Hard Drive limitations

[simdavid]

Ok..this is my problem. My Hard drive is a Western Digital Special edition 80GB. 8mb buffer, 7200RPM, ATA100. The problem is that it can only capture 3.65mb/sec. Is that normal for you guys who is using 7200RPM. What is your transfer rate per second. I test my transfer rate on the drive itself. Cut and paste on the same drive just to see how fast it transfer.

My system is Athlon 1300Ghz
384 memory
windows XP

I just wonder is my transfer rate normal for a 7200RPM, ATA100 drive.
Is my hard drive under performing? how do I use the ATA100 my motherboard does support it!

Can anyone recommend a software to analyse what is the actual writing speed of my drive. I could be wrong in the transfer rate.

[Pojken Purken]

I haven't tried to capture with XP. I made a few futile tries with W2k but gave up. I do all my capturing with W98 and my 5400 rpm Maxtor can easily cope with 10MB/s. Is your WD a standalone drive or do you run your OS from it too? How is it connected - standard on-board IDE interface or some RAID adapter?
/PP

[simdavid]

NO...I partition it with 10gb on C: and 70Gb on D: I do my capturing on D drive and my OS is on C:

It is standard on board interface IDE..
Does the IDE cable play a big role in transfering data from MB, CPU to drive. Becos I think my is a 40-conductor cable.

Thanks for any help render!! :-)

[Zhnujm]

Originally posted by simdavid
I test my transfer rate on the drive itself. Cut and paste on the same drive just to see how fast it transfer.


can you explain this a bit more ? does it mean you copy a file from your disk to the same disk ?
in this case your test is absolutly WORST CASE for your harddrive as it needs constantly seeking to new positions. this would explain your low speed.

if you use vdub for capturing, you can use auxsetup for benchmarking.
just start auxsetup.exe, click on benchmark, disable the windows buffering and start the peak disk performance test. you will (hopefully) get much higher values.

[Pojken Purken]

By partitioning your disk you're still using the same PHYSICAL disk for capturing as your OS runs from. This is just as bad as capturing to C: directly. You're probably suffering from the fact that the OS needs to access its swapfile and system files regularly and during these events your capture program can't access the drive which would result in a huge loss of frames and an overall low disk performance. The 40-conductor cable shouldn't be a problem. It should still theoretically be able to handle 33MB/s.
/PP

[simdavid]

OK...first thanks for all the advice you guys given me..I much appreciate it. I just did the becnh marking in Virtual Dub hard disk test. Disable Windows buffering for bench marking. This is the result given the value that I input 50mb/s for Read/Write. Wonder did I do this correctly?

The result is
Sustain Read : 40252kb/s
Sustain Write : 40252 kb/s

Well, sadly to say..I dun know how to interpret this result..so hopefully maybe you guys can and tell me is that good or bad for video capturing.

Pojken Purken, does it means that video capturing files should be stored in another drive other than the the drive with the OS on? Please advice! Yes..I only had 1 physical drive only and I partition it and use the other 70Gb for capturing!

Well..I'm also thinking could there be any along the line starting from the Video Capture card to hard drive that is interfering with the bandwidth? Eg. RAM, PCI slot?

[kempodragon]

You need a 80 wire, 40 pin cable to get full access speed. If you use only a 40 wire cable, you are limited to ATA 66. Also, make sure your motherboard supports ATA 100 or better yet ATA 133. I've got a WD 120 Gig w/ 8MB buffer, 7200 RPM on a Promise ATA 133 IDE card. While I don't know the actual access speed, I can capture full res NTSC with Huffyuv and 48 Khz sound. As for your partition, I would make the drive one partition only and dedicate the entire drive for capturing. You can NEVER have too much space for capturing!! :0

