Same firewire cable hooked to camera and laptop; no lan involved...no USB involved....same as before. Now, as to harddrive, please be a bit more explicit (novice with computer stuff)...otherwise all seems to be the same. We didn't change anything for any harddrive... Old computer was a Dell Inspiron 8600 with 2 gig RAM, this one is a newer Dell laptop with same amount of RAM. Only change is the dual core.
cjm

Just checked and the DMA are correct...LOTS of 'junk" processes (71 total) seem to be going on this 'puter though...perhaps that's a source of problems? How much/many can we have running on a laptop before it interferes with frames?
cjm

> We didn't change anything for any harddrive... Only change is the dual core.

Are you sure the hard drives are the same?

Forget about the size. If you got a new laptop, you got a new hard drive. Laptops come with 4200 RPM, 5400 RPM, and 7200 RPM hard drives. If you have a 4200 RPM hard drive this could be part of the cause. If the hard drive needs to be defragmented this could be the cause. Don’t assume a new hard drive is defragmented. Dell installed a lot of junk on that hard drive and did not defragment when they were done. Make sure the drive is deframented. Also turn off any Indexing on the drive. You don’t need that running while you are capturing.

Finally, the 71 processes is not a good sign. Uninstall any junk software from Dell that you don’t need. Use MSCONFIG to remove anything from your startup that is not critical. Get it as lean as possible.

~jr

The new hd is 7200 rpm (at least is supposed to be...ordered it that way because of known problems with slower...also had 7200 rpm on old one)...

Indexing...where to turn off? forgot about that.

Been going through all the processes this morning and according to the tasklist.org most of them all seem to be necessary for the stuff on this 'puter. Can't find anything to eliminate safely. Does Wintasks 5 really do that kind of cleanup that they indicate?

Keep on with the suggestions and I'll keep trying.

Also, I did find the Virtual Memory on the 'puter was set below what it should have, so I've set it at "Windows will Select"...or should I set it myself, and if so, how much? (I have 2 gig RAM)

Appreciate the help as always! Never had any problems before on the old machine that hindered it like this.

cjm

Dell systems notoriously ship with a ton of junk applications--and a lot of them are listed in the startup. Go into the Control Panel and remove software applications you don't use--incluing all the AOL junk, etc. Also, ensure that the Dell "support" application is not running, that Window's it not set for automatic Windows and Dell updates (it takes a second to check these whenever you want), and turn off indexing:

Control Panel
Administrative Tools
Computer Management
Services and Applications
Indexing Service
On the Action menu, click Stop.

You may also wish to get an external hard drive (USB or Firewire (my Dell has a Firewire--although I use it to input my video)) and save your video to the external drive (7200's are fairly cheap - I picked up a 300 Gig external Seagate for $99). I've used this for recording video passing it through my laptop (firewire in, USB out). Worked great.

Chanimal: You're using a firewire hooked to your camcorder to the computer to capture to an external HD that is hooked to the 'puter via USB2? Somewhere I read that I couldn't use firewire AND USB2 at the same time...but that might have been when I added a USB2 card to my old laptop and it didn't like having it. You're using it as your first "capture", right? Shall try. I do have a 7200 LaCie external that I use for my rendered projects.

Shall try all the suggestions. Also, am heading to Starbucks to download the latest version of VV5. Mine is the "b" version and I see they are up to "d"...that might help, too. (I'm relegated to 'dialup' from the place I'm in now, so no big downloads!)

cjm

I wrote this FAQ for VASST a few years back:

Dropped Frames VASST FAQ

It may help.

In my experience, dropped frames are usually DMA or background process problems. Remember, all that is going on is a file transfer. There is no processing power required at all. The operation of capturing is not much more than copying a file from one drive to the other. What usually happens is that some nasty background process or program "takes over" the hard drive for a long enough time to "lock out" the capture program. The worst offenders are the anti-virus programs.

I used to regularly capture on a 4500 rpm 750 MHz laptop, using a plug-in Firewire card. I still capture on a 450 MHz Pentium with a 5400 rpm drive. I don't drop frames. However, I have had plenty of dropped frame problems, have tracked them down, and that's what led me to write the FAQ, and what leads me to make the statements above. Defragmentation makes no difference. The transfer rate for DV is pretty low compared to what a modern drive can handle, and the larger buffers in current drives smooth out any minuscule slowdowns that happen from defragmentation.

I would start by getting rid of indexing, and then I would disable as much of your anti-virus background operations as possible. Do that within the anti-virus program. Set it up so that the only time the anti-virus software runs is when you do a manual scan.

One of the many problems that is occuring today with dual core cpus that vendors, ie Dell, load up junk apps and more tracking spy-apps that use memory and disk. Its very possible that during capture, using one core, junk apps are running on the second core and are using the disk too,"limited". If you are using a 4200 rpm disk with 60+ task in memory, with virtual memory in use, realtime capture can be a problem. With a dual cpu, any number over 42 tasks in memory needs serious inspection. Turn off virus scan, use it manually; keep firewall( but not on firewire), disable as many Dell ulitilies and run them when you needed them; disable IM services; check your email program to ensure that its not on automatic R/S., etc.....