Thanks mmreed. I've already turned off all other apps, including antivirus, I also have a dedicated drive just for video. I'll check the hard drive speed and defraging. Thaks again for your help!!!!

Make sure DMA is enabled for your drives.

Dave T2

Also, if you have a cable modem or are on a network, your computer is regularly pinging the hardwarel, interrupting your capture/output. Temporarily disable them in your Device Manager. (When you re-enable them, you'll still have all your settings.)

And download Spybot and clean off your spyware regularly. Those little buggers can steal more resources than you'd think!

good point about the networking activity.

I find it a lot easier to unplug the network cable. This avoids any external signals trying to generate interrupts, and in Win98SE and higher the operating system seems to be smart enough to curb it's own internal network activity until it detects a connection again. Then when i'm done capturing or printing to tape i plug the cable back in again. It only takes a second or two.

Well, this pc is not on a network nor on a cable modem... so those can't be the problem. DMA is enabled too. I did defrag the drive and tried it again and I'm still dropping a large number of frames. Bummer!
Any other ideas??????? Thanks!

Do you have some other footage that you can try?

Dave T2

I saw on a thread where there is some fottage I can pick up. I'll try using it. I also read that one should use "Striped" tapes. I wasn't aware of that until now, so the tape i have wasn't "Striped". Do I understand to "Striped" a tape one just need to run the tape on record withthe lens cap on, rewind, and then use the tape for recording?

if it is an old vhs tape - sometime the anlog timing can get out of whack with the video when capturing... thats why some people use "time based correctors"

you might have to capture the audio seperately then align it in MS.

I captured the footage using my Sony TRV-250 Digitial8 Camcorder. Do I still have to "Striped" the file?

BeBeep--

I'm sure there's no need for striping. I'm sure you've got just some background task interrupting.

First, download an indespensible little piece of freeware called Enditall. (I think it's available on the PC World or PC Magazine web site.) This program will, with one click, shut down all the unnecessary background programs.

But, meantime, check to make sure nothing else is interrupting.

In your Control Panel (in Windows XP), check your Scheduled Tasks to make sure nothing is set to go off on ten minute intervals or whatever.

Also in XP, open My Computer and right-click on each of your drives. Make sure that Indexing is turned off for each of your drives. Indexing tracks every file you add to the computer so that, when you run a search, it will find what you're looking for in seconds -- but it also dogs processor-heavy tasks like capturing.

And, if none of that solves the problem, then we can panic.