[Pojken Purken]

simdavid:
Your numbers looks very fine. Even though I use ATA100 my 5400rpm drive only performs around 30000kB/s. However, this is good enough for me. Capturing full screen with Huffyuv codec normally generates somewhere between 7000-10000kB/s.
Try the benchmark again but this time with a file that's 10-20 times as large to see if your machine can sustain this rate over a longer period of time.
It is highly recommendable to use a separate drive for capture to avoid any interruptions in the capture stream. But don't put it on the same cable as your first drive, use the second IDE interface.
Also, you seem to have plenty of RAM and CPU so that shouldn't be a problem in this case.
I'm a little curious how you know that you can only capture 3.65 MB/s? I use VirtualDub for capturing and it always shows the number of MB/s that is generated by the capture codec. If my HD can't cope with this I get lots of dropped frames but the program never shows how many MB/s that is actually recieved...
/PP

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

>simdavid:
Your numbers looks very fine. Even though I use ATA100 my 5400rpm drive only performs around 30000kB/s. However, this is good enough for me. Capturing full screen with Huffyuv codec normally generates somewhere between 7000-10000kB/s.


same here:i get sustained cca 33MB/s with VD auxsetup
test ( maxtor,40gb,5400,ata100+proper cable,2MB buffer )
and that's MORE than enough for anythting really
(i think it could swallow pure uncompressed RGB
easily....hell i'm sure it can eat YUY2 uncompressed
which is practically bt8x8's native format-bacause i tried
that on 720x576 )

why does simdavid get lo-bitrate?
well he's either compressing it on capturing prety hard,or
he picked lo-res for input.....

usual figures are( 7xx x 576 capture ):
MJPEG (@18) cca. 1,5MB/s-2,5MB/s
HUFF cca. 8MB/s-10MB/s (more noise
bigger the bitrate on both compressors..)

[note.my hdd wasn't defragmented for at least 6months too....
also:if we follow these results (sustained bitrate =1/3 of declared
ata interface ( 33,66 or 100--> which is off course "burst" value )
then we get at round 22MB/s for ata66 and cca. 11MB/s for ata33
so if you have ata33 you can still capture with mjpeg without problems and even
with huff if there's not much noise in video signal...
although those earlier hdd's have smaller buffers so probably defragmenttation would be required more often than on ata66 or 100...]

so ,simdavid,rest assured that your hdd is ok,and look for "problem"
in other departments (as i said picking the resolution and/or compressor.....bigger res./lower compression----> higher bitrate offcourse,
by loking at 3,65MB/s number i presume you use some mjpeg at cca 90% quality ie. setting "19" for picvideo's )

cheers

Ivo

[simdavid]

Pojken Purken,

First thank you for the reply..I got the figure 3.65mb from capturing video for one minute and than divide that by 60sec to get the actual data..I did test with Huffyuv and picMJPEG. I play around to test what is the threshold of my transfering before I drop frames. I capture on 480*576 PIC MJPEG at quality 19. Well..that pass smoothly...but at quality 20..I dun drop frames but the capturing result is jerky..meaning u can actually see the frames running than pause for milli second than run than pause again! But with Huffyuv I drop frames. So I tested the threshold of what my system can take before I drop or have jerky frames. I'm not using VIrtualdub for video capturing becos mine is video capture card is Lifeview Flyvideo 3000. And virtual dub won't let me capture anything more than 320*240. I capture more noise than details in that resolution. somemore Virtualdub is written primary for VFW driver and BT878 chipset.

The lifeview is using SAA 7133/ 7134 philip chipset..So I'm using a software call Fly 2000TV. It's a video capture program written for the chipset I'm using..so I can capture in any resolution that is allowed by the chipset.

I tried virtual vcr, FlyDS..nothing works..so I figured that software written for BT 878 chipset won't work well with Lifeview! Hopefully, VirtualDub can also optimised for philip chipset..IMHO is a better software than the rest! But too bad for me!

well...that the problem!

I think it could be a problem with the capture software. Do you think so?

And thanks Ivo..I think you do have a point..I should also start investigating in other departments as well!!

Afterall, Video Capturing is unique to individual system. Any more suggestion will be appreciated!! Thanks!

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

i wouldn't trust xp for my video capturing.....
(same as win2k goes out of a/v sync on me..)

also i regard VD as a must for capturing
and yes,i have tried lots of programs.....

