Comments

IanG wrote on 6/27/2003, 12:56 PM
On which OS? The instructions are very similar, but if we can be specific...

Ian G.
ana_geobel wrote on 6/27/2003, 1:57 PM
Hi Ian,

on Windows Me.
IanG wrote on 6/27/2003, 3:24 PM
It just had to be!! I've got 98, 2000 and XP installed, but not ME - it was too much of a pain!

OK - try something like start/settings/control panel/system/Hardware/Device Manager
Select IDE Controller, right click Primary IDE Channel then select properties / advanced settings and look at the transfer mode options. That's almost certainly wrong, but it should get you close. Good luck!

Ian G.
ana_geobel wrote on 6/27/2003, 3:44 PM
Thanks Ian. I will try it when I get home. In the meantime, I was browsing for external firewire drives. I'm going to go broke!
discdude wrote on 6/27/2003, 4:18 PM
I think DMA control is under "Disk Drives" rather than the controller settings. At least that is the way it is under Win98.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/30/2003, 8:15 AM
By the way, just to document for future people reading this post. The answer to Ana’s original question “How do I enable DMA on my hard drive?” is to press F1 in VideoFactory or Help->Contents and Index and then select Introduction->Optimizing Your System and it explains in detail (i.e., set-by-step) how to enable DMA and other tweaks that should be made to your system before using VideoFactory.

~jr
sdgates wrote on 7/8/2003, 5:02 PM
After reading the help provided in Sonic Foundry's VideoFactory help file, be sure to click on "For additional suggestions, click here." This will take you to a website -
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/support/SupportProduct.asp?FamilyID=30&Family=Vegas&TopicID=89&DetailID=879

The VideoFactory help states that AV-rated drives (7,200 RPM or faster) should be used. Ana - if you are running Windows ME, chances are your computer is old enough to have a 5,400 RPM drive. If so, check into upgrading to a 7,200 drive. You can pick up an 80 GB Western Digital or Maxtor or Seagate (in my order of preference) for around $80 at www.googlegear.com or tcwo.com or NewEgg.com (the latter being the vendor of choice for us computer geeks). If you can spring ofr it, however, go for a 200 GB drive. That way you'll have the breathing room to be able to work on several projects at once. ($197 at NewEgg for a Western Digital drive.)

(Note: DON'T replace your primary drive if you get a new drive. Simply add the additional drive. That way you can have a drive for DV capture that doesn't have a Windows swap file or any other Windows activity occuring on it.)
sdgates wrote on 7/8/2003, 10:12 PM
Um..... I hadn't realized Ana had already started a "dropped frames" so I may have said something that was already stated in that thread. (It'll take me a while to read through the zillion posts there!)
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In any case - GRAZIE (GRAHAM) - I am VERY interested in your experiences with external FireWire hard drives (as mentioned in that other thread).
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Do you just use that for archival storage or do you actually keep current projects there? Are you using FireWire 400 or FireWire 800? (FireWire 800 would make external drives as accessible and fast as internal drives, but is extremely rare at the moment.)

And, for Ana's sake, and my own curiosity, do you do captures to that external drive and, if so, do you suffer many dropped frames?

The reason I am interested is because I have been considering FireWire-attached external portable drives because employing them would allow me to take my projects with me wherever I go. It also makes adding storage a lot easier than popping open your computer case. (And that even assumes your have a spare IDE channel. I don't, currently!)
Grazie wrote on 7/9/2003, 2:01 AM
Call me Grazie, please.

"I am VERY interested in your experiences with external FireWire hard drives (as mentioned in that other thread" - What would you like to know?

Grazie
miketree wrote on 7/9/2003, 5:04 AM
Graham eh?!!!
sdgates wrote on 7/9/2003, 3:37 PM
Grazie, do you use your FireWire-connected drive for just archival storage or do you actually work on current projects from that external drive?

And do you do captures to that external drive and, if so, do you suffer many dropped frames?

Grazie wrote on 7/9/2003, 4:27 PM
Now then . . .

1 - "Grazie, do you use your FireWire-connected drive for just archival storage or do you actually work on current projects from that external drive? " Guess what? . . . both.

2 - "And do you do captures to that external drive and, if so, do you suffer many dropped frames?" Yes, and what is "many dropped frames" ? Maybe 2 or 3 in 1 hour's worth of scene detected DV - is that good or bad? Mind you that is on a Dell Laptop running WinMisEry

Any more? - I'm here . . .

Grazie
sdgates wrote on 7/9/2003, 5:00 PM
That is pretty incredible. You must really baby your laptop! (Read as - "you really take care of it!" Not like people here at work who constantly pollute their computers by downloading junk off the Internet.)

I just noticed that CDW has a "FireWire 800 board" available for $81. It is made by Lacie. Looking up Lacie.com I see that they also have several external FireWire 800 hard drives available. That would be the perfect solution for sharing projects among several computers.

I wonder if you can actually plug more than one computer in at a time to a single FireWire port? The June issue of DV magazine has an article on page 60 about "FireNAS" - a 480 GB shareable drive for $4,299 each. It is meant for attaching multiple computers per port - but the computers each need a special "FireNet" driver to access that unit. I'll have to experiment on the one Maxtor external drive I have at work and see if it is still accessible if I plug another computer into it.

But it is exciting to know that FireWire drives can actually be used for capturing and editing.

If real-time sharing doesn't work, the drives could always be unplugged and moved from computer to computer. I'd like to end up with a couple of computers in my "computer room" at home. I could keep an older, less useful computer off to the side with a DVD burner installed. Then, when I'm ready to burn DVDs, move the external drive over, set that computer up with a blank DVD, and let it go while I press on with other work on my main computer. (Trying to move the files across my home network from one computer to another would be an incredibly slow process.)