dropping frames with external firewire drive

JoeS wrote on 1/3/2005, 3:37 PM

hi.. its been a long time since i visited the forum.

i've been using a WD external firewire 7200 for a long time for capture & it worked great.
recently that drive died. bought another WD 7200 external, the media center one with built in card reader, firewire & usb2., 160 gig.
now, when i capture with this new drive i get droppped frames like crazy. i have formatted the drive NTFS, defragged it. i use firewire for capture as always. have xp, dell 8100, 1.8 gig, dma is enabled. use my canopus device for capture & export of dv. . these problems only occur with the new external drive, never with the internal drive. i should mention that when i output dv via the analog outputs, the video freezes constantly too.

nothing has changed except the new external drive. but since it is basically like the model it replaced, except for built in card reader, i cant understand why the problem.

thanks in advance.

Joe S

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 1/3/2005, 5:48 PM

I'm not quite sure what you're saying, Joe. Looks like you've got an external drive hooked up with a firewire and you're bringing video in and out through your Canopus?

Is the Canopus also coming in through a firewire? It could be an issue with these two very data-intense devices both coming in via firewire. (I'm not an expert by any means, but I have seen postings from people who had trouble until they removed one of their firewire devices. The fact that you can capture easily to your internal drive seems to be further evidence of this.)

You also mentioned a USB 2 though. Is something coming in via your USB 2 port?

Anyway, one easy solution would be to have your video drive installed as a second drive, internally -- but it doesn't sound like you want to go that route. Besides, it doesn't explain why your old external drive worked and your new one does not.

Those are WD 7200 are external hard drives, aren't they? It's not clear, since you say that your new one is a "media center one with built-in card reader". That can't be right, is it?

Am I not reading your specs right? It's the same old computer, right? Just a new external hard drive???

Clarke wrote on 1/3/2005, 11:20 PM

When you require the use the card reader, does it need USB or Firewire in order to access the memory cards. Or you can do both?

So if you can access the card readers via firewire and USB, this means there is some controller chip internally that changes the data flow from USB to Firewire.

I do remember that USB bandwidth is always limited to the number of controllers you have on your PC. So it can cause dropped frames.
I am using the following:
Downloading via Firewire port from DV Camcorder directly to another external HDD enclosure via my second Firewire port. I do not face any dropped frames unless I am doing other stuff on my PC.

Regards

JoeS wrote on 1/4/2005, 4:40 AM

thanks for the response guys.
to clarify.. my canopus capture device and external HD are both firewire. the old external drive that worked perfectly was a WD 7200 firewire 200 gig formatted NTFS.
the new drive is A WD firewire 160 gig formatted NTFS. this new drive also has a built in card reader. the drive has firewire & usb ports. the firewire is where data goes to my computer for video capture. the usb port is where data is sent from the card reader that is built in.

i have tried leaving the usb port disconnected, & capturing with only firewire attached, thinking maybe the usb was interfering with capture. still had lots of dropped frames. tried removing any software that came with this drive, then reattaching the firewire only & letting xp load whatever drivers it wanted. still dropped frames.
closed just about everything in task manager, retried capture, still drops frames.

again, capture with the internal drive has no problems.

i'm thinking that this drive just cant move data as fast as the original, maybe because of the additional circuitry for the built in card reader. by the way, this drive also can accomodate usb2, which my machine does not have.

hope i clarified things. thanks again.

Joe S

Steve Grisetti wrote on 1/4/2005, 6:28 AM

Well, Joe, if the problem is that the extra hardware on your external drive is causing the problem, there's an easy workaround, assuming you can capture and output with no problems from your C drive.

1) Capture your video to your C drive. Then just move it to your external drive.

2) Do your editing on your external drive. Then, when you're cut your video down to size, output a DV-AVI to your C drive.

3) Now just output that AVI to your camcorder.

I know that's probably too obvious to bear mentioning, but I just thought I would anyway. Take care.

JoeS wrote on 1/5/2005, 4:46 AM

now i'm really confused.
i did a capture with ulead dvdMF3. did only a 2 minute capture. saw no dropped frames!

go figure!

Joe S