Verify DMA is on for the hard drives.
Verify you don't have other programs running in the background.
Turn off any networking.

etc...

For starters, are you capturing from the same drive as your program drive on the second machine? If not, make sure that you have a second physical drive that you are capturing from. Cheers!

I've tried everything. I cannot get this machine to capture 5 seconds without dropping frames. I've eliminated all other running programs, I've disabled my network, I've even defragmented my hard drives. I am using a seperate "D:" hard drive for all media storage. I can't think of anything that I may have changed since my last project, one month ago. I captured everything then without a hitch. I may have to start working on this project in Vegas 3.0 on my old machine until I figure this out.

Thank you all for your suggestions. If you can think of anything else let me know.

Let me remind you that there is nothing wrong with the minidv tape or camera I'm using as a deck. (they work fine on a different computer) Its definately a problem with my machine's configuration. Windows XP. P4 1.8ghz.

More suggestions which may or may not help. On my new Athlon 2200 laptop I had to uninstall Norton antivirus and make sure my networking cable was unplugged before capturing or previewing. Now that I've done that I get perfect 29.97 previews (no effects) with no stutter.

I've always had problems with V3 and now V4 capturing from both of my XL1s cameras. I would experience anywhere from 1 to 100 dropped frames during a 1 hour capture. That may not sound like much, but it was enough to cause problems for me.

A symptom I had is when the capture program sees the XL1s camera, the program navigation slows down. Meaning, opening menus and pushing buttons in the application are slow to respond. I believe there is an issue here, but don't know what. I've tried different computers and different 1394 cards. I even have two XL1s cameras, so I don't believe I have bad hardware. Maybe the XL1s internals have an issue with Vegas capture.

So to get around the problem, I've turned of "Enable DV device control" in the capture program and it works just fine. I can't control the camera from the program, but not a big deal for me. I just press 'capture video' in the program and push play on my XL1s. I never, ever, ever get a single dropped frame now. Now capturing works really good.

Ron