V4 capture intermittent, stops now and then..

ken c wrote on 7/30/2005, 7:32 PM

I've read thru all the 'capture' threads..didn't find a quick answer so here's my question:

haven't had problems capturing w/Vegas4 before now... I have many of my mini-dv tapes from a seminar I'm capturing via vegas 4 to an external drive, as usual..

but many of them are stopping captures several times during each 1-hour tape, says dropped frames, and I have to "continue capturing" from where it stops.. any ideas?

should I just have it capture to c drive in case it's something to do w/the external firewire drives? using win2k and a matrox parhelia card here... this never happened before, same system, not sure why the bugs' there now..

appreciate any thoughts...

ken

Comments

B.Verlik wrote on 7/30/2005, 7:55 PM

I believe if you check your preferences, in the capture window: Options, Preferences, Capture, the 2nd box down. Uncheck "Stop capture on dropped frames".

GlennChan wrote on 7/30/2005, 10:30 PM

Has anything changed in regards to the configuration of firewire devices connected to the computer?

Did the camera/deck change?
Did you add/change any firewire drives?

That might be it... some people report dropped frames on capturing to firewire.

2- If the drive is getting full, you can run into speed and fragmentation issues. Drives get slightly slower as they fill up. Fragmentation is something else, and can happen when your drive is >90% full or has lots of file changes to it.

3- To check if it's the external drive, try capturing to C: and moving files onto the external.

Your problem could be something else entirely too. Maybe there are timecode breaks on the tape?? (Although IIRC Vegas handled those fine.) A TC break is when the timecode jumps back to 00:00:00;00

ken c wrote on 7/31/2005, 5:36 AM

Thanks very much, Steve & Glenn, great tips...

-just did that re unchecking the 'stop vegas on dropped frames' option, didn't even know about that! since this is b-roll footage, that's fine if there's occasional frame drops in the source, as it's just to splice into the main footage for alternate camera shots..

- agree Glenn, will do re capturing to C ... and yes I've been adding a bunch of firewire maxtor 300 gig drives, daisy chained (likely I shouldn't do that, get another firewire card instead) ...

great point too re fragmented drive ... that's something to check as well, and yes it was to a 80% full drive, for these caps ... I'll capture to a new clean NTSC-formatted drive, hopefully will get all 12 gigs per 60-minute mini-dv tape captured without stops..

thanks guys, really appreciate it.. let me know if I can reciprocate w/any tips etc... working on my sitefomercials.com site too .. fun stuff, using vegas..

btw, anyone else have problems w/Maxtor drives? any suggestions for best external drives, eg seagate, WD etc?

ken

Grazie wrote on 7/31/2005, 7:40 AM

Ken - I've got 4 daisey-chained f/w ext MAxtor drives. They work fab. - G

ken c wrote on 7/31/2005, 8:09 AM

Hi, me too re daisy-chained maxtors... agree working great so far...
I've gotta remember to re-quick format all of them when I buy them from the default FAT32 to NTSC format, so they can do >4gig caps..

btw that fixed it, unchecking the "stop on skipped frames" in capture preferences, thanks much...

I won't know what exactly was skipped til I edit it all in vegas... but that solved it for me, much appreciated..

ken