USB External Drive - Dropped Frames

[oka]

Am very disappointed to whenever I use the Seagate's external USB (2.0) to capture a video the capture is really bad. After pressing on the capture button, I looked up and about 200 frames were already dropped. You could see the frame counter "speeding".

I am in the process on getting a Pinnacle Systems - Dazzle DVD Recorder with a USB connection to the computer. Well, I can return it to BestBuy if I do not like it, within 21 days after purchase.

Why isn't an external USB drive okay for captuer?

VS11Plus.

[Black Lab]

Typically, the USB transfer rate is too slow. But I thought USB2 to be ok. Mine is connected via firewire and it works fine, although you will find some on this board that are against capturing to an external.

[oka]

Well, I will just use it for storage. Just got another system for my video, with lots of space for AVI captured files. I was very surprised to see how much frames were dropped. Shocked!
Thanks for the info.

[Black Lab]

Well, I will just use it for storage.

But you are capturing to it, correct?

How are you capturing? If you are dropping frames on another system also then you must have some other problem.

[DVDDoug]

Why isn't an external USB drive okay for capture?

I'm not exactly sure... But, it's all about speed! (According to the specs & theory, USB-2 is plenty fast enough for real-time video. ) Are you able to capture to your internal drive?

I use the Seagate's external USB (2.0) to capture a video...

That's an external drive, right? Or, does Seagate make a video capture device?

am in the process on getting a Pinnacle Systems - Dazzle DVD Recorder with a USB connection to the computer.

What are you using now?

What are you capturing from? (broadcast? analog camcorder? digital camcorder?, etc?)

When you get the Pinnacle device, I recommend that you use the Pinnacle capture software. Capture hardware usually works best with the software that's specially made for it. Once you have a video file on your hard drive, you can edit with Video Studio if you wish.


Real-time capture is tricky. The video data streams-in at a constant rate. If your computer can't keep-up, or if the CPU get's interrupted, you'll get corrupted data, dropped frames, etc. (There is a buffer to handle short-term interrupts.)

- If you're multitasking, you have a greater chance of problems. The operating system is always doing some background operations.

- If you are software-encoding to MPEG "on the fly" during capture, this puts more demand on the CPU and you are more likely to have problems.

- An external (standard definition) hardware MPEG encoder (as I think the Dazzle has) makes things much easier on the computer. Your CPU doesn't have to do any "work", and since the data coming into your USB port is already compressed, less data has to travel over your data bus and onto your hard drive.

- DV (from a MiniDV camcorder) or high definition video requires a higher bitrate, and is more difficult to capture (in real time).

- All of your USB ports may share the same data-path, and using both a USB drive and a USB capture device may be a problem (But, I' just speculating.) Also, plugging a USB-1 device into the same USB controller might slow everything down to USB-1 speed.

[oka]

I must sent some apologies for not have explained myself enough. I got you all worked up for nothing. I really appreciate your help. Though I have subliminally learned more on the modern technology.

First, I very strongly feel the issue has to be my motherboard. I have been having problems with this board (ECS P4M800Pro-M). I have two of them and they are not worth the cost. One had to be taken back after I got it (the third board). The BIOS alternates CD/DVD drives and sometimes, it will not see my hard drives. It’s been a pain. Try to avoid these boards. I should do a test to find out if the board’s USB is really 2.0. Maybe it’s set to 1.0 and I have to install it’s 2.0 driver.

All my capturing has been good until I wanted to capture to an external USB drive. It has to be the motherboard’s USB channel. When I changed to the hard drive, it captured a 216 minutes video without dropping a frame. With the USB, from pressing the capture button and looking up, the number was about 600+ and climbing like the numbers at the gas pumps.

Yesterday, I got an OEM PC from Gateway to try out for my videos. Have not opened the box yet! When I have it set up, I WILL try to capture to the external USB and let you guys know what I find out.

Sure got some good pointers from you all.
Thanks again.

[sjj1805]

You could try installing a PCI - USB2 card.
That fixed problems I had using external hard drives with the built in USB ports.

Another alternative is to capture to the internal hard drive (Where speed is an important factor) then transfer it to the external hard drive (Where speed is no longer critical).

[Dabitz]

If you are using Vista try
http://www.tweakvista.com/articles/3919 ... rd-drives/

But have in mind that you should keep the drive connected at all times and use the "safely remove" feature when you need to remove it for whatever reason.

[2Dogs]

Another solution, and one that hardly costs more than a USB external drive is to get an eSATA external drive. In fact you can find many units that offer both eSATA and USB for good versatility, say if you need to hook it up to a notebook or DVR.

The downside is that all but the latest pc's will need an eSATA bracket to be added - but the brackets are cheap and many eSATA enclosures come with one. The bracket is simply an eSATA socket with a SATA lead that plugs into one of the SATA ports on your motherboard.

Here's a 1TB drive at Newegg.com for $105.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822101082

An eSATA external drive will perform almost identically to an internal drive, whereas USB or Firewire connected external drives have limited data transfer rates.

