Thanks for the info. The other thing I was going to try was to install the capture card that came with the program as well and hopefully it will pick a different IRQ.

WinXP uses ACPI for IRQ usage. I would not recommend changing IRQs in WinXP. A good firewire card should (and will) share the PCI bus.

Concerning the dropped frames...has anyone used a competing program and experienced no frame loss? I am very curious if this is truly a hardware/OS issue or perhaps a problem with VF specifically? Don't get me wrong...I love VF, but I am tired of chasing my tail with the dropped frames.

frosty

I'm on XP as well; I cannot get my IRQ changed for my Firewire card. It is definitely on 9, along with my sound card, video card, and network card. Sounds nuts to me, but they're all there and none of them want to change - no matter what I do. I'm also begining to get very frustrated with this - I cannot get my video back to my camera without losing frames - or 'signal'. I've updated to 2.0b, I have the latest DirectX, the latest drivers for all hardware involved, bought a new firewire cable - nothing seems to work. I feel like I'm at an impass - any other suggestions?

I have been reasonably successful in doing this. I could not change the firewire card that was already installed in the computer so I installed the one that came with the software in the empty slot I had left. It assigned it to IRQ 19 which was shared with one of my USB ports. I disabled the USB so only the firewire is assigned that IRQ. I printed my program to tape and it worked. When I reviewed the tape on my TV, I did notice that there were at least 2 place where the picture seemed to freeze for a second and then it continued. It did not look like the issue I was having before where the entire picture was lost and then came back in little blocks. If anyone has any suggestions on this one, I would be most appreciative. The picture looked great and the audio was fine. I just don't know if I should expect this all the time or if I can get a program to print to tape without any problems.

I have downloaded some other shareware, but none let me save back to my DV to compare. I was expecting VF to just work, so I wasn't planning on purchasing other software to test. XP does not allow the changing of IRQs - I've tried everything (it seems). Support guys, any other suggestions on this? Any other ideas are appreciated. Thanks -

In order to be able to change the IRQ assingments manually you would need to disable ACPI. Generally this involves loading a standard PC HAL (Hardware abstraction layer). I am not absolutely sure how you would go about doing this in XP but generally it involves specfiying a standard PC HAL when installing the OS. Take Win 2k for example. When installing you reach a point at the very begging of the installtion that tells you to hit F6 if you need to load 3rd party SCSI or Raid drivers. You would instead want to hit F5. You can then specify to load a standard PC HAL. This effectivly disables ACPI and will allow you to manaully distribute IRQ's in the same manner that you were able to with Win 98. Where this option is located at in XP or how you do this would be something to look up at the www.microsoft.com. However this might be a heavy handed solution to your problem. I would begin with the typical stuff like make sure that DMA is enabled on your hard drive. If you motherboard has a VIA chipset make sure that you have installed the latest 4 in 1 drivers from VIA. Make sure your drives are defragmented. Try capturing something from your camera and then printing it directly back to tape without even doing anything to the clip in Video Factory. Also to clarify my previous post. You should be able to have multiple PCI devices sharing an IRQ without an issue. However you can run into problems when your capture card is sharing an IRQ with any other device simply because the amount of data that the card is trying to deal with. Take the example of having your video capture card and your display adapter on the same IRQ. Both of the cards are trying to deal with lots of data at the same time sharing the same resources. I can see the potential for problems here. To be quite honest it should work without having to do all of the IRQ changing but in practical application it does not work all the time.

I am hesitant to post this because of the risk in changing something like this. Please proceed at your OWN RISK. I cannot confirm that the below process works in all instances/hardware configurations.

And *please* if you DO decide to do this post back and let us all know if it fixed your dropped frames problem!!!

--

Disabling ACPI in WinXP --- Simply turn it off

Device Manager
Computer -> Update Driver
Install from a list or specific location
Don't Search. I will ...
Select: Standard PC

Reboot, and let XP setup your hardware again, start your IRQ customization to make sure the firewire card is by itself, and finally check your capture to disk.

--

Hope this helps...

frosty

Yes, I've heard the previous 2 posts before and they seem to work.

Also:

Please check out this FAQ:

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/support/SupportProduct.asp?FamilyID=52&Family=VideoFactory&TopicID=78&DetailID=879

Numero uno: make sure DMA is enabled for the drive via Device Manager.

I would like to confirm that this solution has indeed worked for others with the same problem. I did not have such luck. I disabled the ACPI, then was able to finally get my IEEE card onto it's own IRQ (thanks for the instruction on that!). I was so excited when my 30 minute video not only got past 2 or 3 minutes, but actually to 11 before the same thing happened again. Then, it happened right away with a 60 second movie (after re-booting). I'm out of answers now - any other suggestions? I've also followed all of the advice in the article posted in the KB on this topic.

What are all your system, OS, DV device specs?

