OT: Capture via PCMCIA Firewire fails

Cliff Etzel wrote on 5/22/2010, 10:02 AM
Thought maybe some of the hardware guru's can help me out on this issue.

I have a Dell D620 laptop that I had been using a fair amount for other work but recently wanted to try my hand at ingesting and editing footage from my tape based HC7's.

I have two different PCMCIA firwire cards - a Syba 2 port firewire and an Adaptec FireConnect 3 port Firewire card.

My issue has me confounded: No matter what app I use, I fail to be able to capture my footage without dropping frames.

I've tried the following: capturing with HDVSplit, Cineforms HDLink, Vegas Pro 9 capture utility and Edius Neo 2. All of them fail to capture footage reliably to the following: A second 320GB 3.5" Seagate firewire drive attached to the card - the enclosure has an Oxford 924 chipset, my second hard drive in the drive bay or to the second partition on my primary drive.

I thought PCMCIA card slot was capable of handling the capture of HDV content via firewire, but I can't seem to find an answer on the net.

I'm running Windows 7 64bit with 4GB RAM and the ONLY thing I can think of is that either the cards aren't' supported, or the computer is showing its age and technically isn't supported by Windows 7.

Any ideas what else I can try? The laptop specs are in my sig below.

Cliff Etzel
Solo Video Journalist | Micro Documentary Film Maker
bluprojekt | SoloVJ Blog
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Desktop: OS: Win7 x64 | CPU: Q9400 | Mobo: Intel DG33TL | 8GB G.Skill Dual Channel RAM | Boot/Apps Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Audio Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Video Source: WD Black 2x750GB RAID 0 | Video Card: nVidia GeForce GT 220 1GB

Laptop: Dell Latitude D620 | C2D 2.0Ghz | 4GB G.Skill RAM | OS: Win7 x64 | Primary HD: WD 320GB 7200RPM | Video HD: WD 250GB 5400RPM

Comments

RRA wrote on 5/22/2010, 10:53 AM
Hi,

I have no experience with firewire but had problem with capture via Intensity Pro as long as I had discs in RAID (I still don't know what was the reason). Finally I have decided to deinstall RAID and use single HDD : Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD502HJ is able to capture 1280x720x50 without problem. I have checked this disc as internal and external via eSATA. In both cases result is OK. Maybe your problem is connected with transfer to HDD. Try free "bench32.exe" (from ATTO technology) - it will show you transfer to your HDD (my F3 has about 145 MB/s and this is minimal for liteHDV, compare it with yours).

Best regards,
Cliff Etzel wrote on 5/22/2010, 12:07 PM
On a hunch - I restored an Acronis image of my old install of XP Pro 64bit - Not a single issue with Capture in any way! XP Pro 64 bit is very responsive compared to Windows 7 on my laptop.

Guess I 'll keep Windows XP 64 bit on my laptop until I can afford the move to a newer laptop.

Observation: While using Windows 7, the system became unresponsive intermittently while the firewire card was plugged in with any devices attached. All apps were sluggish in capture mode, yet in XP64, it was responsive from the go get.

I had forgotten how lean XP Pro 64 bit was compared to Windows 7.

Cliff Etzel
Solo Video Journalist | Micro Documentary Film Maker
bluprojekt | SoloVJ Blog
--------
Desktop: OS: Win7 x64 | CPU: Q9400 | Mobo: Intel DG33TL | 8GB G.Skill Dual Channel RAM | Boot/Apps Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Audio Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Video Source: WD Black 2x750GB RAID 0 | Video Card: nVidia GeForce GT 220 1GB

Laptop: Dell Latitude D620 | C2D 2.0Ghz | 4GB G.Skill RAM | OS: Win XP Pro x64 | Primary HD: WD 320GB 7200RPM | Video HD: WD 250GB 5400RPM
farss wrote on 5/22/2010, 2:08 PM
I've got a pretty old Vaio running XP. Captures fine over it's internal firewire port. A PCMCIA 2xUSB + Firewire card I bought for it is fine for everything but capturing, runs OK for a bit then drops frames etc.

Bob.
Cliff Etzel wrote on 5/22/2010, 8:30 PM
Bob - I captured 15 minutes of footage with one drop on XP Pro 64 - I could only capture 15 seconds of footage with the same card on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.

Not sure why the difference, but if it works, I'll stick with XP 64 Pro just for this reason.