[Pojken Purken]

Originally posted by simdavid

I think it could be a problem with the capture software. Do you think so?


Well, your hardware seems fine so it sure looks like a software problem. I totally agree with ^^-+I4004+-^^ that XP (and 2000) aren't the best OSes for capture. Can you create another partition and install 98 or Me on that one and try your capture software?

/PP

[simdavid]

Pojken Purken,

Thanks for your advice..I think I will do that sometime this week or next week. I'm getting a 80 wire conductor IDE cable. I just happen to have a spare drive in my friend computer..I will than borrow it to test it out!

Well, by the way. Will my system have problem coping with Huffyuv and PicMJPEG quality 20 codec at resolution 480*576, 29.97 frames. I can only capture with PICMJPEG at quality 19..Huffyuv..drop like crazy! Well..just to know what kind of capturing you guys can do out there!

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

> Well..just to know what kind of capturing you guys can do out there!

i can do 720x576 with both huff & mjpeg ( mjpeg at any compression_ )
bare in mind that captured huff WON'T play ok as it needs VERY
fast cpu for real-time playback (although your capture software should tell you if any drops occurred too.....)
or go tot some newer VD version and search for drops (in "Edit" menu...)

i have cel600 btw.,and no dropping with VDsync.....

some people sugested that older huff versions worked better on them....
(i have 2.1.1 and it's ok.)

[Zhnujm]

things i would check before replacing your os: (xp isnt that bad for capturing)
- is your hd in dma mode ?
- check your cpu utilisation during capturing
- try capturing without sound

and as ^^-+I4004+-^^ already said, dont judge the result by playing the mjpeg or huffyuv file, even mjpeg can cause trouble during playback. (at least with my P3-800)

btw, you are using PAL resolution (480x576) with 29.97fps ? if you capture a pal signal you are limited to 25fps.

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

>btw, you are using PAL resolution (480x576) with 29.97fps ? if you capture a pal signal you are limited to 25fps.

yes,that one slipped my eyes....
people in usa (and NTSC anywhere) should use that FPS rate,and people
on PAL system go for 25FPS
also it's not 576 if you're in NTSC country but 480
576 is PAL resolution.......

correct that and see what you get.....
(if you live in ntsc country=xxx x 480 on 29,97

or xxx x 576 at 25 for pal country)

[theReal]

Well..just to know what kind of capturing you guys can do out thereFor me it's also: Picvideo MJPEG, all quality settings, 720x576 (PAL, 25fps), Huffyuv 720x576 (haven't tried other settings recently because these are the best, I don't need anything else).
I have two IBM Deskstar 120GB drives, 7200 rpm, as RAID 0 and they are much more than fast enough for capturing (even I have Win2k and installed programs on the same physical HD, on other partitions though).

I'm sure your HD is fast enough, but you have to make sure you're capturing to an empty partition that you only use for capturing (or at least a very well defragmented partition).
Fragmented files are very bad for capturing, even on fast HDs!

[Owen]

First, XP works very well for Capture if drivers and hardware are up to the task.
The WDM drivers for the Philips chip may not be the best.
WDM capture programs like iuVCR, FlyDS and Virtual VCR should work with any WDM capture card.
VirtualDub is for VFW drivers only. The VFW wrapper in 2k or XP sux.

Do you have a VIA chipset mother board?
Do you have a Sound Baster Live card ?

If yes, then you may be experiencing PCI bus bandwidth problems.
There are some patches to help with this.

You can install Win98 and VFW drivers for your card to help prove if its hardware or software. If it works in 98 it’s a driver or software problem.
I do not recommend Win98 due to the 2 Gig file size limit.
Its worth the effort to get Win XP working.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Owen.

[Navellint]

Originally posted by simdavid
Ok..this is my problem. My Hard drive is a Western Digital Special edition 80GB. 8mb buffer, 7200RPM, ATA100. My system is Athlon 1300Ghz, 384 memory, windows XP. I just wonder is my transfer rate normal for a 7200RPM, ATA100 drive. Is my hard drive under performing? how do I use the ATA100 my motherboard does support it!

