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View Full Version : Dropped frames everywhere...New HDD's to blame?


Dot50Cal
23rd October 2005, 05:27
Hi guys, Im hoping someone can help me here. Ive been using Virtual VCR to capture HuffyUV @ 29.970 FPS/ 640x480 resolution for a while now, however anymore when I try and capture like this the frames just drop TONS.

I just got two 300GB maxtor 7l300s0 drives which have 16mb buffers. I dont know whats going on but this is ready to make me format...Any help is appreciated!

I think the drives may be defective...Not sure but is there any good applications I can do to test their speed to see if it matches what its rated at? Anyway more details:

I can capture at YUV without any problems, also it seems when I lower the resolution it drops less which makes me really think its a HDD issue. Ive defragged the drive, hardly anything is on it (260 some gigs free).

Alright, I got this program called HD Tune. You can get it at http://www.hdtune.com/

Basically it looks like it is the HD's. The drives I have are supposed to be 9.3MS. The ones I own are 15.1 and 13.8. This is bull......

setarip_old
23rd October 2005, 06:39
Hi!

I think the drives may be defective...

Make certain that DMA mode (NOT PIO mode) is turned on for the drives...

Dot50Cal
23rd October 2005, 07:02
DMA is only for IDE, I thought? In any case the IDE channels both have DMA enabled..But im running two SATA's.

Ive always been told write cache'ing is a bad thing, so that should be off, right?

CWR03
23rd October 2005, 16:11
Are you using the drives together with RAID in mirror mode? That will slow down writing to the drives. Write-cacheing should be left on for speed - I have it off for my primary drive, since a power outage can cause data loss, but my other two drives have it enabled.

Dot50Cal
23rd October 2005, 21:04
I dont have them Raided together. Eh I suppose a format is in order.

Boulder
24th October 2005, 10:25
What are your system details? Capture details? Have you tried the latest VDub? Have you tried capturing at 720x480? Have you disabled video display while capturing?

The seek time is never the same as what manufacturers report. Nevertheless, it's more than enough. Currently I capture to a 5-year-old 5400rpm Maxtor with 2MB cache :)

Dot50Cal
24th October 2005, 10:45
Ok full details since someone is nice enough to try again with me :)

Pentium 4 2.4 @ 3.0 (1:1 FSB @ 1000 Quad Pumped) (Yes AGP is FIXED)
Abit IC7G Mobo
1GB PC4000 (actually tunnin at 4000 since the 2.4 is @ 3.0) OCZ DDR
Geforce 6800 GT
400 Watt Antec PSU

Capture Card is a PDI Deluxe from PMS Video. I also have an ATI TV Wonder VE installed, and DID encounter some problems with the two. My PDI was sometimes being recoignized as a TV Wonder. I ended up uninstalling the drivers using something called BT Capture? Im not sure of the name. Im sure a format would fix this but Id rather avoid that if I could...

I tried Vdub, it does the same thing. Capturing at 720, yes. Yes Disabled preview, also audio. Neither helped.

Boulder
24th October 2005, 10:52
Have you tried any other codec for capturing? ffdshow includes an MJPEG codec you might want to try, PicVideo MJPEG is also a very good choice. Some people have had lots of dropped frames with HuffYUV for some reason.

Dot50Cal
24th October 2005, 11:23
Yeah I have, but I wanna keep with Huffy since its lossless. Im re-compressing the videos to Divx so its not really ideal to have two degredations.

Boulder
24th October 2005, 11:42
There are other lossless codecs as well.

Besides, you won't notice a difference between HuffYUV and PicVideo at Q20 (or even Q19).

Dot50Cal
24th October 2005, 12:13
Well Im a stubborn guy, I stick with what works for me. I still use Divx 3.11 lol :D *awaits mass of "*insert codec here* is better!"* Before that happens Ive already got all my sites videos using divx and to switch formats would be stupid and unessasary (sp?). 3.11 suits my needs quite well for my site and it took a damn long time to get Nandub down pat. I know it like the back of my hand now and even though I know there are better codecs out there 3.11 still just feels right.

