I'm captureing using FireWire from my MiniDV Sony camcorder.

OK, just a shot in the dark, when capturing if you have the preview window set large, try making it smaller. Try another firewire cable,
Could be a gazillion issues . Thats a start at least.
good luck.
what version of vegas you running ?

I made the preview window smaller which helped a little bit but not as much. I have also tried disabling the preview with the same crappy results. I have also tried a different FireWire cable and a different jack. I have added FireWire PCI cards to both systems and have tried both the jacks from the cards and the onboard jack, same results.

I'm running the latest version, Vegas 6.0d.

Anyone else have any ideas?

two systems, two firewire cables, same result.

I think you may have a camera problem.

Edited: I see it works fine on XP. So you may have a camera problem, or it may be a Win2000 problem. XP is much better than 2000 in my experience. Go ahead and upgrade.

Try running VidCap standalone, might help.
I'm capturing at the moment on a 900MHz PIII ancient VAIO using an external firewire drive daisy chained to a DSR-11. If that'll work reliably anything should work and I even have Scene Detection On. This system runs XP but I have another running Win2K with never an inexplicable dropped frame.

Just one thought, what size is the drive you're capturing to?
I had a problem with Win2K and large disks that didn't have the Enable LBA thing sorted out.

Bob.

I don't think it's a camera problem as the camera works fine on my XP computer which is using three year old technology, should be much slower than the two new systems I'm having this problem with.

I'm using 1 gig of ram and this is the hard drive I'm using. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140

Is your drive running in PIO mode instead of UDMA?

Mike

Unplug from internet, then turn off all anti-virus and firewall programs. Look in the Task Manager and see what applications are running that shouldn't be. Also look at the processes tab of Task Manager to see if there is anything with a high percentage cpu usage. Be careful to not shut anything off unless you really know what you are doing. I caught Real Player checking the internet every 5 minutes or so in the background, even though I had that option turned off in the setup. Thus, no Real Player on any of my machines anymore. QT also checks for updates, that's turned off also.

Check drive UDMA modes, any "!" warnings in the Device Manager?

Then see if the capture drops frames. If so, try to get Sysoft Sandra to test your machines, maybe the motherboards don't support the cpu, memory incompatibility/broken.

There are several threads on this forum that link to two articles about tweaking XP for video editing. Some of those would apply for Win2K also.

Or you could just give Scenalyzer a try. I've used it on 700MHz WIN98 machines without any dropouts. No tweaking required.

The demo is free, so what do you have to lose?

Other tools are fine to try and use. But if the base system cannot capture without dropped frames, something is not set up correctly, which will cascade to other application's performance.

I can capture with no dropped frames with my dual Pentium III 1Ghz using Vegas 6.d in XP Pro. All the time.

Check the dropped frames FAQ on the VASST site for a few more suggestions.
I've captured on a W98 machine, P2 450 with a 5400 rpm drive and not had any dropped frames.

Mike

Fldave,

I've unplugged from the internet, I have UDMA set up on my hard drive, no warnings in Device Manager, no anti-virus or firewall programs installed, and almost nothing running at all in the background other than the default Windows applications. I have checked my CPU usage both capturing and not capturing. When I'm not capturing the usage is showing 0-2%, when I'm capturing it jumps up to 85-89%. No clue as to why. I even have Media Manager turned off.

Here's the other thing I'm thinking of here. This system is 64 bit (processor), but I'm obviously not using 64 bits as Windows 2000 isn't built for that. So, I had to use the 32 bit CD to install the main board software. Does anything think this might have something to do with it?

The other thing, when I built my main computer three years ago I noticed my processor was only using half the speed. I realized I had to move a jumper next to the processor to get full usage from the processor. In these Shuttle machines there are no such jumpers other than the CMOS jumper. I tried looking all over in the bios for clues and tried tweaking things that I thought would have certain relevance to no avail.

This stinks.

Sounds like a bad Firewire port or shared resource problem. I just captured a clip on my P4 3.2Ghz and my CPU % was 8%-9%, not 89%. Do you have a free slot for a new firewire card if you are using motherboard firewire? Not daisy-chaining firewire peripherals, are you?

Also, I noticed on that Shuttle that it has a 200watt power supply. That seems very low to me.

I tried both the onboard Firewire port and the PCI Firewire expansion card that I added, same result. I took the PCI card out and tried the on board Firewire port just to see if the added card was slowing it down. Nope, same result. No, there are no daisy-chaining going on, just straight to computer from my Sony Handycam. Yeah, I know Shuttle has the 200 watt power supply, but I'm not running much in this system. Just the system itself, the hard drive, and floppy drive (which I do not use, it's only there to install things that require those type of disks). I do not have CD/DVD drives in these systems because these are only for video capturing and rendering, all other stuff happens on my main system which has two Sony DL DVD drives.

Camera and cable work fine on XP machine, so rule that out.

I think that leaves BIOS and Win2K install. You can try the third party tool like Scenealyzer to see if that works.

I would also get a system analysis tool like Sysoft Sandra to see if anything is not configured right and how your overall system performs compared to the expected values of similar systems.

Here's another thing. I just had the Task Manager open showing the CPU performance while I was starting up Vegas. The usage for that was mainly around 80-85%. Towards the end of the starting up it spiked real quickly to 92%. Is that normal?

I see about 2 distinct spikes.

The fact that this happens on BOTH of these Shuttle machines means that it's something consistent with them. There must be some kind of setting that I'm missing, the fact that I'm only using 32 bits of the 64 bit processor, or something isn't set up right. I can't figure it out and it's so frustrating. I have tried capturing with WinDV, which I don't like, and from the few minutes I captured it seemed to work fine, but I think it probably just makes it. For all I know it may not capture a full hour or two like that, but I don't want to put on a prolonged test like that to find out. The fact that I'm having trouble using Vegas 6.0d troubles me and I'd rather use my Vegas to do these captures. What could this be? I'd like to know for sure before I take the drastic step of spending more money to get the 64 bit version of Windows XP to install on these machines.

My aging Win2000 machine is a Dell P4 at 1.4 GHz with about 750M of RAM.

Captures are flawless with any capture software I've tried including VEGAS, Scenalyzer, Pinnacle, etc....

I hesitate to upgrade because this machine is ultra stable. I also will not install any of MS's service packs or security fixes as they have caused me downtime whereas no virus ever has...

On another note, I tried playing a video file. Same thing, it plays back all choppy and I got a CPU usage of 100%. HUH? That's not right. This obviously has something to do with how the CPU is running. So bottom line here, these machines are running MUCH shower than they are supposed to. Why would that be and how can I tweak this?

I think we have narrowed it down.

It is NOT Vegas.

Something in your machines is just not right. It is evident from not only video capture, but from playback also.

Benchmarks, like Sysoft Sandra, allow you to compare your CPU to the CPUs they have accurately measured.