port and card are working as they should as is Vegas capture.
I would really like to get the Cineform working as I think it would save a lot of time in both loading onto the hard drive and for editing and outputting to dvd....

Also, I noticed that after the "CrapCleaner" purge my preview times picked up a bit as well.

Kinda wish there was a similar "CrapCleaner" for the rest of my house!

thanks again,
Teaktart
Serena wrote on 2/23/2006, 11:09 PM
Just to reassure you: Cineform works very well. So the problem is in your machine or in the way you've set the options. You say you've tried them all in all combinations. Tell us how you expected the options should be set (rather than all the things you've tried). Of course you realise that you can post a service request to Cineform?