Ive tried that MSU codec, still losing frames...Something is definitly fishy here :sly:

AVIL
24th October 2005, 12:19
Hi,

For capture I prefer uncompressed video, but after capture I compress it with arithyuv codec. Less powerful compression than MSU but faster.

Good luck.

Boulder
24th October 2005, 12:23
The MSU codec requires quite a bit of CPU power, my 3.22GHz P4 also drops frames at full resolution. Try with ffdshow's HuffYUV, it might work better.

I don't see why you should compress to lossless format after capturing, it only takes extra time and space. Better just encode directly to the final format.

Dot50Cal
24th October 2005, 13:28
Well I like making videos and stuff, We plan on adding them all together on one big file. I dont like dealing with lossy formats for that. Basically Ill record something, edit it in Nandub, then put it to divx with a logo on it. However thats not the end, Ill possibly get screenshots from it sometimes (lossless = champ) and such. I have 600GB currently so its not really a big thing. I planned this upgrade with lossless in mind ;)

Boulder
24th October 2005, 13:59
I directed the second comment to AVIL ;)

If you can capture in uncompressed YUY2 and can live with the extra diskspace need and slower decoding, go for it:) By the way, there's a bug in Avisynth and raw input with dropped frames, it was reported just a little while ago.

skeg64
26th October 2005, 18:27
I recently captured my first full film from VHS with 0 dropped frames. I have a similar system to yours. Same MB, 1GB RAM, SATA hd's, VirtualVCR, 720x480, YUY2, huffyUV.

What made the difference was capturing to a different physical disk to the boot drive.
Also what are you capturing from? If you are using a JVC SVHS make sure to turn off the "video stabilizer" option.

AVIL
26th October 2005, 18:41
@Boulder

To capture video I have a VIA EPIA M10000 mobo. Uncompressed footage is (appart from MJPEG picvideo who isn't lossless) the unique choice to avoid dropped frames or to minimize it. After capture, and previous to lossless compression, I solve the rare dropped frames (if any) by doing a bob (with tdeint) of the previous frame.

Boulder
26th October 2005, 19:12
I was only wondering why you save to lossless format when you could feed the uncompressed source to the encoder you finally use. Or is it that you do heavy scripting which results in slow encodes and doing a multipass encode is faster when you use an intermediate file?

I just tried to capture a camcorder tape today. HuffYUV resulted in dropped frames in all other resolutions but 768x576:(

AVIL
26th October 2005, 22:18
@Boulder

Usually, I made three (or even four) copies of the same video for combine after. I've found that, in this manner, aleatorious noise can be easily cancelled (after heavy avisynth scripting of course). Then I must live with five or six copies from the same footage. Even with four discs of 160Gb each, squeeze the videos is mandatory.

Boulder
27th October 2005, 06:57
That explains it then:)

Dot50Cal
27th October 2005, 16:22
This is very odd...I just installed my old 160GB IDE Maxtor and it records with no loss of frames. I try these new ones and WHAM, Loss galore...What the heck!?

Im using a HD logging program and while the new ones are recording I keep getting "Buffer Overflow" errors inside the monitoring program. Anyone have any idea what this could be?

The only thing I could think of is that the file is being saved over a gigantic file that was previously on the HD (but deleted)...Dunno if that even makes sense lol. Im in the process of moving all the stuff off the HD now, them im gonna do a full format on it to see if this is it...If so I might just look into getting a fast Raptor as my OS/Games drive, while these big guys are just raw 300GB video storage!

EDIT:
Darn, I just finished a 2 hour format and it still drops tons of frames! Same Buffer Overflow stuff :|

Boulder
27th October 2005, 19:10
Have you tried changing the buffer settings in VDub, or disabling write caching while capturing?

AVIL
27th October 2005, 20:50
They are a driver (11MB) to enhance performance of Maxtor drives :

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/Maxtor-Maxboost-utility.shtml

You must google for more information, because MAXTOR has discontinued the developping of this driver and donīt support it.

Anyway a previous point of restoration could be a safe option.

Another thing that you can try is to connect the new drives as PATA (IDE) to check performance.

Good luck (if you have a VIA mobo you need a miracle instead).