Print To Tape - Cracked It! ... Maybe...

Grazie wrote on 6/26/2002, 7:34 AM
Hello My Friends!

Well I've been in purder with my pc and VF for the past week [apart from England going out of the World Cup], trying to "nail" this knotty little PTT problem.

Part1 - Knowing What I've got
Okay... WinME has this System Monitor utility and I have been able to graphically show the usage of the processor, second by second. Hmmmmm... very intersting... sad aren't I? - Must get out more!

Firstly, I was able to see that the processor activity flew up to 100% when I started the "Record To Device" procedure. It would then settle down to around 60%-70% - oh yeh VF is presently swimming about in 95% - 99% of free resources. So I've got two methods of "recording/registering" PC activity/usage - i)Processor Usage and ii)Sytem Resources. Secolndly, I can also keep the System Monitor in view by selecting "Always On Top" - very handy - viewing this when I'm in PTT.

Part II - Saving In PTT

When I was in the PTT proccedure I noticed that under "File" there is a "Save" and a "Save As" option. On investigation Save As "forces" a naming of the default.sfvcap file. The "Save" - I don't know. But, BIG but, I do know that if a leave any file Word, Excel, PowerPoint et al IN an unsaved "state" it must mean that processor/RAM is being held up - I'm not a techie but saving anything as you go is a GOOD thing. Soooo.... I now save within the PTT procedure and see if I get my "drop-out". Well folks I've now achieved 100% non-drop-out. Yeahh! Now I switch to the system monitor to see if this has made any difference. Wadyah know! My Processor/Kernal usage has now droppped to 30%-40% - not the 60% - 70% that I was achieving previously.

PART III - Conclusions
There appears to be a severe demand on the processor "prior" to saving - this is a bad thing. After saving there is a 30% drop - this must be a good thing. Well so far so good.

Folks, my VF User conclusions are these:

1. If I have not realised the need to save "prior" to Record to Device then I'll put my hands up and take the idiot of the year award.

2. If other people have been succesfully PTTing - have they been saving prior to Recording to Device? If not and this is a big "If not" then all I can say is that they have either alot of RAM or have been very fortunate or both.

3. If 2. is the case - saving while in PTT - why hadn't anybody asked me this? Maybe it was a given, I would have.

4. In my origiunal posting I allowed everybody to see my error message - which I didn't really comprehend. However it does identify Kernal overflow (?) etc etc. This should have got mine and others bells ringing.

5. Maybe forget about PTT and make jolly little VCD/SVCD or DVDs instead of piping all those creative videos through another digital layer, which can then go awry.

6. We on this Forum add a lot of extra value to this remarkable package.

7. There aint no point 7. (Hah!)

Best regards

Grazie

Comments

Simmer wrote on 6/26/2002, 9:16 AM
Great! Glad you got it going Grazie.

I'm not a techi either.
Sorry we didn't hook into the "Kernal overflow" clue.

Happy PTTing. :-)

-Mike
Chienworks wrote on 6/26/2002, 9:16 AM
Hmmmmmmm. Maybe you're on to something, but my gut feeling is that saving the vidcap file has nothing to do with it. Having the file unsaved shouldn't be using any processor time or resources at all; it should just sit there idle. Even after it's saved it would still be using up just as much memory as before (practically none). We'll just have to give it some more experimentation.
the_ripper wrote on 6/26/2002, 9:16 AM
Grazie, funny how you bring this up. Last night I spent an hour trying to output to a vhs tape. I will post a separate post, but I was going out of my canopus converter, and into a VCR. It did nothing. kcarroll, any ideas? have you used VF and went out of the computer using firewire, into the canopus box, then out of the back of the canopus box and into a vcr....If you or anyone else has done this, LMK the secret. the_ripper