capture on external vs internal laptop drive

ditnoj wrote on 9/26/2003, 12:37 PM
Howdy.
I am a newbie to video but much more experienced in audio.
I have a vaio grt series laptop and some questions:

On my first project I am using (not by choice) the little Dazzle dealie (PCV80 or something like that) which is a USB converter/interface. The cameras the project was recorded on do not have firewire nor usb outs.

I am getting, after the initial start capture kind of drops, 1 dropped frame per second more or less.
It is an 80G hard drive partitioned into:

*: the hidden vaio recovery deal that's there (don't even know how big it is except by subtraction from the known partitions.
C: the windows xp (pro) OS and vaio proprietary stuff (10G)
D: where i'm putting the apps I loaded (Vegas, Reason, and the like) (20G)
F: memory stick
G: the largest (40 G) area where I capture to

I did the Video Guys tips on visual effects, processor focus on running programs, etc.

the HD is a 4200 which I know is s...l...o...w for video

1) Are the dropped frames more likely a result of the Dazzle, the HD, or both?
2) How well does Vegas capture to an external drive?
3) if I get a firewire external drive, then I couldn't capture from a firewire out on a camera (the one I plan to buy for me) because the firewire in on the laptop is occupied, right? So what about a usb 2.0 external drive, or is there such a thing as a firewire hub like the usb hubs?
4) how do you vaio owners deal with this kind of thing?

Thanks in advance

D out ITNOJ

Comments

jbrawn wrote on 9/26/2003, 1:52 PM
I don't have a vaio, but I capture video to an external firewire drive using a "1394 CardBus". This fits in a PCMCIA slot and has 3 firewire ports on it. It cost me $30 at Fry's Electronics. I believe that any OHCI compliant firewire card will work equally well.

I don't have an internal firewire port, so you *might* have to disable yours if there is some interoperability problem with the OHCI card.

My external firewire drives are all 7200 RPM, most are 200GBytes. So far my Compaq N800c has worked for capture, editing and printing to tape without a hiccup. (Only problem has been Western Digital Firewire drives failing, probably due to overheating. My external drive cases with built in fans have been completely reliable with both Western Digital and Maxtor disk drives inside.)

Also, I have connected one of my dual mode external hard disks with USB 2.0 for editing, but I haven't tried capturing that way. I assume it would work...

Good Luck,

John.




Chienworks wrote on 9/26/2003, 2:19 PM
A couple of issues to consider:

The Dazzle DVC80 is USB 1 which isn't fast enough to carry a full resolution full frame rate data stream. If you're trying to capture 640x480 or 720x480 at 29.97 it's going to drop frames badly.

Capturing to a separate partition of the same hard drive doesn't help anywhere near as much as capturing to a physically separate hard drive. When you use the same hard drive you will be forcing the read/write head to bounce around a lot while capturing. In the case of your setup an external drive would just about have to be a better option than capturing to the G: partition.

Firewire hubs are available and they're not very expensive. You could probably get a 5 port hub for under $50. Also, the external drive you get will quite likely have a "piggyback" firewire port on it which would allow you to connect the camera to the drive, then the drive to the laptop.
hugoharris wrote on 9/26/2003, 2:29 PM
I have a Sony GRT as well, but haven't tried capturing video yet. However, I use the built in hard drive to run some very intensive apps (mainly streaming software samplers like Gigastudio) without difficulty. I think USB (even 2.0) is risky for audio/video applications, and is the likely source for your problems. I bought an Audiophile USB to record audio and was never able to get it to work on the Sony, yet I have an Echo Indigo cardbus audio interface that works flawlessly.

The GRT has a built in firewire port on the left side; if it was me, I would try to beg (or borrow, or...) a cheap mini-DV camera for a day, like a low-end Canon, that can digitize an analog signal through it's firewire port, and pass that on to the Vegas capture utility. I do that frequently on my desk-top with old VHS and Hi-8 footage, and it works well with no dropped frames.

Often, my first firewire port is occupied with an external hard drive (for audio); I have a cheap OrangeLink cardbus firwire interface (2 ports) that works just fine in this instance.

I'll try to capture some video directly through the firewire port next week on to the internal hard drive, and I'll post again to let you know how it works. Sony ships the GRT with a DVD-/+R (like my unit), and I don't anticipate any problems.

Kevin.
ditnoj wrote on 9/29/2003, 8:35 AM
Thanks a lot for the posts, it clears up a lot.

I had been thinking that the bottleneck was the USB but I hadn't thought about the fact that the Dazzle dealie was USB 1. Which is why I'm believing for at least a Canopus ADVC100 for myself!

Kevin, I'm looking forward to the results of your test! I'll also be looking for someone here in the church with a DV out or at least USB 2.0!