FYI: I use exactly the same drive (in udma 4) with p3-450 and 192 sdram on win2k or winxp with fat32 and ntfs. It gets a transfer rate of 20 MB/s without dropping frames and CPU-usage of 80% (capturing sound+video 720x576 pcm+huffyuv 2.1.1). If i use Nero 5.5.9.9 and test my drive speeds in 'preferences' -> 'cache' then it gives me a rate of 50 MB/s but i don't know whether that's sustained. I do know that it's the only drive on that ide-controller (udma66 on Abit BE-6). Also, when windows is on the same drive it has the same rate.

With p4-2400 on p4b533-e, 512 ddr, winxp, udma133 controller and the same drive (in udma 5) but with windows on another: virtualdub's benchmark w/o windows buffering gives me a 35 MB/s sustained read/write with a 500 MB file.

[theReal]

Western Digital Special edition 80GB. 8mb buffer, 7200RPM, ATA100Just wanted to add: there's hardly a better drive for capturing (except some expensive SCSI drives with 10k-15k rpm). The problem must be something else, I'm absolutely sure.

[simdavid]

Hi to all the people who help me in this problem.

I finally got the problem nailed. Alright, just a brief account to share with. I used the Lifeview Capture Problem to do some test test capturing. I couldn't get the lifeview proggy to capture nicely before so I left that proggy for a while and I go test Fly2000TV. Fly2000TV work well with 2mb/sec flow and below. OK, that's why I have this hard drive not being able to cope with capture flow. And, last week, I download the lastest driver from Lifeview and tested the capturing again with their software. Well, to my amaze, I'm able to capture at 1 gigabyte/ min. So it's definitely not a hard drive issue.

It's really the Fly2000TV not able to do the job. Dun know is it with the codec or the proggy. Anyway, to all lifeview flyvideo 3000 series user. I'm using Ulead Video Studio to do my capturing becos the lifeview proggy is not able to detect my NTFS format and limit capturing to 4gb. Wrote an email..hope they add more functions to their proggy. I have no 4gb limit problem with Ulead. But it's a bit tricky to configure to get it to work right. Now, I'm able to capture Uncompress, 1gb per min, becos Ulead has a bug with using codec. Try to compress with Huffyuv but dun know why can't detect. Well, anyway..hope things improve then! Thanks for all the reply. HOpe this helps other people. Thanks

[Navellint]

That's great, but i still don't c y u don't get 2 GB/m. Maybe put the drive as single drive on a controller?

Also, y r u still not using virtualdub 4 capturing?

[simdavid]

Hi Navellint,

Thanks for the concern, I'm capturing uncompress AVI with Ulead Video Studio or the Lifeview Capture Program itself. My TV card is LIfeview Flyvideo 3000 series. By capturing uncompress YUV..it's give me 1gb/min. I thought this is the largest uncompress limit for uncompress. Didn't know that is possible actually capture at 2gb/min. What umcompression codec will it be then? RGB or something else?

I like to use Virtual Dub for capturing since it is laden with flexibilty. However, in VD, I can only capture in 320*240, nothing bigger than that, resolution way too low for me to make a SVCD. VD support BT878 chipset and support VFW drivers and mine is a Zoran chipset, WDM drivers. The WDM wrapper limit resolution size in VD. Too bad for me.

Is there anyone out there who is using LIfeview or Zoran chip TV card and able to capture in VD in any resolution and on XP. I really would love to use Virtualdub. The ony proggie that support Lifeview at the current moment is Fly2000TV.

Well, requirement to use LIfeview with other capture proggie. It must be WDM supported. Virtual VCR doesn't do the job as well. It must be able to TWEAK the Zoran chipset

Is there anyone out there who can recomment such a software?

If there is any kind programmer out there who can Tweak the lifeview or Zoran chipset to work with VD. Something like a generic driver to use in any program .. that would be nice!

[Navellint]

well, I capture using Huffyuv lossless 2.1.1 and yuy2 at 720x576 25 fps and 48 kHz 16 bit stereo. It's about 10 MB/s. At one time I used some wrong setting and was capturing at about 20 MB/s, but my drive can handle 35 MB/s sustained (2 GB/m), witness the virtualdub benchmark above. I don't think that isnecessary for a perfectly good capture ever though.

