drop frame

[mellmo]

Hi folks.
I'm having problems with capturing video to my external hard drive, I'm trying to convert video to DVD, capturing in AVI format, intrnal hard drive has no problem with this but with only having 40gigs left on hard drive can only copy half hour, no good, so perchased an external hard drive"Maxtor Personal Storage 3200" 300gigs,16mb cache/7200rpm, up to 480mb/sec transfer rates.
Done every thing it says in the user guide but still drops every fourth frame.
Any help would be much appreciated..thanks

[GeorgeW]

Hi Mellmo, and welcome to the forums

In order for us to help, we need a little more information. Can you provide the following:

-what device you are using to capture video
-what is the original video source (camcorder, VCR, DVD Player, etc... -- please list specific make/model number if possible)
-all the connections you are making from the video source device to your computer
-the properties of your captured video (i.e. probably not DV .avi because that would only need about 6.5gb for half hour -- are your .avi's using some other less-compressed format -- if so, what codec is being used? )

Regards,
George

[mellmo]

Hi George and thanks.
I'm using Tevion DVD Maker VS-USB2800D for capture from a Toshiba V856B VHS video recorder and just using theAVI option in videostudio 10, compression/color space YUY2 720x576 frame size, 25 frames/sec with no compresion and as i said erlyer, have no probs capturing to internal hd but get drop frame on external hd

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Mellmo

If you capture to uncompressed Avi you need about 65 Gb per hour.

You need to use a compression to reduce the file size to about 13Gb per hour.
This is the same rate as a digital camcorders video.

Select the Options Cogwheel—Tick use software compression.—Advanced
Select ---Microsoft Video 1 from the Compression box, This should give you 13Gb per hour.

The Compression : Huffyuv v2.1.1 is a free download. It is a lossless compressor at about 23Gb per hour.


You could try capturing direct to Mpeg 2

Choose DVD from the Format box
From the Options Cogwheel-Capture Properties-Advanced
Set these properties

MPEG Files
24 Bits, 720 x 576, 25.00 fps
Upper Field First
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: 6000 kbps (this will give you 90 minutes) 40000 will give you 120 minutes.
Audio data rate: 128 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48.0 KHz, Stereo

Hope this Helps

Trevor

[mellmo]

Hi Trevor and thanks
Trying new settings at the mo, so far over 9 mins i have droped 400 frames, not bad, the thing is i'm trying to convert all my bike racing videos to dvd, and the quality on some of the videos isn't all that good, so i want as good a quality as i can get, the AVI setting are perfect for the job, it's just my extarnal hd seems to be droping the frames.
if any one out there knows of some setting i need to change they would be greatly appreciated

[tommytucker]

I am always getting dropped frames on my capture counter using VS10+, so I started using that freeware WINDV for capture. According to that software frame counter, I am not having any dropped frames.

[heinz-oz]

@melmo,

I think your problem may be related to the fact that you connect via USB in both cases. The USB bandwidth is shared among both devices and any other USB device you may have active at the time.

I think changing from USB connection into your PC to firewire may fix this. Personally, I prefer firewire connections over USB. On the surface it appears that USB 2.0 transfer rates are sufficient, but these transfer rates are not sustained. Firewire has a higher sustained transfer rate. I even have my external HDD connected via firewire and never experienced any problem like yours.

[sjj1805]

Hi folks.
I'm having problems with capturing video to my external hard drive, I'm trying to convert video to DVD, capturing in AVI format, intrnal hard drive has no problem with this but with only having 40gigs left on hard drive can only copy half hour, no good, so perchased an external hard drive"Maxtor Personal Storage 3200" 300gigs,16mb cache/7200rpm, up to 480mb/sec transfer rates.
Done every thing it says in the user guide but still drops every fourth frame.
Any help would be much appreciated..thanks

Looking at your system specifications you only appear to have one internal hard drive. You have 4 IDE slots and no doubt you have a DVD burner using up the second of your 4. This means you have room to install a further 2 internal hard drives.

I experminted with USB and Firewire external hard drives and found them unreliable - though I am aware that other users of this forum have reported that they use them without problems.

The hard drives I used as externals - I simply removed them from their external casing and placed them into the computer as ordinary IDE drives and poof no more problems.

[heinz-oz]

Whilst I have an external HDD, connected by firewire, I only use that for storage of downloaded programs, finished video projects and images. I would not attempt to capture video to it even though it might work. I have 4 internal HDDs in my video machine as well.

[mellmo]

Thanks to heinz-oz and sjj1805
well it looked like my worst fear is comming true, and i'm going to bite the bullit and buy an internal HDD, but i do like that idea of sjj's but don't want to take the risk of wrecking a decent ex HDD, so am going to look at fire wire route first. thanks again Mellmo
ps. will i be able to run my ex HDD via fire wire

[alan.glaister]

mellmo,

Unless you are concerned about voiding the warrentee on your external HDD it should be a straight forward case of transferring it into your PC.

However if you don't like the idea of this then there are plenty of bargains about for HD these days but for speed purposes you are best off getting SATA.

I do know of a number of people who successfully use external HD's on firewire but all of these people daisy chain their video device to the HD to their PC (eg camcorder->ext HDD -> PC)
Doing it this way allows the data to ineffect be captured direct to the HDD avoiding the PC interferring

For extra info SVP source external HDD cases at a good price and a number of my colleagues at work have bought them and recommend them

[sjj1805]

........... will i be able to run my ex HDD via fire wire

This depends upon the external enclosure.
I have two, one is USB only, the other has outputs to allow connection via USB or Firewire.

I agree with Heinz regarding use of the external for storage, my original intention was to use the external drives as portable drives so I could carry one round with me for file transfers between computers - especially when I repair a friends computer.

As stated previously I found them unreliable for Video Capture.

[Black Lab]

I realize what Steve and Heinz have told you, but I do capture video to my external hard drive, via firewire, and have had no problems. It's worth a try!

[Liamo]

I found this guide useful. I capture to external drive via firewire.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/cap ... frames.htm

A fragmented drive seemed to cause most of my problems and I defrag now after each capture.