Jumpy video, not just in VideoStudio, from DV source

[hdbaumeister]

Hi all, first-time DV Camcorder user here. Just bought a TerraTec card with VideoStudio 8, installed, plugged in and... disappointment.

I imported a DV cassette using "DVD" format. Import went smoothly, but the subsequent video jumps around - i.e. it seems to only have every third or fourth frame! The audio is fine.

To make sure this wasn't a software issue, I fired up the MovieMaker software that comes with XP -- same thing!

I then tested again in VideoStudio using "DV" as the format. No change.

Can someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong?

PC is a Pentium 4 2.566 GHz with HT, 1 GB RAM, plenty of disk space. The specs should be ok, I thought...

Oh, by the way: the video does NOT jump when played from the camcorder That is a cheezy Panasonic NV-GS27.

Thanks!

Best regards,

Nick

[Ken Berry]

An easy one! If in fact you have a mini DV digital video camera, for high quality transfer, you MUST use Firewire (called i-Link on some cameras -- check your camera's Manual.) And you should be doing it using the DV/AVI format, not DVD/mpeg-2 settings. The problem is that no camera manufacturer of which I am aware includes a Firewire cable with the camera, but they usually include a USB cable. This gives users the wrong impression that they use USB for the connection.

And you certainly don't need to use a capture card for DV. A direct Panasonic - computer firewire link is all that's necessary, because you are not in fact capturing but merely transferring the contents of the DV tape (which, as its name suggests, is already in the DV format) to your computer in the same format.

Trying to capture DVD format from a DV camera imposes an extra burden on the processing power of your computer. More often than not, the latter can't quite handle the speed and volume of the incoming signal -- which is sent from the camera in DV format but you are asking the computer to convert it and compress it on the fly. So the computer pauses for a fraction of a second while what is called the transcode buffer is processed and emptied out, then the capture starts again. That would probably account for the dropped frame/jerkiness you are noticing.

Of course, your computer must have a Firewire connection. But if it doesn't, then Firewire cards are cheap these days, and usually come with a connecting cable as well. With regard to the latter, make sure you get a cable with the right plugs at either end -- normally it is a small 4 pin one at the camera end and a larger 6 pin one at the computer end.

Believe me, it will make all the difference.

[heinz-oz]

Ditto that.

Why did you buy that TerraTec card? What model is it?

[njdowding]

TerraTec make firewire cards. The version that bundles VS8 has two fire wir ports and a few USB ports. So there is a good chance the OP was capturing through firewire but using direct to DVD through VS8.

If so the answer is to capture to your hard drive first as a DV AVI and then use VS to make the mpeg and burn to disk. Slightly longer process but much better chance of sucess.

Nick

[heinz-oz]

Could also have used the USB ports with the cable that came with his camera. Would explain some of the problems.

Let's see if the OP gets back to this and gives us some more details

[hdbaumeister]

Hi Guys, wow, thanks for the ample replies!

Okay, let me get into more detail. njdowding was right - the card I installed is basically a Firewire/USB card. Also, I was using a firewire connection from the camcorder, so that should be ok. Also, I was not going directly to DVD, but producing files on a (fast) hard disk.

As mentioned in my original post, I actually tried transferring directly to DV format, which, if I understand it right, should require no processing (VideoStudio was set to DV-2) other than data transfer into a file.

So while it sounds reasonable that a conversion from one format to another while being innundated with data could be a problem even for my CPU, but then I don't understand why the same effect came up on the direct-DV file creation...?

I'm wondering some other hardware (I have another USB card in the machine) is blocking resources periodically from the TerraTec card? Could that be a problem?

Thanks again!

Nick

[hdbaumeister]

oh, and to answer Heinz Oz' question why I bought the TerraTec:
simple: while my motherboard does have a 1394 connector on it, and that connector is enabled in the BIOS, for some reason, Windows didn't find the hardware.

So I was looking for a cheap 1394 card and found the TerraTec plus VideoStudio on ebay...

[njdowding]

As I said before you need to find the reason for the dropped frames. Follow the advice of the various links here and I am sure you will fix it.

Classic problems are things like having virus checkers or firewalls or even an internet connection in the background.

Nick

[Ken Berry]

I would advise you to go back to capturing direct to DV rather than DVD.

And the reason you got a bad capture before when trying to capture to DV was that you were using the DV Type 2 decoder, when your computer probably cannot handle that either! To change it, in the Capture > Capture Video window, and with your camera on and set to capture DV, click on the cogwheel Options icon. That will allow you to shift from Type 2 to Type 1. Hopefully that will solve your problems.

[rhondelon]

I have at times, had problems with DV Type-1 and DV Type-2 captures. It requires nearly 60% or more of the speed of the Hard Drive, more or less depending on the flavor of throughput you have. While researching the problem, I kept seeing slow processor but in my experiance, a slow hard drive can kill a system. After digging a little, I found that both my hard drives, because of errors now and again, had slipped into DMA1 and PIO modes. This is a flaw in windows, it cannot write at speed, so it reverts and reverts continually, the flat is, it doesn't reset, ever, without intervention.

First, before you do anything to change your system, you may want to check your DMA modes (Right click hard drive letter, properties, hardware properties). DMA-mode5 is optimal for any IDE drive.

If you find yourself stuck in PIO mode, you may try this, I've used it and it fixed my problem, it simply adds a registry entry that forces windows to reset the DMA mode on reboot.

link=> http://winhlp.com/WxDMA.htm

Hope this helps

Brian