Have you checked this (http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/) yet?

I wasn't able to go higher until I installed it. I didn't succeed within an hour, but it works now. I know it says bt8xx but there's more you can do. 'supported cards' shows lifeview and flyvideo too. GL

[igor140]

@simdavid

Just wanted to tell you
I have the same HDD as you, same capture card, hooked to an ECS K7s5A, Athon XP1800+, running WinXP SP1 and I can capture uncompressed RGB at full PAL (about 1.8 gb/min) without dropping frames. the programs I use are VirtualVCR and FLY2000TV. Both work perfectly, only Fly2000TV gives me synch problems on long captures, but that's another story.
Maybe that helps your troubleshooting: It's obviously neither your HDD's nor your capture card's nor the abovementioned software's fault.

[simdavid]

Igor140,

So what do you think is the problem? I can capture uncompress, using codec like Huffyuv and pic video. I will drop frames with Fly2000TV. Well, what can u suspect is the problem? How did you use virtual VCR and use the full frame resolution becos I can never capture bigger than 320*240 with Virtual VCR!

[DaveQB]

try iuVCR

theres a reg hack (simple) to allow full 768x576 capture, been playing with it tonght :D

HDD is tested all ok ??


check event viewer for any possible HDD errors (IDE0)

Edit: added extra line

[igor140]

@simdavid

Could be anything, really.
Concerning the dropped frames in Fly2000TV:
If it's only a few, that's normal, usually a problem with soundcard and capture card frequencies I don't fully understand. If you don't get a whole load of dropped frames at a time don't worry about it.
But it could also be caused by a load of other reasons: broken hardware, DMA not working, other processes running etc. Check the capture FAQ and capture guides.

Apart from that: Get the latest drivers from the Fly2000TV website http://auzol.narod.ru/download_e.html
and the latest program version.

Concerning VirtualVCR: Make sure to check "Custom settings" in the "Video" tab (I refer to the latest version). Try using colour format YUY2, but most codecs (like Huffyuv) require you to set it to RGB24.

[Navellint]

I thought you people would like to take a look at some hdd benchmark results from TomsHardware.com:
Nov 2001 (http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20011120/wd1200-04.html)
Mar 2002 (http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20020305/wd1200-04.html)
Oct 2002 (http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20021011/wd2000jb-06.html)
They are concerned with Western Digital mostly. I guess Maxtor doesn't want to share their results with the rest of the world as opposed to the noise they make...

[DaveQB]

Originally posted by igor140
@simdavid

Could be anything, really.
Concerning the dropped frames in Fly2000TV:
If it's only a few, that's normal, usually a problem with soundcard and capture card frequencies I don't fully understand. If you don't get a whole load of dropped frames at a time don't worry about it.
But it could also be caused by a load of other reasons: broken hardware, DMA not working, other processes running etc. Check the capture FAQ and capture guides.

Apart from that: Get the latest drivers from the Fly2000TV website http://auzol.narod.ru/download_e.html
and the latest program version.

Concerning VirtualVCR: Make sure to check "Custom settings" in the "Video" tab (I refer to the latest version). Try using colour format YUY2, but most codecs (like Huffyuv) require you to set it to RGB24.

i have been told by many here that both huffy and MJPEG are YUY2 based codec's.
settings it to rgb24 just makes more work for them to convert them

:confused:

[theReal]

Try using colour format YUY2, but most codecs (like Huffyuv) require you to set it to RGB24.

HuffYUV is one of the most native YUY2 codecs, I think. Also the Picvideo MJPEG codec works best with YUY2.

Hopefully both of these codecs will support YV12 soon, but that's another story... :)

[DaveQB]

thats what i thought

whats YV12 got thats so good?? :D

[theReal]

whats YV12 got thats so good??

...for example that Divx encoding with avisynth 2.5 and VDubMod is about 10 fps faster with YV12 on my machine!