Cliff Etzel
Solo Video Journalist | Micro Documentary Film Maker
bluprojekt | SoloVJ Blog
--------
Desktop: OS: Win7 x64 | CPU: Q9400 | Mobo: Intel DG33TL | 8GB G.Skill Dual Channel RAM | Boot/Apps Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Audio Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Video Source: WD Black 2x750GB RAID 0 | Video Card: nVidia GeForce GT 220 1GB

Laptop: Dell Latitude D620 | C2D 2.0Ghz | 4GB G.Skill RAM | OS: Win XP Pro x64 | Primary HD: WD 320GB 7200RPM | Video HD: WD 250GB 5400RPM
Steve Mann wrote on 5/23/2010, 9:33 PM
Dropped frames are almost always a result of an underpowered PC. The data from the camera or deck does not stop just because the processor can't get it to the hard disk. The result is that some frames get lost, or dropped.

Solutions: get a faster hard disk, use a RAID0 array, get a faster PC. Actually, what you need is more RAM buffer for your hard disk. Older laptop disk drives were lucky to have a couple of Mb of buffer RAM on them. Newer drives have 8-16Mb of buffer.

IGNORE the rated disk speed. That is only the burst speed - the speed of filling or emptying the RAM buffer. Once that's done, you fall back to the sustained data rate, which is usually much smaller. (And really difficult to find. Because it's not a big number; you won't find it on the box). No matter what the interface spec says, there are physical limits to how many bits the head can physically fly over in a given period of time. This is around 55MB/s for the fastest consumer drives.

DO NOT use "green" drives for video work. They are green - low power consumption - because they throttle back on the throughput during idle. It's bad for video because they take time to spin back up.

Hope this helps.
Cliff Etzel wrote on 5/23/2010, 10:03 PM
Steve - This is a C2D laptop maxed out with 4GB RAM, a WD 320GB 7200 RPM Black Drive as primary. The second drive in the removable media bay is a slower WD 250GB 5400RPM Blue Caviar drive, and the external firewire drive is a Seagate 320GB 7200RPM drive. All three failed to capture under Windows 7 64 bit, yet all three captured 15 minutes straight thru of footage via the Adaptec FireConnect PCMCIA Firewire card.

The only change made was I restored my Acronis image fo XP Pro 64 bit. Windows 7 failed capture within 20 seconds, XP Pro 64 bit captured 15+ minutes.

I have no idea why the latest OS from Microsoft fails with this card as compared to the older OS, but for the time being, it's the only option I have at my disposal since buying a new laptop is out of the question.

Cliff Etzel
Solo Video Journalist | Micro Documentary Film Maker
bluprojekt | SoloVJ Blog
--------
Desktop: OS: Win7 x64 | CPU: Q9400 | Mobo: Intel DG33TL | 8GB G.Skill Dual Channel RAM | Boot/Apps Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Audio Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Video Source: WD Black 2x750GB RAID 0 | Video Card: nVidia GeForce GT 220 1GB

Laptop: Dell Latitude D620 | C2D 2.0Ghz | 4GB G.Skill RAM | OS: XP Pro x64 | Primary HD: WD 320GB 7200RPM | Video HD: WD 250GB 5400RPM
Laurence wrote on 5/24/2010, 6:05 AM
Is your virus protection enabled while capturing? I always turn my virus protection off during capture and get noticeably fewer errors when I do. Not all virus protectors are equal. Norton is probably the worst. McAfee is right at Norton's heels. AVG, Avasst and my current favorite Microsoft Security Essentials hardly slow your system down at all (but I disable them during capture anyway).
Cliff Etzel wrote on 5/24/2010, 4:23 PM
Laurence - I was using MS Security Essentials on Windows 7 64 bit. Alas, Microsoft in its infinite wisdom doesn't make it available for XP Pro x64, so I'm running AVG.

I just finished shooting a short video for a client and after ingesting my tape footage to my desktop, I decided to test yet again on my laptop. Total footage acquired is about 15 minutes (web video ad job). I'm ingesting to the media bay second 250GB 5400RPM drive as I type this and not a single issue. I couldn't get past 20 seconds on Windows 7 without the capture aborting and a message saying the transfer was interrupted (HDVSplit, Cineform HDLink, Vegas and Edius capture utilities)

My thinking is that this is an issue related to the age of my laptop and legacy support being next to zero for my Adaptec FireConnect PCMCIA firewire card under Windows 7. Under Windows XP x64, it works flawlessly for ingesting projects for editing as needed when traveling.

Cliff Etzel
Solo Video Journalist | Micro Documentary Film Maker
bluprojekt | SoloVJ Blog
--------
Desktop: OS: Win7 x64 | CPU: Q9400 | Mobo: Intel DG33TL | 8GB G.Skill Dual Channel RAM | Boot/Apps Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Audio Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Video Source: WD Black 2x750GB RAID 0 | Video Card: nVidia GeForce GT 220 1GB

Laptop: Dell Latitude D620 | C2D 2.0Ghz | 4GB G.Skill RAM | OS: XP Pro x64 | Primary HD: WD 320GB 7200RPM | Video HD: WD 250GB 5400RPM