Performance problems w/ HD video capture

tfirma · Post by **tfirma** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:14 pm

Hello,

Here is my setup :

Sony Handycam HDR-HC3
Windows XP Service Pack 2
HP Pavilion s7320n
Intel Celeron M processor 380 1.6GHz
1GB RAM
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900
Visual Studio 10+...

Whenever I try to capture High Definition (and I've followed the guidelines in the great tutorial here in the forum) - the video is EXTREMELY choppy - and when it's finished and I go to watch the captured video there is only about 1 second of video and the rest is just a garbled mess...
I've also tried setting up the custom ideo editing profile - but get the same results...

I'm thinking that perhaps this PC may not just be powerful enough (I can't seem to find the real suggested specs anywhere - but I've done a bunch of video editing on this PC before (admittedly, not HD). I'm no longer technical enough to understand the gaps between what I have above and what is usually recommended by the companies!

Before I go out and buy a new PC (obviously not my preferred solution!) - could anybody please make any other suggestions? Or, is this PC simply not cut out to capture HD video?

THANKS in advance!

jchunter · Post by **jchunter** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 9:11 pm

You should have enough computer power to capture the HDV because that is mostly a copying process, with very little computation going on. If you are doing playback in Video Studio, in the Edit section, however, you might get choppyness.

First, to see if the capture was successful, download Media Player Classic at
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Med ... lassic.htm

If MPC can't play the file, then I would suspect that your computer doesn't have enough free, unfragmented space. To capture an hour of HDV requires 13GB of space. Defrag and capture again.

If MPC can play it, and you have another 15 - 20 GB of free space on your disks, you could try editing HDV using the "Smart-Proxy" feature with your performance challenged computer. To enable this, open the Preferences menu and on the fifth tab check the enable button and give it a shot!

BTW, I have never tried Smart-Proxy. But others have reported HDV editing success with even slower computers.

tfirma · Post by **tfirma** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 12:16 am

Hi jchunter -

Thanks so much for the reply! I tried and checked a few of those things - they were all great suggestions.... No luck, unfortunately... But I *did* just notice something (this may not be anything, of course) that I found interesting...

When I have the i.Link Conv set to "on (hdv->dv)" the video works perfectly - very smooth and transfers just fine. When I set it to "Off" - is when I have the problems... So, I believe I have to have it "off" to truly transfer HD video, right? could it be something with the HD driver (when I switch my PC indicates that I have a "new device".... Again, don't know if that means a thing at all - but perhaps I've begun to narrow down the issue?

Thanks so much again -

Tom

tyamada · Post by **tyamada** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 12:54 am

When you switch your camera to HD->DV and iLink conversion ot on your camera is in the SD mode not High Definition, thats why you can capture with out the skipping.

As John suggested you should try to use the proxy mode to edit your video, once your video is rendered to a High Definition file it should play back fine.

If you are going to continue to create High Definition video I would suggest upgrading your computer to at least a 3.0Gig dual core processor.

jchunter · Post by **jchunter** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 1:18 am

Tom,
I agree with Terry that a 3GHz computer with lots of hard disk space would put you in the "comfort zone" for serious HD editing.

However, there is no reason why the capture should not work if you have enough hard disk space.

And the question still unanswered is whether Media Player Classic can playback your captured HD video file. When I playback an HDV capture file my computer is running 40% busy, so you should have enough power to playback a good HDV file..