Excessive Dropped Frames and DV incompatibilities

scs0 wrote on 6/22/2003, 7:48 PM
After capturing video, VideoFactory2 is reporting an excessive amount of dropped frames. My system is a 1.6ghz Athlon chip based PC with 1GB SDRAM. I am capturing to a secondary harddrive which does not house my swap file or any installed programs. It's an 80GB EIDE harddrive with 60GB of free space. I am capturing from a Canopus ADVC-100 external converter device. Here's what happens:

With full video and audio preview, I captured a 6:10 clip and after the capture a dialog told me that my session was 9:13.13 in length and that I had 5478 dropped frames. If the dropped frame count is just from the captured video (6:10 = 11038 frames) then it lost 49% of all of my frames! If it includes the intire session, then it's a still unreasonable 33% (9:13.13 = 16520 frames total).

With no video or audio preview, my next test was bad. The durations were all similar except that my dropped framecount fell from 5478 to 4590.

Why am I dropping so many frames? Since the video is mostly still I can't visually detect the dropped frames, but there's noticable pop noises in the audio. With so many dropped frames you'd think it would be very noticable.

My other problem with screwed up video seems to be caused from an incompatibility between the app I used for capture (ArcSoft Showbiz) with VideoFactory2. When editing with video captured with VideoFactory2 or Microsoft MovieMaker I do not see these problems. (So much for DV being a standard)

Comments

laz wrote on 6/23/2003, 2:29 AM
The dropped frame error is a perversity to VF and tells me every time I capture. If I believed it I wouldn't have footage at all.

When capturing and printing to tape it's best to turn of all non-vital b/g progs else frames will be dropped.
JimClark wrote on 6/23/2003, 3:43 AM
I get the dropped frame messages then clean the heads and try again and they go away.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/24/2003, 7:01 AM
Sometimes the quality of the source may be the problem. Tapes that have marginal signal may cause dropped frames. Some capture devices are more sensitive to this than others. Try another tape that has a clean, strong signal and see if that helps.

~jr