Including mobo and hard drives.

Win XP (5.1.2600 build 2600)
AMD Thunderbird 900 MHZ
512 MB Ram
MB: ASUS A7Pro ACPI BIOS 7/24/2001 (latest version)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400 32MB
Hard Drives: IBM Deskstars 30GB & 60GB
Camera: Sony DCR TRV-530 NTSC
IEEE card: Texas Instruments OHCI IEEE 1394 Firewire card

Deef, any other ideas or suggestions on how I might solve this?

Try www.creativecow.net "Good Luck Z"

Please confirm that DMA is enabled for all IDE drives. You may also need to defrag your drives- both of these can make a big difference.

Okay,

I am having the same type of problem that you are all discussing. I am using Vegas Video 3.0 instead of video factory but I also tried using a different software package (ulead) and am experiencing the same thing. I am able to capture from the camera just great but I get a lot of dropped frames when printing to tape. I have heard several people suggest that I first look to see that DMA is enabled on my HD. . . Done.

Next the IRQ issue. Well my firewire card is sharing the same IRQ as a couple of other things but is this really the solution? I haven't heard anyone yet that has successfully found a solution by overriding this. I really don't believe that this is a VF or VV3 issue because I was able to duplicate it with another program. It seems to be more of an issue with the VIA chipset Motherboards or a Win XP issue. Isn't there some brainiac hardware expert out there that can help us here?

here is my hardware setup. What am I doing wrong?

Athlon XP1600
ASUS A7V266-E motherboard VIA KT266A Chipset (New board just released about a month ago)
512 MB ram DDR
75GB HD IDE 7200 RPM
nvidia Gforce2 DDR (video card)
Firewire card - ADS Pyro - basic IEEE 1394 (texas Instruments)
Windows XP

Using a Sony DCR-TRV20 Digital Video Camera

I just want to let everyone know that I have been experiencing this same problem while running Vegas Video3. I have done everything suggested in this discussion (enable DMA, change IRQ settings, update all drivers etc.) to no avail. I am still getting the dropouts just as they were previously. Is this just a Win xp issue? Is anyone else having similar problems running a different version of Windows? I tried a different program (Ulead Video Studio) to see if it was something related to Sonic Foundry software. Guess what? Same results

I am pretty certain that this is a hardware issue related to either DirectX - VIA chipset Motherboards - win XP. I am at a loss to figure this out and it is driving me crazy!!!

Is there anyone at Sonic Foundry that can help us? Are there any hardware brainiacs out there with any other possible solutions for this?

FYI - my hardware setup is:
Athlon XP1600
ASUS A7V266-E motherboard VIA KT266A Chipset (New board just released about a month ago)
512 MB ram DDR
75GB HD IDE 7200 RPM
nvidia Gforce2 DDR (video card)
Firewire card - ADS Pyro - basic IEEE 1394 (texas Instruments)
Windows XP
Using a Sony DCR-TRV20 Digital Video Camera

Hmag posted a similar post on the Vegas forum, so I'll do the same: Please list your IRQ layout in this or the Vegas forum.

To get the list, go to: Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System info>Hardware resources>IRQs

If you see a bunch of stuff on IRQ 9 THAT IS LIKELY THE PROBLEM. Once you post the list we can take it from there.

For the record, I've got an Abit KT266A-based board with WinXP and I've got similar issues - I can print to tape well enough but it's during real-time previewing out to firewire that my frames drop.

-Doug

Ok,

well it has been a couple of weeks since I last tried fixing this problem. Finally today I found a solution. It seems after trying all of the above suggestions, along with every other possible thing I could think of. I sought the advice of my friend that built the machine for me. We tried my firewire card on his machine and got the same results. His guess was that there is just some sort of conflict with the Texas Instruments chipset on my firewire card and the VIA chipset on my motherboard that hasn't been resolved yet. He suggested that I try another firewire card with another chipset (preferrably a VIA chipset if I could find one) Well sure enough I went out and got myself a new 1394 card made by SIIG and it works great! YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!!! Oh . . . by the way it does have a VIA chipset. I'm not sure if my other card is bad. I suspect not, because it was working great for capturing from the tape but it was the printing to tape where I was experiencing problems. Anyway . . . If there is anyone that is using a TI chipset 1349 card and has the newer VIA chipset (KT266A) motherboard and is experiencing these similar problems, then you might want to try a different 1394 card. check out: www.siig.com

I've tried it all. Card in a different slot. Disabling ACPI then making sure the 1394 card had its own IRQ. I originally had an ATI DV Wonder, I've since tried 2 other cards including a SIIG as suggested by the last poster.

Nothing works, I'm at a total loss as to what to try next. I can't print a single project back to tape. My HD is now full and I can't continue until I get some of the footage off.

What's left, does anyone have any more ideas.

Thanks in advance.