Dropped frames

OldVic wrote on 11/25/2001, 6:16 AM
I just changed from PinnacleV7 and am happy except for many dropped frames (Zero with Pinnacle). For a 30 second capture I get 130 dropped frames with video on and 20 dropped frames with video & audio off. I'm running Win2000 on a XP1800, GeForce3, 512M DRam system. I'm using a dedicated Maxtor 7200, 60G drive (I don't know how to configure DMA). Everything is off during capture, but I can run a lot of other stuff without making any difference. Please help.

Comments

bonze10 wrote on 11/29/2001, 6:04 PM
Turn DMA on for your hard disk in control panel. Well, I dunno how its done exactly in win2000, but in 98 you open up the system icon (in control panel), go to the device manager tab, go to disk drives and select the hard drive, and hit properties. Then hit the settings tab and check the box that says "DMA" and restart your computer.

Like I said, I've never used win2000, so I don't know if its done the same way. It should make a big difference though with dma turned on, if its not already!
Chienworks wrote on 11/30/2001, 6:29 AM
Is anyone else out there using Western Digital Caviar drives or an ABIT
BX motherboard with integrated IDE RAID? I don't have a setting for
DMA for my hard drives. I also have no trouble with dropped frames at
all even when running other programs while capturing or printing, so i'm
going to assume that DMA is enabled. I just wish the setting was there
so that i could see it checked.
OldVic wrote on 11/30/2001, 3:08 PM
Problem solved. I dug around some more and found the answer. In the IDE advanced features of Win2000, you have a choice between PIO and "DMA if available". Then it tells you that you're in the PIO mode even though you chose DMA. In order to make it work I ran a program called "SYSIDE" that came with the computer (I figured the IDE part might do something). Sure enough, now the mode reads "Ultra DMA" and I now get zero dropped frames. Thanks very much for your help.
Vic Huebner
deef wrote on 11/30/2001, 6:19 PM
Yes, I believe you enabled UDMA 100 support.
Luxo wrote on 11/30/2001, 11:43 PM
Where did you find the program "SYSIDE"?

Luxo
Chienworks wrote on 12/1/2001, 1:42 AM
Ahhhhhh! That may explain it. When i built my system i ran the Western
Digital utility progran to set my drives to ATA 100 instead of 33. That
probably set them to DMA as well, and since WD doesn't want users
changing the drive settings after the installation is done, they probably
don't include the DMA setting in the Windows control panel.

Now i can sleep tonight ;-)
OldVic wrote on 12/1/2001, 4:53 PM
It came on the CD packaged for the motherboard. I think my Athlon uses a K7 board. Anyway, it's got to do with the IDE slots - not the hard drives. If you know what kind of motherboard you have, you probably can download it for your computer.
EricK wrote on 12/2/2001, 7:57 PM
Dropped frames is an interesting problem, I don’t have any problems with my c: drive which is a DMA100, but I do have a lot of problems with a second drive which is a Seagate DMA100. Both are correctly configured.

EricK wrote on 12/2/2001, 7:59 PM
Is there a difference between UDMA and DMA in the Windows settings?