Capturing is choppy

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:16 pm

Now I'm confused. Earlier you said that capturing via Movie Maker was fine, but later you said that MM capture also produced choppiness. If the latter is true, I think it is a hardware problem. If you used 2 different firewire ports, but the same cable, I would look at the cable.

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:18 pm

If it captures to an external ok, I'd go back to my link and re-read the suggestions, looking in particualr at teh bit which says how to check if your internal drive has been to set to PIO mode.

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 1:04 am

And in reference to what vidoman was saying, he was suggesting that you may be dropping frames. To check that in VS go to File>Preferences>Capture Tab and check the Show Drop Frame Information, then try capturing again to see if, in fact, you are dropping frames.

extremekicks · Post by **extremekicks** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 7:10 am

Ok I managed to capture to my external all 11 DV's but on my 12th. I cant capture.

I added the frame drop option and no frames lost with my last 3 of the 11 DV's.

When I capture to my external now it will play for 3 or 4 seconds and freeze completely. I did a disk error fix and also defrag'd the external.

This is so frusterating.

Post by **Ron P.** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 8:15 am

This is so frusterating.

You should be on this side of the questions....

Do you have any other devices connected to your PC using Firewire? There may be a problem if your external drive is connected by firewire, and you're camcorder is transferring using firewire. Problems like this are more common with USB. If your external also has a USB port, try using it and see if this choppiness goes away, or if it has both and you're connected by USB, try changing it to the firewire port. My external drive only has USB, and so far I've not had any issues capturing to it.

So far I'm inclined to think you have a problem with your video drivers or card. However if you're DirectX is up to date, which must be done manually from Microsoft's DirectX page, and you don't have any problems playing videos with Windows Media Player, VLC, or whatever you have installed, this choppiness may just be the norm for viewing in preview playback, and during capturing. Since you're not dropping frames and yet have this choppiness, seems like a video driver issue. However if you can capture/transfer fine using other programs, such as WMM, WinDV, not dropping frames, and not choppy while capturing, I would rule out a video driver. Which this leads me to....

Try rendering a short clip (share>create video file>same as first clip). Then using a video player on your system play the video file you just created. Does it playback smoothly? Also in VS most of the time, when previewing in Clip Mode, it will play smoothly, but Project Mode playback, depending on the complexity of your project will not be very smooth. Previewing your video in VS just is not going to be pristine, and smooth. Most of the time, my playback becomes real choppy before I've made it half way through.

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 10:25 am

skier-hughes wrote:If it captures to an external ok, I'd go back to my link and re-read the suggestions, looking in particualr at teh bit which says how to check if your internal drive has been to set to PIO mode.

extremekicks · Post by **extremekicks** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 5:56 pm

Ok so I checked my IDE channels and its listing 2.

The first IDE Channel is listed in DMA and device 0 and device 1 are set to Ultra DMA mode.

The second IDE channel disk 0 is set to DMA but brings up PIO I tried to reset this but it keeps coming back as PIO, also disk 1 is set to DMA transfer not applicable.

I moved some of the video that was on the external over to the hard drive to make some space for the new captured video. I dont think this woudl have caused the capturing to not work.

Dont think its my graphics card I did a 3d performance test V6.1 and it flew with flying colors.

I tried to update the drivers for cannon cameras but I can only find a driver for year 2001 driver ver 5.1.2600.0 this is for a GL2.

I even ran the patch prog for 11+ just in case.

So I went from choppy on the internal to smooth captures on the external to now freezing in the first 5 seconds of capturing.

Camera to PC - Firewire.

External - USB

I also realized I have DDR2 memory woudl that make a difference?

I'm friggin losing my mind.

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 6:35 pm

extremekicks wrote:Ok so I checked my IDE channels and its listing 2.

The first IDE Channel is listed in DMA and device 0 and device 1 are set to Ultra DMA mode.

The second IDE channel disk 0 is set to DMA but brings up PIO I tried to reset this but it keeps coming back as PIO, also disk 1 is set to DMA transfer not applicable. What internal discs do you have? Is this IDE channel connected to a hdd and is this the one you are tryinhg to capture to? If so, look at the ways of ensuring DMA is set.

I moved some of the video that was on the external over to the hard drive to make some space for the new captured video. I dont think this woudl have caused the capturing to not work. Full discs can work slower and yes, this can affect capture.

Dont think its my graphics card I did a 3d performance test V6.1 and it flew with flying colors. Graphics card won't have any affect on it, unless the firewire is on the card.

I tried to update the drivers for cannon cameras but I can only find a driver for year 2001 driver ver 5.1.2600.0 this is for a GL2. Windows supplies the firewire driver, no need to change this.
I even ran the patch prog for 11+ just in case.

So I went from choppy on the internal to smooth captures on the external to now freezing in the first 5 seconds of capturing.

Camera to PC - Firewire.

External - USB

I also realized I have DDR2 memory woudl that make a difference?

I'm friggin losing my mind.

Have you done all the other things suggested on there? Like turing off all other apps?

If so, then I'd look at a problem with hardware, such as the cable or firewire port.
Find a working cam/cable and pc. Make sure it works ok, by using it yourself.
Now swap each of your items one by one until you've tried all three items and you'll be able to work out which if any item is causing a problem.

extremekicks · Post by **extremekicks** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 8:18 pm

I did also notice my external is listed as disk 5 is this ok as well?

extremekicks · Post by **extremekicks** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 10:08 pm

The Fix

Ok so I remembered I had another capture card laying around. Got that and tried it out and it worked.

I thought I was losing my mind. A bad power supply and now a bad capture card. Ugh

Post by **Ron P.** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 12:02 am

Next stop, new PC...

Glad you have it working now. I think video editing would make a good troubleshooting tool for some hardware devices. It sure seems magnify little problems, that might otherwise not be noticed.

extremekicks · Post by **extremekicks** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 2:02 pm

I went through every loop possible and yet again it was a piece of hardware. Ugh.

I do need a new system all my stuff is old. Need to save up.

Hmmmmm...

Quad core, 8 gig of RAM and a kickass graphics card and should I dump alot into a capture card? Em I leaving anything else out besides 1 tera of internal?