Have you tried capturing to an internal EIDE?

Yes, that hard drive did not work so that is why I bought another one. :( I have defraged last week but I will try it again. Hummm

Thanks

As a thumb of rule, i wouldnt use external HD to capture DV-sources. The reason is that i have heard many people have problem to use external HD's either they have problem transfering the DV files or the external HD is too slow.

If you have a big IDE HD (of course internal) i would try to capture to it.

...You also said that the internal HD doesnt work, then my question is, how do you boot up with your OS if the internal HD is not working?

Frankie
Singapore

Frankie got to the point of my question. If you are capturing from and writing to firewire or usb via the pci bus, you are putting an incredible strain on the bus and dropouts of some kind are likely to occur. The same apparently is true for raid devices. Best scheme is to capture directly to a secondary master ATA 100 with no slaves. Second best is to a primary slave. The conventional wisdom of avoiding irq sharing, closing background apps and network devices, and defragging applies.

Not so. I capture regularly to external Firewire and USB devices on MANY systems. It's not at all "an incredible strain on the bus" because it's only 3.5 mbps that it's hitting. A big photoshop file can do more than that data rate.
More likely is that the Firewire card is sharing an IRQ with the graphics card.
A few things to shoot for.
1. Reduce the size of your capture window to the smallest it will go (176)
2. Unplug any network cables.
3. Turn off 'preview audio' (removing the sound card from the issue)
4. Does your Firewire tank use Oxford 911 controllers? If not, that alone could be the issue.

On the VASST tours, all 6 of our machines are using external drives, both USB2 and Firewire. No issues EVER. 3 VAIO's, custom setup by PC Nirvana, and 3 desktops, all built by me. 2 of the desktops are slower machines, 1.8 gigs.
IRQ sharing and lack of resources, plus the Oxford issue causes this a lot.
Last, if you have VIA chipset in your system, be sure you have the 4 in 1 driver updates for this. It's a critical update if you are doing video. Not a Vegas issue, but a VIA issue. Matrox and Pinnacle won't even warrant your system if it has VIA, and AVID won't allow any reseller to have VIA in their machines. It's that bad.

I saw the rainbow pixels on my first 1394 drive-an Acomdata 70GB box.

The rainbow is actually a compression artifact around dropped or missed pixels. I would get it by just moving a file onto that drive. The look of the artifact would change based on the way the video was compressed. In my case it always occured at the same point in the file-about where the HDs cache would fill up, I think.

The solution was for the manufacturer to change the bridge card in the drive for a different type.

1394 drives can cause trouble so if you have a problem get on the phone to the manufacturer immediately and raise bloody hell. Tell them a 1394 drive has to be able to capture video. That's what 1394 is for. It's no use if it can't do that.

If you return it, look into a dual 1394/USB2.0 box. Since some people (aside from Spot) have trouble with playback from 1394 drives I'd do my best to avoid the whole mess (if I had it to do over again).

At this point, 1394 drives don't seem like a sure bet. They work great for some but I think you'd be better off with a removable bay in your chassis and a 1394/USB2.0 tank for storage and transport. And if you had a matching removable bay in THAT youl'd be ready for anything.

Rob Mack

Hummm, I am not so sure what to think of all this. I just bought the firewire card and THEN the external HD so I can capture correctly. It worked for awhile... not it's not. Now I took out a loan to order the xl1s and it will be ariving soon.. BUT what good is a great cam if I can't even capture correctly? ! ! !

I don't know much about coputers actually but I am learning. I only know software. So all this talk confusses me.

I don't know if I have a Firewire tank use Oxford 911 controllers.
How do I find out?
What is a VIA chip? How much do they cost? How do I know if I have one?
Do I have to defrag my external HD as well? If so how often?

I have spent so much money trying to get this to work.
I will spend more if I have to but I would rather not.

Would more ram help. How about a better Video card.(Using Matrox 450 I think) What is the fastest Vid card out there? Will this help with the rendering time?

Is it a problem if I capture through the same firewire? For example, I am using the mini DV to go through firewire and then to the HD on the same firewire. Would this effect things. I am guessing it may but I don't want to buy another firewire unless I know it will help.

Thanks everyone!

-Broke
I mean - Ed

My internal HD does work but it doesn't work for capturing mini DV to it. It drops frames like crazy. I was told on these forms not to run the applacation on the same drive. I only have two drives. One internal and the other external. It is a Lacie 114 GB drive. How do I know how fast they are. I thought this would be a good one. I don't know you have to worry about how fast they are. Hummm

Thanks Frankie for your time.

-Ed

I'm not experienced in this but a thought struck me: Is something else writing to the drive during capture? It could be an anti-virus app or something?
Tor

Hi Ed,

Just to pile on...

It is possible that your cable is bad... have you tried another? Cheapies have caused these issues.

Do you have any other computers/vegas users available? That could help you swap cable/cam/drive etc. to see what works or not on a working system.


HTH, MPH

Well I shut down my Virus programs and I have tried another cable. I think it is my HD itself. It is grinding very loudly sometimes and It is not running anything major. For example... it is grinding like mad right now and all I have running is explorer. It is a scuzzy hard drive so it should be fast.

Is there a way in the Capture program to make sure it doesn't write to my internal HD first and then the external drive. Is there a setting I can change in the program somewhere or on my computer?

Thanks

-Ed

Yes, you can specify where you want the captured video to be placed. In the capture program, go to Options, Preferences.

The capture preferences are described in the Tips, Tricks, and Scripts issue scheduled to be released either at the end of this week or beginning of next week (Issue #3).

Okay,
For the bridge card in the drive you can call the manufacturer and ask. You should do this anyway. And start browbeating them.

The VIA chipset would be on the motherboard. The documentation might say but if not then open the case and look. A chipset consists of two large flat chips on the board. One is somewhere between CPU, Memory, and AGP slot. This one may have a heat sync on it. The other will be down in the lower right quadrant and visible. It may say Intel or VIA or nVidia, or SiS...

Another way to check without cracking the case is to look in "device manager/system devices" for something like a "Processor to AGP controller" It should also say whose it is.

Defragging. You should defrag the video drive frequently, especially because it takes longer to defrag when your files are really large. If you do it frequently the job will go quickly.

The MAtrox card is fine. 256MB works well enough but more is better. These aren't your problems though.

If you have the camera and drive daisy chained together this could be a problem. I've done it without trouble but it might be just luck. You could have better luck if you use different ports of the same 1394 card. If you still have trouble then start working on returning or exchanging the drive.

There's no reason you should have to capture to a firewire drive. It isn't a requirement. You can capture to an internal drive or to a USB2.0 drive.

The nature of the problem, random rainbow pixels, sounds like dropped data. Either there is something interupting the stream as you write to disk or... well, that's really it. Does the capture utility report dropped frames? Do you see it as you capture or is it only later when you view the files off the drive? If you copy a corrupted file to the internal drive is the artifact still there?.

I really suspect it's the drive and you'll need to exchange it for something else.

Rob Mack

Gee, now I'm confused. Which is SCSI? Which is grinding? When you say grinding do you mean making a horrible sound? If not maybe you should use less loaded terms.

Rob Mack