Jerky Captures via Firewire

weinberk · Post by **weinberk** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 3:03 pm

Hi:

Trying to help out a friend who can't seem to get a decent capture.

Here's the setup:
•Sony HC1, connected using firewire, in HD out mode, to a belkin? firewire card
•VS9 with the Aug 12 patch and the HDV plugin
•P4 2ghz, 640mb ram

I've followed the instructions in the sticky post in this form. Setting the project to NTSC-DVD, 8mb variable, etc, except I've got it set to 16:9 since that's how the camera recorded the original video.

It appears that with the HDV plugin there aren't many settings for capture. You can try to select something other than MPEG for the format from the dropdown, but MPEG remains selected (which is fine with me, but seemed buggy).

I'm able to capture video with HDV output selected on the camera. The problem is that it's terrible. Every now and again there will be a couple good frames in a row, but generally the video is fragmented, pixelated, interlaced looking, etc (the same bad video you get during heavy rain with directv).

Note that my buddy was previously using Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5 with the camera in non-hdv output mode (since roxio doesn't support it), and still getting aweful pictures.

This pixelation makes me fearful that this may not be a setting issue, but could be a problem with the <B>ability of the firewire connection to transfer data quick enough</B>.

Thoughts? Ideas that I might be able to try?

Thanks much!

weinberk · Post by **weinberk** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:34 pm

kebrinton · Post by **kebrinton** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 7:09 pm

Worrying about Firewire speed would be the last thing I'd do. It is so likely to be one of a large number of other things.

elubin1234 · Post by **elubin1234** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 7:19 pm

My thoughts....

I've seen this problem twice. The first time there was a conflict with my firewire card. When I removed my network card, sound card, and tv card, the problem went away.

Later, I had choppy capture again, and just needed to run the head cleaner on my camera. You'd know it though, because playback directly through the camera was also bad.

DiscCoasterPro · Post by **DiscCoasterPro** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 1:20 am

I am wondering if this could be a situation where the computer cant encode to mpeg on the fly fast enough to keep up with the capture.

dgoldan · Post by **dgoldan** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 11:28 pm

That's exactly the problem I had, using a P4 1.8GHz and 1Gb RAM. I switched to capturing in AVI (DV) mode and the problem went away.

Dan

DiscCoasterPro wrote:I am wondering if this could be a situation where the computer cant encode to mpeg on the fly fast enough to keep up with the capture.

Post by **Ron P.** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 11:34 pm

Another possibiltiy is that he doesn't have enough ram (640Mb) to begin to handle mpeg conversion on the fly. Then if there are other apps running in the background that's going to eat away at his available ram..

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 11:43 pm

The 1MB RAM number is a typo, Windows won't load on such a system. DOS would load in 1MB or 640KB, but you won't be able to run Videostudio on it...