visited by the dropped frame pixi

pen wrote on 2/5/2003, 5:32 AM

I bought VF last week, hooked it up today and have been dropping frames (while capturing) left righ and centre ever since... I have a P3, 128 ram, 20G HD (I regularly defrag), TI video card with MS driver adn a JVC DV camera (dont know model- 3 yrs old). When I capture onto DVPAL I am getting around 22 FPS (instead of the standard 25) because of dropped frames.
So far I have tried turning off video preview, and turing off some start up programs. I know,- I should have a partitioned hard drive, but I was hoping that VF wouldnt find it such a problem.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Should I use a different capture format, or different media properties? (currently using video 1, lower field first), or is there a good way to turn off all other programs? The alternative to all these I guess is that I need a new firewire cable or new HD? (aaahhggg!)
I bought VF becuase it looked like a good program, but I was also very impressed with the online forums, which look realy good, so, if anyone out there has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

Comments

IanG wrote on 2/5/2003, 7:03 AM

First question, does the captured video look ok? It could be that the dropped frame count is wrong (though I'm not optimistic!).

Are you capturing via a firewire card now - you mentioned a TI video card? If not, it's worth spending the £30 odd to get one.

Is DMA enabled on your HD? It should be!

I've never had any capture problems related to drives being partitioned or otherwise and I doubt that it has any bearing on your problem. Getting another, bigger HD is always nice though!

Ian G.

Frenchy wrote on 2/5/2003, 12:42 PM

IanG first questions are right-on. Search the forums for setup questions - there is a lot here (try the Vegas forums as well).

Also:

How much free space on your HDD? A single 20GB HDD is (IMHO) wayyyy too small for effective capture of DV. Forget a separate partition - get another 7200 rpm HDD (as large as you can afford). What OS are you running - definately turn off all background programs/processes with cntr-alt-del or task manager.

Here's a couple of links to browse (First one, which is a good first stop for you,is a visit to the SF KB):

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/support/SupportProduct.asp?FamilyID=52&Family=VideoFactory&TopicID=78&DetailID=879
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=153457
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=153463
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=153242
Non SF site, with good info:
http://www.videoguys.com/techsupp.htm

Keep tweaking, and keep at it - VF (and it's big brother) are WORTH IT.

cheers

Frenchy

pen wrote on 2/7/2003, 5:50 PM

Thanks for this advice, chaps. Im off to buy some more HD, and I can strongly reccomend Frenchy's link to www.videoguys.com/WinME_Tweaks.html
It clearly and logically explains the why and how of a great list of tweaks to improve drive performance- especially for a technophobe like me..
Pen