Capturing Video - Dropped Frames

I'm new here, so forgive me if I sound like a beginner.

I am trying to capture video on my computer through my video camera. I've done this in the past with no problems, but the videos were always short.

I have a Dell Dimension 5100. I have the necessary firewire installed on my computer. I have 81 GB of free space on my hard drive, and I recently updated my RAM to 1.5 GB. I make sure to shut down all other programs, as well as the preview option in the video editing program. I usually use Windows Movie Maker, which has always worked fine. After this problem began, I purchased Vegas Movie Studio 8.0 by Sony. The camera itself is a Sony Handycam.

Whenever I try to capture my video (in either program) I am a victim of dropped frames. In fact, after only 5 minutes, there are hundreds of them. The sound is off and on, the picture is jumpy - it's impossible to make out what anyone is saying. I can't figure out the problem. When I watch the video on the camera itself, there are no problems with it. So basically I'm out of ideas.

Like I said, the videos in the past were always small in size - no more than 10 minutes. But the video I am trying to capture onto my computer is almost an hour. It's my brother's wedding video, so I would very much like to fix this problem.

Do I need more RAM in order to do this project? More space on my hard drive? Any ideas would be very helpful. Thank you for your responses.

FieldZ

 

DeFrag lately?

 

Actually yes, that was the other thing I did.. And still it didn't seem to make a difference..

 

olyteddy is right. Usually when you get dropped frames, video information is coming in faster than the hard drive can write it. So, your computer has to drop the frames to keep up.

I would also ask you, ..what resolution are you capturing at? If you are capturing in HD, you might try a Motion JPEG compression codec. It uses more CPU, but needs less disk speed, so that may work for you.

One last thing. I love vegas video. I use it all the time, but I do not have good luck using it to capture. I find that the freeware Virtualdub does a much better job. You might give that a try just to capture, then edit with vegas.