I figured out my capture problem (frame drop) because Hdd !! Please advice needed!

[birdy]

Hi guys.
I was very upset having my pc dropping frames always at begining of my captures. Specialy that I have a good pc and the cpu level durring capture was at about 20%!

Finally I discovered that the problem came from my Hard disk!
A S-ATA Maxtor 300gig diamond 10 wich is said to be a prety fast and good hdd!
Now the strange thing is that if I capture to my e:\ there will be not even one frame dropped! But if I capture to G:\ (this is a 170 gig partiotion were I do my captures) I will always have few (btween 4 to 17) frames droped in begining of capture!
As Yes I have defragmented the damn drive! they are both ntfs and same cluster size. The are both on same HDD just different partitions!

Please some tell me what is wrong here???!!!

[tedkunich]

Hi guys.
I was very upset having my pc dropping frames always at begining of my captures. Specialy that I have a good pc and the cpu level durring capture was at about 20%!

Finally I discovered that the problem came from my Hard disk!
A S-ATA Maxtor 300gig diamond 10 wich is said to be a prety fast and good hdd!
Now the strange thing is that if I capture to my e:\ there will be not even one frame dropped! But if I capture to G:\ (this is a 170 gig partiotion were I do my captures) I will always have few (btween 4 to 17) frames droped in begining of capture!
As Yes I have defragmented the damn drive! they are both ntfs and same cluster size. The are both on same HDD just different partitions!

Please some tell me what is wrong here???!!!

Do a search on SATA - I seem to remember some discussion a ways back that SATA drives had/caused problems with capturing. Have you checked to see if DMA is enabled for that drive? it may be a poorly written SATA driver too - try seeing if there are any updates from the mfg.

T

[Boulder]

What program do you use to capture? Are the frames dropped in a big lump or one every now and then?

It cannot be directly hardware related as the different partitions exist on the same HD.

[birdy]

I mostly use iuVCR and VirtualVCR. Also tried with Vdub.
What happens exactly is that when I begin to capture
After exactly 2 to 3 seconds, I see the hard disk led show
some activity and at that moment few frames will drop.
something btween 4 to 17 frames drop at that moment
and then the capture goes on with no more frame drops.
so all the droping happens at once!

@tedkunich
Thanks mate I will look again.

[Boulder]

With VDub you could try disabling Windows' write caching (it's somewhere in the options in the capture mode). The issue sounds like there is data buffered and then written in a burst which probably causes too much PCI bus traffic. When write caching is disabled, this does not occur as the traffic is pretty much constant.

[AVIL]

Hi,

another cause could be the virtual memory file. Test with it disabled.

Good luck

[Guest]

A partition near the edge of the HDD platter will have a higher throughput than one near the center, just due to geometry. That is why two partitions on the same disk can behave differently.

[trolltuning]

Can you not simply work around this by capturing a few xtra seconds at the beginnining and then trimming away the section with the frame drops?

[Hard Core Rikki]

how about doing a defragmentation ? helps a lot

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Takes about an hour on 100 gigs HDD

EDIT: NTFS is VERY BAD about avoiding fragmentation. For capture partitions, you better convert em to FAT32, write speed is faster and more sequential.

[birdy]

Ok here is what I finally did and fixed Somehow the problem!

With partition Magic I made a 10GIG partition from middle of the hdd. Now On that partition I don't get ANY frame drop.
Wierd!

[Guest]

Wierd! No it's not. I already explained how that can happen. Your inner tracks can't sustain the required throughput.

[Hard Core Rikki]

inner tracks can't sustain the required throughput.

true, and the new partition was created in a contigous space too, so two birds with one stone

[birdy]

No it's not. I already explained how that can happen. Your inner tracks can't sustain the required throughput.

hehe neuron,
your hint gave me the idea to do this and I have to thank you for it mate:)