Thanks again to all!

D out ITNOJ
FuTz wrote on 1/2/2004, 10:42 AM
I just got a Vaio too a few weeks ago and this morning I tried capturing video on an ext drive for the first time.
Problem: *lots* of dropped frames.
DMA enabled.
Oxford chipset in ext enclosure.
WDigital 160Go,8Mb cache,7200rpm,ATA100.
I feed my cam to laptop via FiWire and my ext drive via USB2.0.

Fresh defrag of both drives.

Any recommandations? Cause the only way to do it right now seems to be: capturing on the second partition of my internal laptop drive then exporting (or copy-pasting) the video files on ext drive. Time consuming a bit...
Liam_Vegas wrote on 1/2/2004, 11:08 AM
Well it <should> work... can you run a drive speed test on your external drive to see if there is any bottleneck with that?

Download the EZDV TEST tool from canopus (very quick, very simple) that will show you how fast your drive is as it relates to DV performance.


farss wrote on 1/2/2004, 2:00 PM
What you've got to remember is when you have the external HD and the camera/vcr on the same 1394 port is the data comes from the VCR to the computer then from the computer down to the HD. SO the one port has to be switched backwards and forwards all the time.
The port can handle 400 MBits/ sec so it should be able to do it easily however the data from the VCR has a very narrow time window within which it MUST be moved or a frame will be dropped. I suspect this is the issue, I've heard of so many having a porblem with this config, even Apple laptops.
One thing you may try which might help is reducing the cluster size of the drive. This is only a theory, I'm hoping if you drop the cluster size you'll reduce the size of the data block being written by the CPU to the HD giving the data from the VCR a bigger window to get through in.
FuTz wrote on 1/2/2004, 6:17 PM
Just tried EZDV test on another computer just to check out. It says I got an Athlon 1.1 (pretty close: a 1000) and that my OS is Win2K SP1.
I run XP.
I later checked their help file and this app runs with OSes up to Win2K. No XP there. Is that a problem?
Anyhow, I got these red-yellow-green bars, the green being twice as long as the red...My guess is that it's ok, no?

farss, I may try this and disable the cache on the drive, but just to be sure: you mean re-formatting my drive with smaller clusters size? ...I'll post the results.

Thanks for input !
FuTz wrote on 1/2/2004, 8:16 PM

I just de-activated the 8Mb cache on the ext. enclosed HDrive and I still get around 8 dropped frames/second...mmm...don't really know where to look now... ???
Spot|DSE wrote on 1/2/2004, 8:22 PM
As a daily VAIO user, I use the firewire port connected to the harddrive, with the camera daisychained to whichever HD is the last in the chain. (You can only have up to 5 HD's in this scenario)
Capture is no issue whatsoever.
However, the Dazzle product is a known trouble-maker, and USB makes it even worse in most cases due to the slow nature.
I didn't read the entire thread, so apologies if I've been redundant.
FuTz wrote on 1/2/2004, 8:39 PM
Just hit ctrl+alt+delete and I notice I'm running 38 bckground apps: whoa, seems a lot no? On my desktop, I usually run around 23-27...
Could it be a reason?
Is it true to say that closing all the BckApps that got our user name on them is safe as a rule of thumb ?

I'll try this daisy-chain now...
FuTz wrote on 1/2/2004, 8:49 PM
+_o !!! Can't plug cause I miss one FiWire cable... you know: big connector-small one-big-small... Wish I owned a RadioShack and lived on top of it..!
Postponed for tomorrow... I'll use something else for now.
Thanks very much!
FuTz wrote on 1/2/2004, 11:37 PM

I just tried the daisy chain on my desktop and it works very well. 3 dropped frames total out of 3 whole tapes (all on the same tape so I figure out it's the tape itself).
Actually, I tried capturing on ext. drive a few time ago and it didn't work very well. Now it seems to be working. I'm eager to try it on my laptop.
mountainman wrote on 1/3/2004, 6:31 PM
Spot, just so I've got this right. I can run firewire to the hard drive and then camera v firewire directly to the hard drive? This means I only need one firewire port out of the laptop?
FuTz wrote on 1/4/2004, 7:59 AM
That's what I understand and that's what I did on my desktop and it works..! Spot just insisted on the fact that the camera should be the last unit on the chain.
I didn't have time to get a cable to do it on my laptop but by monday I should be able to test it and I'll post the results.
FuTz wrote on 1/5/2004, 7:44 PM
Linked my cam to my ext. h-drive to my laptop and Capture works a-1-a...
I tried the preview with the same exact config right after and (should I say no surprise..?) it didn't work very well. Succession of strobed images and blue screens plus noise in between.

At least we know the ***capture*** works.