[prom3theus]

Your hard drive looks more than adequate for what you are doing. If you are not getting a minimum sustained rate of 18MB/sec or more then you have some other problems.

1) check the specs on the drive, especially max and min sustained rate. Average rate is deceptive. I believe disks normally write from the outside cylinders to the inside. This would be for obvious reasons of rotational velocity (outer points on a disk spin faster than inner points, giving a faster access). With a huge drive like that, you wouldn't even really need to worry about minimum speed most times, until you get close to filling it. Of course, as always, defragment. I'm not sure exactly on the problems of using a partition on the drive to capture. As long as you don't use other programs, and you're capturing directly to the capture partition with allocated space, i don't think swapping should be an issue. It depends on whether a partition is a cylinder partition, making all space on the drive to be within a certain cylinder, and all space on theother drive from the boundary of that cylinder on out.

2) make sure your drive is connected to the right ide port and that it supports ata100. On some motherboards, only certain ide ports support ata100 through an additional on-board controller (like some abit raid boards). If this is the case, use a smaller boot drive, and use the capture drive on the ata100 port (ide3 or ide4 usually). You may want to check your ata100 controller version also if you have one. You may want to update that if it's old.

3) Make sure you adjust process priority in virtualdub or use a freeware program for another capture program. I have seen huge differences in Win98 between capture at normal priority and capture at high priority. Use a task manager to kill or reduce priority on unnecessary background tasks during capturing. Especially important is to not run a modem or cable modem during/before capturing. I noticed a huge loss of capture ability while my cable modem was simple on and unused, running through USB. Which is something else, PS/2 is better than USB for mouse/keyboard, because they require no real cpu overhead to operate, they are hardwired with hardware interrupts to operate them.

4) What is your cpu speed? You want to have at this point at least something like AMD t-bird 700Mhz. You want on-die cache and not on-board. 256k on die is better than 512k on board cache. You want a front side bus of at least 100mhz, with sdram which is at least pc100 but right now pick up some pc133 for dirt cheap. Good mb's will let you run pc133 ram on a 100mhz fsb board.

5) If you cannot capture at 20MB/sec with that hard drive, then something is really wrong in your setup. I could use an ati all-in-wonder rage 128 32mb ram card and capture in yuy mode I think i twas at 20MB/sec (no audio) and have 0 dropped frames for 100 gigabytes, using a t-bird 1.2ghz cpu in win98 with 128mb pc133 ram.

[Gren]

Originally posted by simdavid
Anyway, to all lifeview flyvideo 3000 series user. I'm using Ulead Video Studio to do my capturing becos

what version of ulead?

[simdavid]

Hi guys...thanks for all the help rendered again!

I'm back from several experimenting!First intro to my system:
AMD Althon 1.3Ghz
GigaByte MB model: GA-7ZX-H
WD Hard Disk. 80gb-8mb buffer ATA 100
S3 Savage4 VGA card
Creative Onboard Soundchip
LIfeview Flyvideo 3000 series

I was having problems with Fly2000TV..there's a guy that reply saying he doesn't have a probelm with it! Well, I have no luck with it even till now! After several frustrating with Fly2000TV..I gave up!

Well, then I try Ulead Video Studio 6.0..with service pack..Not so bad with that software..but I didn't like the software..that's a personal preference! So after reading one of the post in this topic that Igor140 of the guy manage to use Virtual VCR for my video card.I decided that I should give it a try again! I have used Virtual VCD before..that was version 2.32 something..can't remember..It doesn't allow me to capture custom size say 480*480 for NTSC @29.97. All I managed to capture was 320*240.NO matter how I tweak my setting..I couldn't capture bigger than that!

With version 2.67 I could capture in 480*480 @29.970 and 480*576 @25.00 using YUY2..Uncompress, or with HuffYUV. NO DROP FRAMES if my source is excellent.I will get drop frames if I'm capturing from a poor source with Video fickering sometimes!

That's all I want to share with Lifeview Flyvideo 3000 series user.
The TV card is not bad at least now we have Virtual VCR that support it and it's free! Happy Capturing ;-)