DV Capture to STS drives bigger then 137GB (48bit addresing)

[moonwatcher]

Has anyone had any problems with this?
i am tying to detrmin why i loose frames on sampleing DV to a WD2500JD SATA drive, is it the a problem with the 48bit addresing of large drives or is it the drive melfunctioning?

[bb]

What do you mean by "losing frames"?

bb

[moonwatcher]

i mean a typo...:) i ment loosing frames.

[bb]

Well, I'm afraid I simply don't understand what your problem is. You need to be more specific. Maybe you can explain more accurately what happens when you're trying to save your DV data to your hdd?

bb

[moonwatcher]

ok, i used DVApp from the latest DirectX 9 SDK.
i tried with the microsoft movie maker and with WinDV (all gave the same results).

i have three sets of storage:
1 WD1000BB (ATA)
1 2 x WD360GD (SATA)in RAID 0
1 WD2500JD (SATA)

i have a SONY TRV22E
i use a 1394 cable to get a PAL DV stream from the camcorder.

if choose to save into the WD1000BB or the RAID0 volume i get perfect result.

if i choose to save the file to the WD2500JD i get a clip with chopped playback and the application (all three) report dropped frames during the capture.

sorry if my previouse post has been unclear. i hope this is better, and thanks for the interest bb :)

[bb]

What you describe sounds like heavy bus problems. Is the WD2500JD connected via a PCI SATA card? If yes, this might be the problem, if there's too much traffic on the PCI bus.

bb

[moonwatcher]

what traffic, its the only process the computer was running.
the Borad is an ASUS P4C800-E and the RAID0 is mounted on the Intel ICH5R and the WD2500JD is on the Promise Serial ATA (PCI indeed)...
does that mean there are no known problems with hard drives above 137GB (48bit addressing)?

<Edit>
The full specifications are:
Asus P4C800-E
Creative Audigy (PCI)
Matrox G450 (AGP)

Plextor 52/32/52 (master)
Pioneer 106 DVD (slave)
On the Intel ICH5R secondery (ATA)

WD1000BB (master) (ATA)
On the Intel primary (ATA)

2 x WD360GD (SATA)in RAID 0 on the ICH5R Serial ATA ports

WD2000JD (SATA) ( i changed it, was WD2500JD, same results)
on the onboard Promise 378 ATA (connected on the PCI bridge)

both WD1000BB and the RAID volumes have no problems during capture.
the WD2000JD (and the WD2500JD) show the described problem.

So you think its becouse the PCI cant handel the load?
it is true that the onboard VIA 1394 port is on the PCI bridge as well.

however, HD-TACH showed that the READ/WRITE preformace of the WD2000JD where almost wice as fast as the WD1000BB...

[SomeJoe]

I don't think it's a problem with the drive size (i.e. >137GB / 48-bit LBA).

You're seeing some type of PCI bus or SATA implementation issue. The i875 chipset is a great chipset, but there are some PCI peripherals that don't communicate optimally, and the Promise SATA chip might be one of them. In addition, the VIA 1394 chip and the Promise SATA chip together must optimally share the PCI bus for the video data to transfer properly, there could be some implementation issues there as well.

There are a couple of things you can try:

1. Move the WD250/WD200 drive to the Intel ATA primary slave, using a PATA/SATA adapter.

2. Even though you don't have a Matrox video editing card, you might try their Matrox PCI Optimizer (ftp://redirect:r45j99t3@video.matrox.com/private/forum/SATAfix/MatroxPciOptimizer.exe). This optimizer is specifically designed to address third-party SATA controller issues on Intel i875P and i865PE chipsets. From what I understand, it changes a few hardware registers associated with the south bridge that control PCI timings.

3. You might try to go into the BIOS and adjust the PCI Latency to 64 or 128 vice the default 32. This may allow larger bulk transfers on the PCI bus.

Beyond that, the only other thing I would suggest is change the video capture drive to a PATA, and use it on the Intel primary slave.

[moonwatcher]

Thanks SomeJoe

i have no problem using the RAID for the capture, the big drive is mainly intended for storage, however i was wondering what was cousing the problems.
I had horrible problems with big SATA drives at first untill i read how critical it is for the cables not to be parallel and to close to each other since they are not shielded, and then found out about this. i was just afraid the drive might have issues, you do need to make sure then drive is not melfunctioning before you store 100GB of data on it...:)

anyway, i will try all you suggested, but i am begining to be convinced its the PCI being jammed :)

[theReal]

A DV Stream isn't really that much data (around 3.5MB per second). Even very old drives are able to capture DV without frame-drops, so if you really get a lot of frame-drops with that SATA drive, it seems to be a big problem.
If I were you, I'd run
HDTach (http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=BenchmarksMain) to check my drive (maybe the drive is very slow all the time with all read/write operations?)

[moonwatcher]

i ran HDTach and got the expected results (the drive worked as fast as it should) i even tested the old WD1000BB on the PATA and it was much slower then the new one...
look up i checked it...:)

[specise_8472]

Are you watching movie at the same time as recording on HDD?
Sound will then also be using PCI bus.

And ,clutching at straws here, I assume you did not put the SATA card next to the AGP?