Sammo,

I don't know if this is related, but while capturing every once in a while I would get a message that the capture device could not be found sometimes before starting the capture and sometimes during a capture. I suspect you are losing your firewire connection to your camera and it is interrupting the transfer.

I went to microsoft's website and downloaded all of the patches and have not experienced this problem directly. There is a DV driver patch that is out which I believe has corrected my problem.

You can get the patch at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/downloads/vidcap.asp

Make sure you also update your system as well.

I have a Panasonic NV-DS5;
I also don't think it's a VV problem as my original package Edit Studio is also playing up. I think it's an XP / Driver / Performance / Interupt issue...
and previously (under windows me) all was working fine, but since moving to XP (so i can create bigger movies) things are not so good..

Stoped screen saver and virus scanner and firewall apps to no avail, have read that XP installs some suspect drivers for non intel systems so i am going to track down the correct ones...

I have tried putting the video drive on it's own ide channel made no difference.
Does anyone know what processes and services can be stopped in windows XP. When using Windows Me i used to stop everything except Systray and Explorer..

Another potential problem is that i used another editor to capture the video (Edit Studio 3) which i use when i want to do a quick project. But i don't want to start again unless i have to -- i captured over 1 hour of input and spent days putting it all together.

XP is different isn't it. You can see what services do what to zap those if you don't want them running this way: Start\Run type: Services.msc

Clicking on each line gives basic information on what each "service" does.

Also try: 'msconfig' from the Run command, then go to the Startup tab.

I also am having troubles printing to tape. I get slight stumbles or glitches here and there (in a 2 1/2 minute program!), but it does keep going (for what that's worth, which is not much). I do have the Via KT133 chipset but I loaded the latest 4-in-1's, upgraded VV to 3.0c, turned off Norton, have no screen saver, turned off indexing, and stepped thru fame by frame to see that there are no bad frames. It tends to always stumble in one area that happens to be compltely free of edits and effects. It's an unbroken pan.

My media is on a separate frive from the system. The media is on an 80GB 7200 drive with DMA and it's on its own ATA 100 channel. This is a 1Ghz Athlon system with 512MB RAM. VV has some nice features but does not seem to be a dependable program with typical current hardware and OS.

I posted my problem on DV Doctor (www.dvdoctor.net) and got this reply from Andy Dean from PureMotion (makers of Edit Studio 3 my other video editor)
This sounds like a possible resource clash. First, go through the steps at:
www.puremotion.com/editstudio/faq/brokendvpicture.htm

to see if this fixes the problem. Also, look for IRQ clashes in the Windows Device Manager - sometimes hardware can share the same IRQ as the FireWire card and this can cause problems.

Good luck!


------------------

Andy Dean, Pure Motion Ltd, www.puremotion.com

The Link was very helpfull -- I upgraded my system Bios (i have ASUS mother board) and installed the 4in1 drivers. My problem seems to now be resolved.

"VV has some nice features but does not seem to be a dependable program with typical current hardware and OS"

Hardly. Vegas Video is one of the rare applications that is extremely stable across the various Windows platforms. Most problems as Sammo just discovered are more related to hardware/system issues that may not show up until you stress your system. Printing to tape IS stressful and demands the full resources of your PC and even just a little burp can cause dropped frames or other odd things.

Maybe. However, it seems that I am far from alone in having problems printing to tape.

At least for now, DVIO has done the trick! That is one slick little(!!) program. I can print to tape perfectly with it. The lack of device control is a bit annoying but at least I can get the program to tape!

I am a bit confused here; could someone explain (or point to info) on what the latest '4-in-1's' are. Under what circumstances should I have this loaded on my machine.

I have downloaded the latest BIOS but never installed it as, while everything seems ok, if it 'ain't broke, don't fix it'!

My system;
Mobo: ABIT KR7A-RAID
CPU: Athlon XP 1700+
RAM: 256MB DDR2100
Video: ATI 7200
Sound: SB Audigy Platinum

The ABIT manual says it uses the VIA VT8366A and VT8233 chipsets.

Thanks for any help.

Cheers

Good policy... if it aint broke, don't try to fix it. The general "rule" for BIOS is don't upgrade unless you have a KNOWN problem or it adds a feature you need not currently supported in your prsesent BIOS or you just may find yourself in worse shape after installing the upgrade. If you've built your own PC meaning you started at the motherboard level then visiting the web site of same you'll frequently find BIOS upgrades,improvements for the IDE controller, South Bridge and so on. Frequently they are bundled, thus 3 in one, 4 in one, in a single zip file.

Thanks.

Yes, I built my own computer and just installed the bare BIOS without anything else. I've just read through the manual and realsie I should have installed the 4-in-1 stuff and the RAID drivers (although I'm not using RAID it seems that I still need the drivers in order to get the extra speed from my HDs).

Cheers

I would agree with BillyBoy - don't do a Bios upgrade or apply the 4in1 drivers unless like me you have exhausted all other possibilities. Windows drivers seem to be very Intel biased, the 4in1 drivers are for VIA chipset mother boards. BUT and it's a big BUT you need to find the specific drivers for your motherboard which generally means getting the covers off and getting serial numbers!
If you do a BIOS upgrade be very cautious, you will normally have to do this from a Floppy disk - so make 2 bootable floppies, if given the option to back up the current BIOS do so to 2 disks - if the upgrade goes wrong you have no PC, so be paraniod.

Just one little clarification as to what I meant. When you're building your own system, and get to the point of setting up partitions, then formatting, then installing some operating system THEN of course you need to install the specific drivers which should come on a CD with the motherboard. These generally will be to add special features unique to your motherboard and/or improve on more generic drives which Windows may have had on its install CD. Then after all that if you have problems, then maybe consider a BIOS upgrade and/or adding newer drivers off your motherboard's web page or other such pages. :-)

As far as doing a BIOS upgrade, this is very different than just installing software. What you are doing is directly overwriting a EPROM chip on your motherboard which provides the basic info your computer needs to boot and control hardware along with the operating system. BIOS = Basic Input Output System.

If you're unsure what BIOS is all about, check out this basic FAQ on the topic: http://sysopt.earthweb.com/biosdef.html

also:

http://www.windows-help.net/features/motherboard-flash-bios.html

Hi to everybody.
I had the same problem on my athlon2000 system; random frames dropping on print to tape, with stop of the vcr.
The answer seems to be: raise in BIOS the PCI latency timer from 32 (default) to about 48.
In this way bus mastering cards have more time for their pci bus data transfers.
The problems seems to be correlated with VIA chipsets and Athlon processors.
Ciao from Italy.

You should not use the msconfig in XP. Here is an article on how to strip down the services to get the best performance. http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

The article says to only use the services.msc and to not use msconfig anymore.