Well, I am sorry to say that my little "experiment" produced no better results than the hardware I was using originally. So, it appears not to be any issue with my Highpoint controller or VIA chipset as far as hard drives issues go.

I plugged my external 80GB 7200rpm Maxtor External IEEE drive into a brand new Maxtor IEEE PCI Adapter. Then I plugged my Canon ZR10 into the same adapter (no daisy chaining).

Same results...dropped frames! >:-(

I am at a loss now...I could disable ACPI I suppose, but I think this is a bit extreme as WinXP is intended to have ACPI enabled. I hate to say it, but I am thinking about trying another software program at this point to see if I have the same issues. I really don't want to do that as I like VF quite a bit, but I have done pretty much everything I can to eliminate this issue and it is starting to look like it may be a VF software incompatibility with certain system hardware configurations...(especially since many others are having similar problems).

Any last thoughts before I throw in the towel? If I can't get the dropped frames issue resolved I certainly don't feel like I have received full value for money spent. I am trying everything I can do to fix this however as I do believe in this product.

Thanks for any help,

Frosty

Bump...

Thanks for any help!

Anyone from SF listening????

Please help. This is a common problem across many different platforms and hardware. We have paid for the product in good faith and need a solution to the dropped frames issue.

While it has worked for a few people (and not worked for others), it doesn't appear simply a matter of disabling ACPI and individualizing IRQ usage. In addition, this is not an advisable solution under WinXP.

Would appreciate more info on what is being done to address the problem from Sonic Foundry's side...

Thanks,

frosty

Hi frosty,

Here are some things I would do if I were in your shoes:

1. Download and flash the lastest bios for your mobo from Abit's web site at www.abit.com.tw.

2. Download and install the lastest Via 4-in-1 drivers from www.viatech.com.

3. Download and install any misc drivers for you mobo from Abit's site, especially for your raid controller.

4. Try another capture application. One probably came with your DV cam. If not, download some other non-SF demo.

5. Unplug all USB devices.

BTW, what processor and RAM are your running?

Hi Jimcho,

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, I had done all you have suggested other than try a different software program. I am running latest BIOS, latest Via 4in1, and latest Highpoint drivers that match my BIOS. I did try unplugging all USB devices too. :-(

I am running a 1.4GHz 266MHz FSB Athlon (non-overlocked) and 1GB of Crucial DDR registered SDRAM (4 DIMMS).

Thanks again for your suggestions...I feel very frustrated that I can't get around this issue and wish that SonicFoundry was doing more to help users in this situation.

frosty

DMA enabled for all IDE drives?

Drives defragged?

If the above are true, please post your IRQ settings here- that might point to the problem.

I too was having dropped frames no matter what I did. I did the DMA thing, I bought new drives, I even built a new computer from scratch. I finally solved the dropped frames by stopping using a Canon MiniDV camera. I found that both the Canon Elura 2MC and the new ZR25 dropped frames occasionally no matter what PC configuration was being used. Changing the camera to a Sony or a Panasonic resulted in perfect captures with no dropped frames. Can you beg/borrow a different camera to try to see if that is the issue?

I had no trouble with dropped frames until I added a second monitor card (PCI). then there was 8 things on IRQ 11 supposedly managed by ACPI. Also sound and video preview were a bit scratchy.
Bypassing ACPI and changing cards around so that the firewire and audio were on their own IRQs made all the difference, no drops, clean audio and smooth preview.
Best of luck, Brian