DV Camcorder, firewire capture and dropped frames.

ElectroBlaster

ElectroBlaster

ElectroBlaster

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I have the following:

Samsung VP-D362
Sony Vegas 7.0
Asus Ati motherboard with on-board firewire and 2.4ghz ht p4
XP Pro SP2
Seagate 80gb ide drive
Western Digital 750gb Sata

I made sure video capture was not using the system drive and only using the sata drive which is partitioned in half. Initially using the system drive the capture was dropping frames like no tomorrow. Then I realised the mistake and set it correctly then tried again. So far its reported one dropped frame but until the capture finishes I cant be sure how many frames it has really lost, so far im saving a 60minute tape which is almost done.

Is there any other things I can do to eliminate dropped frames completely?
 
generally you shouldn't use the PC for anything else whilst it's capturing and try to have as few programs running in the background as possible. Defragging the hard drives can also help.
 
I know the cpu is sloth like, I gave the kids my core duo setup because I didnt really care about it at the time... maybe I should put the camera on that instead. I do tend to run a fairly cleen install of windows apart from having zonealarm on it and its very recently fresh aswell and both drives were blanked and re-partitioned. I also have daemon tools and a cookie blocker running so should I turn them off?.
 
I've been doing video editing for a few years now and started off with a AMD 1.5ghz cpu for capturing and editing and only now use a few 2.8 ghz PC's , it's ample . Using Firewire and Pinnacle 9 for capturing without any dropped frames ...EVER.
As said , if your capturing or editing on a PC that's internet connected , by that I mean , having all the gubbins installed like: anti-virus ,anti-spy ,firewall , I think you'll have problems somewhere down the line . My Pc's have no net connection or anything on them to slow down the capturing process .Once captured , I use Sony Vegas , Pinnacle , Serif Movie Plus for editing and never have any problems . Rig up a spare PC purely for editing and see how that goes .
 
Some good advice chaps :)

One thing I have noticed is the captured video always comes out as avi and they are flaming huge. I have two computers hooked into sky+ boxes recording with radeon all in wonder cards. They capture in mpeg2 format and ive always been really happy with the quality and file size. Is there anyway I can capture in mpeg via firewire from a camcorder? Unfortunatley I never got the analogue output lead for it and I cannot find any for sale anywhere so im stuck with firewire :(
 
There might be an option in the capture window (I haven't used sony vegas before) to change the capture settings. Either that or drag the clip onto the timeline and export it as an mpeg2.
 
Thats a problem, ive looked all over that program and I can change the settings to mpeg1 or 2. I can just convert the file but it will take along time. I guess I have no choice tbh.
 
If you are capturing DV over firewire you will only have the option to capture as a DV AVI file. You can however transcode this to MPEG2 afterwards either using the method $loth has suggested or by using a program such as Super.

However you are far better off editing using the DV AVI files as editing programs work extremely well with them and they do not suffer generational loss when you apply effects etc to them.

My advice is to complete your edit using the DV AVI files and then export to DV AVI although this is down to you and hard drive space, you can then delete the original capture files and just have a master DV AVI, which you can transcode to whatever format you want.
 
I agree your pc ain't super fast but it shouldn't drop frames, an old Athlon 1.4 I had didn't!
I'm guessing something somewhere is interfering and slowing down pc, maybe anti virus or something similiar, you could perhaps disconnect from t'internet and turn off virus et.c and try again?
 
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