HDV/DV capture to PCI SATA unreliable

[2Bdecided]

I have a 2GHz P4 machine. I've never had any problem capturing DV and HDV via a cheap PCI Firewire card to internal IDE HDDs.

I've bought a cheap PCI SATA card, and a Seagate SATA HDD.

It seems to be working OK - I can copy 13GB of video from an IDE HDD to the SATA HDD in about 5 minutes.

However, if I try to capture video over Firewire straight onto the SATA drive, it loses packets. HDVsplit: lots and lots of problems; WinDV: a few dropped frames.

Here's the strange thing: if I make sure I close any windows explorer / my computer windows before starting HDVsplit, it's happy to capture without problems. However, if I have any folder on the SATA drive open, or if I open one while capturing: lots and lots of problems! I don't have to do anything, just have the window open! If I close the window again, the problems don't stop - lost packets a plenty! I have to close and re-start HDV split for the problem to go away.

What is happening?! I don't have this problem with my IDE drives.

Is it some PCI issue? Some windows issue? Some bizarre combination?

I know I can capture without any other windows open, but it makes me think that the capture is only just about working, and so I might see problems in the future - plus I like to have the capture folder open so I can see the files as they're captured.

Any advice?

Cheers,
David.

[2Bdecided]

I've now tried the latest drivers for the SATA card, and it's made no difference.

Any ideas?

Cheers,
David.

[Blue_MiSfit]

I've bought a cheap PCI SATA card


That may be your problem!

I've heard horror stories of problems coming from cheapo SATA cards. From what I understand, since they make the CPU do a lot of work, they tend to introduce a lot of latency. And as we know, latency is not good when it comes to real-time operations, i.e. capturing video or recording audio!

I would suggest trying a beefier SATA card - preferably on the PCIe bus.

~MiSfit

[Revgen]

PCI devices are limited to 133mb/sec. And every PCI device must share this bandwith. That's not exactly an ideal way to hook up a drive you intend to capture with. You should go for a PCIE card instead.

[burfadel]

Going by his machine I doubt whether it has the relatively new PCI-e ports...

You could try playing around with the pci-latencies, depending on whether the problem lies with the capture card or SATA card when using both at the same time! There's an old programme called PCI-Latency tool, you may have to add (more) latency to the SATA card to stop your problem. Conversely, you may need to do it to both, or you may need to increase the latency of the capture card and be blessed with being able to lower the latency of the SATA card!

Its available from www.guru3d.com:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/PCI-Latency-Tool-3.1-v2-download-951.html

It is not just for graphics cards, it can be used for other devices as well as each are listed separately. If you're using an AGP card you will get extra benefit because you may be able to squeeze a noticeable gain in performance by reducing the cards latency!

[2Bdecided]

Thank you burfadel - I shall try that.


btw, it doesn't have PCIE!

Isn't PCI 133 megabytes per second? HDV is 25 megabits per second, i.e. 3.125 megabytes per second, which hardly sounds like a challenge.


Remember the problem is only present when I open a windows explorer / my computer window showing files on that HDD.

I thought that sounded pretty unreliable and wanted a fix, but I've since captured five tapes without problems by not having any other windows open. Maybe it's "quirky" rather than "unreliable"! If so, I'm not so worried, though I still wonder what's happening.

Cheers,
David.

[DrP]

I used to grab DV via a cheap PCI firewire card to a Seagate hard disk attached to a cheap PCI SATA card with no problems whatsoever.

If the problem only happens when explorer is looking at the capture drive it might be an antivirus issue or it might be explorer snooping on the content on the hard disk to determine what it is and the statistics so it can give a fancy multimedia view of the directory - ie, columns with stats, preview pictures etc. Google will find info on disabling the video previews etc.

filemon (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896642.aspx) might be revealing.

[2Bdecided]

Thank you DrP - I didn't know about filemon. Just looking at it on my work PC shows a frightening amount going on - I'll take a look at home tonight.

Cheers,
David.