I've also had intermittent problems with DV capture and print to tape operations. I've read countless suggestions, many of which are no more than voodoo incantations. However, I have also found several suggestions that really make a difference, and some of which -- unfortunately -- will periodically recur, forcing you to take action again.

1. Make sure "DMA" is enabled for your disk drive. Since you probably never would have captured successfully in the first place without having this set, you are probably O.K., but you should nonetheless look at it again (you will find the setting in the Control Panel, System, Device Manager tab).

2. Bring up the list of running tasks (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and "End" everything but Systray and Explorer (this works for Win98 and WinME -- WinXP and Win2000/NT may be different). This is the place that you will most likely find intermittent problems. In particular, the biggest problem I have on my machine is my HP Photosmart printer. It insists on loading a task called "HPHA1MON" any time that I use its built-in card reader. What's worse, it also places this in the secret automatic starting place in the registry so that once I've run the card reader, this process starts every time I boot. Once this process is running, you most definitely cannot capture DV without all sorts of problems. Because it starts every time, once the printer automatically puts it back into the registry, you can't solve the problem just by re-booting and then immediately capturing (which is a technique that sometimes cures problems due to memory leaks). To "permanently" get rid of any task or program that you don't want to have running, use the "Startup Configuration Utility" that comes with Windows, and go to the "Startup" tab. Uncheck any process that you don't think you need. However, as I note above, the HP software will automatically put this program back again the next time you use the card reader.

Here's a link to a pretty good list of what tasks you can remove from the "Startup" tab, and which ones you should leave:

http://www.3feetunder.com/krick/startlist.htm

John

yes... i stopped all programs in the tray, background, dont run virus protection. only thing running is VF 2.0

Well. thanks for the list of what HAS top be loaded.... will try to cut that down... and since both you and p_l suggested the background progrmas... i will take another look. thanks for the help... will pass on a go or no go after i try our your suggestions

I tried both of the two suggestions, niether worked.

Tell you what did work! i captured my movies to the 60 gig hard drive i moved the previous files too. strange? the only way i can get good performance out of the hard drive is if i have it half loaded with files? any thoughts?

Check this free program to keep those programs from starting up. Works great.

http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s=1478&a=8067,00.asp

Jon

Capture performance DOES decline on a hard disk as it fills up. Sometimes this can be due to fragmentation, and running the defrag utility is supposed to help. However, in all honesty, despite having run countless defrag utilities for the past twenty years, I have never once been able to detect any difference.

More typically, disk performance declines as it fills up because hard disk rotational speed is constant, and the data is stored at different densities at the outside than it is near the center of the disk. If your system is marginal for capturing video, then this difference in performance could cause you to start losing frames.

You don't need a fancy system (mine is 450MHz) nor do you need a fancy drive (mine is 5400 rpm). However, as I stated earlier, you MUST have DMA enabled. You didn't explicitly state whether you had confirmed this. I can GUARANTEE that it won't work if the DMA check box is clear in the Device Manager tab.

Capture performance is always better if you capture to a different drive than the one that contains your programs. This drive should be connected to the second IDE controller (i.e., physically on a different cable from your C: drive).

I can go on, but instead, let me refer you to the Adobe site where they have an excellent document that covers every conceivable idea for squeezing the last ounce of performance out of a PC when video editing. I don't think you need to do ALL the things listed, and quite frankly some of the disk settings they recommend will make your PC SLOWER for other tasks. However, Adobe has been doing this longer than anyone, and their support reflects this. Here's the link:

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/144f6.htm

John