If all you did was to add another HDD, none of the above should be necessary. How did you hook it up (master/slave or primary/secondary master), and what are the exact models of the hard drives you are running? Also is the HDD controller built-in or is it a pci controller and what is the brand name of the controller?

John

Hiya John
It's a western digital EIDE 120GB hard drive. It's hooked up as a slave driver to the original. I am not sure what make the original 80GB hard drive.
How can I find if the HDD controller is built in or a pci controller? I am sure it is a pci controller but I can't be certain.
I am sorry that I haven't got more info, I'm not too technical minded!
But I really appreciate your time.

Hi mahedy,

Capture drives should really be masters and not slaves since you want them to have priority when transferring data.

Cheers,

Scott

Hi Scott
but there isn't a problem capturing any footage. I just have problems previewing on an external monitor through the camera, and printing straight onto tape as the film is rendering. It starts off okay but after a few seconds the problems start.

When I render the film first, and then print it to tape, I have no problems.

When I preview some footage which is still on the my original drive, the master drive, the same problem occurs.

I can work away as it is, but I feel I haven;t got to the bottom of the problem.

thanks again
M

It took weeks of banging my head against the wall until I just tried increasing the PCI latency timer, whcih was a total trial an error thing. I am a little worried about what I might be sacrificing for havnig it set at 200!

Hi mahedy,

Apologies, I misread your original problem.

However, you say you're trying to render and print to tape at the same time? I've always rendered first and then output that to tape - never tried both at the same time as I would expect that you'd need a pretty beefy PC to be able to render effects & transitions as well as maintaining a steady 3.6MB/s stream to your camcorder.

Are there any effects / transitions at the points you get glitches? If you say that pre-rendered files print to tape OK then there doesn't seem to be any problem other than you're possibly taxing your system too hard?

Scott

When you installed the original master drive, if you plugged it into the motherboard you have a built in controller. If you plugged it into a card you have a controller card. Your 80 GB drive should be the primary drive (drive c) and the new 120GB (drive d).

DMA should be enabled in Windows and both should be set to the same ULTRA ATA speed. By default they should have come set up for a speed of 100. If one is not you will need to use the Data Lifeguard Tools diskette to make them both the same.
If you used the Data Lifeguard Tools diskette when you set it up, and if you used EZ- Install it may have installed EZ-Bios. That would have been a huge mistake. EZ Bios is very unreliable. Your HDD controller should take care of setting up the hard drives properly as the system boots. The bios usually will not indicate the proper HDD parameters when the computer first starts. The controller sets it up during the boot process. Get rid of EZ-Bios if it was installed.
If you are using a controller card, you might try using the second EIDE slot on the card instead of the master/slave setup to see if that helps if the above fails to help. Be sure you have the jumpers on the drives set up properly.
Make sure the HDD controller drivers appear in the Device Manager otherwise you will need to install them from the CD or diskettes which came with the card or motherboard depending upon which controller card you have.

Also, Print To Tape issues have always been a topic of discussion on the forums. Use the Search function and see for yourself. I have all but abandoned PTT in favor of a full render. Far fewer problems.

John

It sounds a lot like and IRQ sharing issue to me. Remove any card from the first PCI slot (closest to the AGP), set your latency back to 32 and give it a try...

If all you did was to add another drive there should be no need to move any cards around as the IRQ's those cards occupy are different than the ones claimed by a Hard Drive.

John

May not be it, but you did enable DMA on your new drive didn't you?

sorry if this sounds silly but i didn't notice it in the posts to date.

can you replicate this problem? ie, if you take the drive out, and reset the latency timer to 32 does everything work the way it did before?

put the drive back in and see if the problem appears again.

if it does, i might try and unplug the cdrom or other eide device and put the hard drive on that channel and see if the problem persists.

ideally, i would disconnect all eide devices except for the two drives and see if you still get the problem. if you don't it may be a power supply issue.

if you do still get the problem, then i would unfortunately suggest pulling out all non essential cards from the system and tyring it that way. this is obviously an extreme means of trying to solve the problem but doing it this way you should definitely see where the problem kicks in.

One other thought, I did hear of a problem with some FWire drive enclosures that were shipped with 40 core ribbons instead of 80. Worth checking you're using the right kind of IDE cable as it sounds like a flaky kind of problem which is exactly what you'd tend to get with this kind of mixup.

Also since you added the new drive where are your prerender files going to?

When you do a PTT VV has to switch output from original avi file to prerendered files for effects and transitions etc. If this is the case you'd see the problem during that part of the PTT.

Is it just coming off the new drive you have the problem or is it both the old and new?