Glenn, not sure if you did this but did you try disabling the USB Host controller device? The one that's sharing the IRQ with your firewire card?

glenn71x :
Have you checked to be sure your capture drive is set to DMA?
In XP - Control Panel, Admin Tools, Computer Management.
In the left window select - Device Manager. In the right window select IDE Controllers.
Right click on the Primary and/or Secondary channels and select properties and then the advanced Tab.

Should show - Transfer Mode - 'DMA If Available' with the Current Transfer Mode set to something like - 'Ultra DMA Mode 5'
HTH
bd

hey, just move the firewire card to a different slot. I think it is just the conflict in the irqs and that may fix it. Keep moving it around and then check it. It will still, most probably, be sharing an irq, but hopefully not with anything as intense as a video card.

Thanks Everyone!
Well what I did was unplug everything, All Usb Devices and USB Hub, Network Cable, even disabled the offending USB Hub. I also set the priority to HIGH in task manager of the capture program. I just captured 60 min of video with 25 dropped frames. Great? no...but a LOT better than the 300 dropped frames i was getting earlier today! Will 25 dropped frames in 60 min of video even be noticable? If so, how? Thanks again all

Thanks Everyone!
Well what I did was unplug everything, All Usb Devices and USB Hub, Network Cable, even disabled the offending USB Hub. I also set the priority to HIGH in task manager of the capture program. I just captured 60 min of video with 25 dropped frames. Great? no...but a LOT better than the 300 dropped frames i was getting earlier today! Will 25 dropped frames in 60 min of video even be noticable? If so, how? Thanks again all

change the card slot

Is DMA activated on the hard drives?

"Will 25 dropped frames in 60 min of video even be noticable? If so, how?"

Depending on the subject matter and amount of movement in your video, a dropped frame can either be barely noticeable or blatently obvious. Further, if some of these frames were dropped in succession, it would look downright terrible.

It looks like several people have offered some good tips to try out and knowing this group, someone will help you through this. You might even see a post from SOFO tomorrow.

Mike

What about your DMA setting for that drive? Someone else asked and you didn't indicate - that is a prime culprit for dropped-frames. You shouldn't drop any - let alone 25!

The DMA is fine. I am running XP. It normally sets the DMA and it did in my case too. DMA mode 5. :(

After all that high tech info this may seem a little dumb, but do you have another firewire cable laying around? Try using a different cable. I remember another thread some time ago where the problem was found to be a bad cable.

Do you know somebody with a computer that has a firewire port? Try installing Vegas on their computer and capture to it, could even be a problem with the camera (uninstall Vegas off their computer when done of course :)

I have an HP computer with built in firewire used by the whole family and loaded down with so much crap you would not believe it, background processes, active internet connection, kids playing internet games off my connection using a lan, anitvirus, ad blocking, pop up blocking, you name it, it's there. And never drop a frame.

Hey Guys I think your chasing the wrong thing with IRQ's... XP can use and
handle
the devices /usb/PCI/Firewire that share IRQs, Just look on Billys site and
it
tells you there that XP uses the same IRQ for many different devices.

My video pc is using IRQ 12 for s/card and Firewire & USB and no problems
at all.

One thing I would check is have you got Smart Monitoring Enabled in your
Bios for
your Hard drives. If so this will cause dropped frames, I had this on my PC
a while
back and this was the culprit.

Smart Monitoring checks every so offten the status of the drives in the
system, and
if you have a small network with other PC's connected it also checks the
drives on
them through the network, so this might be causing your dropped frames.

Flack

The worst offender I have ever found for dropped frames are background processes. You can use MSCONFIG (which you can clicking on "Run" in the "Start" button and then typing MSCONFIG and pressing Enter) to temporarily disable processes that aren't related to the main operation of your computer. I would disable most of the options in the Startup tab of MSCONFIG and then disable most of the services in the "Services" tab that aren't from "Microsoft Corporation."

The worst offender of all the background processes is one that comes with HP's inkjet printers. Do you have an HP inkjet printer attached to your computer? There is a background process that loads in order to read the compactflash/smartmedia card. This process is called HPHA1MON. If you press Ctrl-Alt-Del, look under the "processes" tab. If you see this process running, KILL IT. Try capturing again, and your system will work.

Someone suggested checking the cable. I would take the cable and camera to another computer and try. I have only dropped frames when using pass through and the source material is poor (ie. bad VHS) or when I dual booted to Win2K and didn't have the proper driver for the controller interface card. The system used a generic driver, but I lost frames all over the place.

Well, you've eliminated most of the obvious computer problems. That leaves the cable and the camera as likely culprits.

1. Swap the firewire cable with another one. Any better?

2. Try another camera or deck. I seem to recall that in the past, Canon had used a nonstandard firewire implementation that occasionally resulted in dropped frames. There was a registry fix on the old Canopus forum, but a search on the new Canopus forum came up empty. Anyone else remember what I'm talking about, and knows how to find the registry fix? I once had a Canon ZR that had a faulty firewire port that resulted in symptoms like you describe. I had to send the cam to Canon to get the port replaced.