Capture

wgoldberger wrote on 12/29/2003, 12:16 PM

Whenever I capture video from my Panasonic DV Camcorder into PC at 720 x 480 quality, tha audio comes in choppy (dropouts all over).
My PC is a P4 2.0 Ghz w/ 512 mg of DDR RAM, Win XP,
I connect the camera with a Firewire connection and the external dedicated 160 GB NTFS 7200 rpm HD via USB 2.0.
ANY HELP WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.

Wolf

Comments

MUTTLEY wrote on 12/29/2003, 12:55 PM

Have you tried capturing directly to an internal HD ? THink I would try this first. If that works, well, two things:

1) You can always capture to an internal HD and copy it over to your external.
2) It's possible that while your external drive is USB 2.0, your mother board might be USB 1.0. I had to get a USB 2.0 PCI card in order to get the " Enhanced " USB to work, even still I've never tried to capture to it.

Check it out and let us know.

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/29/2003, 1:11 PM

Try turning off your preview so that you aren't seeing the video as it's being captured. Could be resources preventing this.
Are you sure you're hearing the dropouts? In other words, you might hear them via the soundcard during capture, but have you played back the media after capture to hear if it's really dropping out during capture? The latency could be related to soundcard resource conflicts.
Make sure that all background apps are shut down during capture. Disable your NIC if it's connected, do this in Control Panel. Kill any antivirus during capture. 'enditall' can be downloaded from ZDNet for free, it might make it work better for you, as it kills any and all unnecessary apps running. Run Enditall and then launch Video Capture.
You should not have any issues whatsoever capturing to Firewire, USB1, or USB2 drives. DV has a datarate of 3.6MB, so it's not that big a deal. I'd be looking at resources first. Also, unless you have a huge cache on your video card, never run the preview screen full-size. Size it to the smallest setting if you really want to see the vid in the preview window during capture.

wgoldberger wrote on 12/30/2003, 10:33 AM

Thanks Ray, for your response.
The reason I don't use my internal HD is because it's a 5400 rpm and I get frame drops when using it.
My motherboard is USB 2.0.

Any additional input will be GREATLY appreciated.
Wolf

wgoldberger wrote on 12/30/2003, 10:40 AM

Thanks, Spot:
I sure hear the dropouts while capturing, and when I look at the audio waveform, I can see silent spots here and there.
About the preview, I'll sure try it tonight.
BTW what is NIC?
In the meantime, I want to thank you for your help I APPRECIATE IT.
Wolf

jetdv wrote on 12/30/2003, 11:16 AM

NIC = Network Interface Card typically an Ethernet card of some sort.

DGrob wrote on 12/30/2003, 7:35 PM

Might depend on what you've recorded. I've had certain extremely loud sounds override my auto gain control on my camcorder, which results in a audio blank spot. Tried to do a fire siren the other day with results just as you describe. Just a thought. DGrob