Capture stuttering/dropped frames

fatbloke · Post by **fatbloke** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 10:36 am

Can anyone advise please what to do next? MSP8 reports 2-3% dropped frames during capture despite taking every precaution (that I can think of) to prevent this problem. Even WinDV drops frames, is there something I've failed to do?
Thanks in advance, Simon.

Here's my set-up...

Capturing to a laptop (single hard-drive only): -
MediaStudio Pro 8
Win XP Pro Service Pack 2
Pentium 4 @ 2.4 Ghz
1 GB RAM
Anti-virus disabled, unnecessary background tasks suspended, system tweaks applied (i.e. DMA on, disk has been defragged, Disk indexing OFF).

Camcorder, Sony DCR-PC9E connected thro' firewire.

Capture set-up: -
720 x 576 PAL, DV type-1 (even tried type-2)
Device control: MS1394
Plug-In: Ulead Direct Show

Gorf · Post by **Gorf** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 10:41 am

Look in control panel/system/hardware for anything that might have IRQ conflicts with the 1394 card.

Are you capturing to the laptop hard drive or an external unit? If the latter, how is it connected? If the former, run diskspeed32 on the laptop hard drive to see what sort of speeds you're getting.

fatbloke · Post by **fatbloke** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 10:52 am

No conflicts, capturing to the laptop hard drive. Can't seem to find diskspeed32 despite a search. Is this part of XP or a utility I can download?

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 10:57 am

It is hairy when you do everything on a single HDD and when it is a laptop HDD, it is even hairier. My first advice is to clean off everything that you never use and then thoughly defrag the disk and I don't mean run the Windows legacy Intel defragger, which is an abomination unto mankind. Use a real defragger, such as Diskeeper.

fatbloke · Post by **fatbloke** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 11:09 am

Thanks for the advice. First, I'll try Diskeeper as you suggest and if I can, I'll try out on another PC with two disk drives.

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 11:34 am

fatbloke wrote:No conflicts, capturing to the laptop hard drive. Can't seem to find diskspeed32 despite a search. Is this part of XP or a utility I can download?

Sisoft Sandra has an excellent disk speed measuring system and general performance diagnostics. The free version is excellent value for money!

Gorf · Post by **Gorf** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 1:11 pm

fatbloke wrote:...Can't seem to find diskspeed32 despite a search. Is this part of XP or a utility I can download?

GiyF

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 2:33 am

Hi Devil,

..... The free version is excellent value for money!

you are cracking me up man

No offence intended, just liked the punt

fatbloke · Post by **fatbloke** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 8:58 am

OK, think I've solved the problem. I tried capture on a PC with two defragged drives using Diskeeper - one HD with MSP8 and one HD dedicated to video capture. Seems fine. There's a lesson here somewhere...

Thanks all

GORF, thanks for the link to diskspeed32, I'll give it a whirl.

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 3:50 am

One of the lessons being: If you can avoid it, don't use a laptop. Laptop HDD are generally slow rpm drives. You may get away with it if everything else is streamlined. HDD's on a desktop are predominantly 7200 rpm drives with a faster interface than the 5600 rpm ones fitted to a laptop. In both cases UDMA should be enabled.

fatbloke · Post by **fatbloke** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 8:23 am

Totally agree. I ran a test on the laptop HD and then again on the secondary drive on the desktop and there was a significant difference in performance despite the laptop being a 'newer' machine.

Thanks for the reply heinz-oz.

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 9:36 am

You are more than welcome.