To my mind, anyone buying a USB or firewire external drive or enclosure is missing out on the much better performance of an eSATA unit.

[skier-hughes]

Why isn't an external USB drive okay for capture?

I'm not exactly sure... But, it's all about speed! (According to the specs & theory, USB-2 is plenty fast enough for real-time video. ) Are you able to capture to your internal drive?

USB2 in theory has the right speed, because they advertise a high speed 480, unfortunately this is not sustainable over long periods, - being a burst speed - and so, you can get problems when capturing using USB2.

Firewire's speed of 400, although lower is sustainable and thus is superior for capturing video.

I capture to an internal drive and then move to USB drives and edit from there is I need to.

[sjj1805]

......
An eSATA external drive will perform almost identically to an internal drive, whereas USB or Firewire connected external drives have limited data transfer rates.

To my mind, anyone buying a USB or firewire external drive or enclosure is missing out on the much better performance of an eSATA unit.

I recently purchased a Western Digital 500GB "MyBook" Home Edition external drive. It "accepts" 3 forms of connection.
1. Firewire
2. Esata
3. USB2

I had connectivity issues with the firewire and so took it back and swapped it for another. I still had the same problems so I invested in a PCIe -> external ESATA card. I still had connectivity problems.
Finally I connected with USB2 and it works perfectly.

Perhaps I was just unlucky.

[2Dogs]

I had connectivity issues with the firewire and so took it back and swapped it for another. I still had the same problems so I invested in a PCIe -> external ESATA card. I still had connectivity problems.
Finally I connected with USB2 and it works perfectly.

Perhaps I was just unlucky.

I think you probably were unlucky. Getting a PCIe -> eSATA card seems a bit long winded, since you can normally just use a bracket that has a cable that plugs into a spare SATA port on your motherboard. Maybe you didn't have any SATA ports free.

Although many eSATA enclosures work with both SATA 1 and 2, some only work with Sata 2 - so will not work with a SATA 1 drive. You can normally set a SATA 2 drive to work with a SATA 1 enclosure, however. None of that should have been relevant to your circumstances, though, since you bought the whole external drive and did not fit your own drive into a separate enclosure.

I've read of people having to format the drive whilst it's connected by USB rather than eSATA.

If you buy the bracket separately, rather than get one that comes with the external drive, you can get one with a power socket so that you can eliminate the power "brick" too. I like anything that reduces cable clutter!

I know that you're a big fan of removable drives in drive caddies - and the eSATA enclosures can perform the same function whilst not requiring a mid or full sized tower case.

[sjj1805]

Yes I tried a cable from the motherboards SATA ports BUT each worked ONCE and then would not work again.
I think the SATA -> ESATA cable blew each of them in succession.

Although in theory you can connect an external SATA drive this way (in fact it did work - even if only once), from a practical point the cable is too susceptible to movement and (what probably happened to my internal ports) can come loose. That is just like hot plugging which you should not do with a motherboard port.

As for using brackets - to do so would defeat the purpose of an EXTERNAL hard drive, you use brackets for mounting an internal hard drive.

As for SATA1 / SATA 2.
This is a sealed and factory manufactured external hard drive, not something I built myself and it is SATA 2.

If the USB cable hadn't worked I was ready to rip the SATA drive out of the casing and see if I could install it as an internal drive - that's if the SATA ports do still work which I doubt after using that thick pink cable (I did some research on the Internet before getting one and several sources confirmed it would work - which it did 'once')

[2Dogs]

You always have a link for everything, Steve!

When I referred to the eSATA brackets - they are simply a folded plate that replaces one of the blanking plates you find on the back of a pc, when there are unused pci, pcie or other slots. Once fitted, the bracket is fixed, connecting your motherboard SATA to the eSATA socket on the bracket.

The external drive is then removable by unplugging the eSATA cable connecting the drive to the eSATA socket on the bracket, just as you would unplug any USB drive.

It's a more practical arrangement than using a SATA to eSATA cable, such as the one you tried, for that reason.

eSATA bracket

The motherboard SATA ports are quite fragile, and you certainly would not want to plug into and unplug items from them on a regular basis.

It's a pity you had your bad experiences with eSATA, since it's clearly put you off any thoughts of using eSATA on your pc. In your position, I would definitely want to know what caused the problem. If your motherboard SATA ports were damaged, it suggests there could possibly have been a short in the SATA to eSATA cable. That would be fairly easy to check with a meter.

Have you since tried using the SATA ports with a SATA hard drive to confirm that they are in fact dead?

I think I would only use a USB enclosure as a rest home for an old IDE drive these days.

[sjj1805]

Pity I didn't spot one of those before I bought that cable.
I will bear it in mind for the future. I don't have any SATA hard drives available to test out the ports and am not going to crack the case of the external drive open to use that!

I only use this particular external drive for various virtual machines so it is not important that I convert it to SATA right now. Thank you though for the extra information.