Frames Dropping from New Hard Drive on D:

I have recorded about 30 hours on my C: drive without a single problem. Yesterday I went out and bought a new hard drive which I could dedicate entirely to captured video.

It is a WD 120GB internal, 8mb cache and 7200 rpm. Both hard drives are on the same cable and both are set to Ultra DMA. However, when I begin recording it instantly starts dropping frames and the video has visible slowdowns and sometimes freezes completely. Obviously it is not anything that may be running as when I switch to C: it works perfectly.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

 

I always do this..., two more details.

I set Virtual Memory on D: drive to the same settings as C:. Also the only two devices attached to the IDE cable is the two hard drives.

What is interesting is that the frame dropping is instantaneous.

 

Put the drives onto separate IDE channels.

 

You can try Intel Application Accelerator, available from intel.com (free download).
This program works on Intel chipsets.
It will allow differing DMA speeds on multiple devices attached to the same cable.
See if it helps.

 

If you Put your Drives on seperate IDE Chanells your Drive speed will slow down to the Slowest Device on the Chanell so if you are Shareing the IDE Chanell with a ATA/33 or ATA/66 CD/DVD Drive then the Hard drive will only run at that speed, that is why it is allways recomended by Motherboard Manufacturers that you use IDE 1 for your Hard drives and IDE 2 for CD Drives.....
Make sure the Drive is set on the Highest DMA Mode that your Motherboard and Hard drive Supports....
And new Hard drives will Run slower when you First install them because there is some sort of Safety feature built into most Drives so they do not get Dammaged when they are Being Shipped which makes them Run slower at First but this feature gets disabled after your PC gets restarted something like 10 times..
You should also try disableing the Acoustic Management on the Drive, This is a Feature built into most newer drives that Helps Muffle the Sound the Drive Makes so you don"t have a Overly Noisy drive, But this Feature also slows down the performance of the Drive...There should be a Utility you can download from the Net that will disable accoustic management on your Drive, I know that Maxtor has a Utility you can download to do this on Maxtor Drives...
I have a Maxtor 160gb ATA/133 5400rpm 2mb Cache($80)Drive as My Second Hard drive for Video capture and I haven"t had any problem with Frame Dropps, that is even when captureing Full resolution Uncompressed AVI files which write over 1gb per minute to the Drive....
What Format are you Captureing to?? If you are Captureing to Mpeg1/2 then it would not be a Drive Problem that is causeing you to Drop Frames as that Format is More CPU dependant than Drive dependant...If you are Captureing to Uncompressed AVI then maybe try useing the HuffYUV codec as it will produce the same Quality as Uncompressed AVI while useing Half the Disk Space and if you are useing HuffYUV then maybe try the "PicVideo Mjpeg Codec" as it will produce close to the same Quality as HuffYUV but use about half the Disk Space when useing a quality setting of 19....
What Software are you useing to Capture?? I know I had Frame Dropping Problems when useing Virtual-Dub so i switched to Virtual-VCR which stopped the Frame Drops....Well Good Luck....Cheers

 

Cool, you guys are so helpful!

My small C: System Drive works perfectly to capture video either from VHS, Camcorder or Cable TV. I use an ATI Wonder Pro TV Card which has never given me any problems.

Some things are leading me to believe this hard drive is defective:

1. For the first time in years PCPITSTOP tests fail when they read my drive.
2. I am getting serious blue screen kernel stack errors, never had these before the install.
3. Frame dropping is immediate and furthermore when I play mpeg2's on this drive the movie constantly stops/restarts, stutters, etc.
4. I was writing at 8mb per second and switched to 6mb and it still drops frames.

My system is a Dell 2.52 GHz with 512mb ram just for reference. I am capturing in mpeg 2 at DVD resolution (about 2.2gb per hour used).

Logically my system drive should perform worse for video capture but an empty D: drive is the problem, leads me to believe there is something wrong.

I will change the cable this morning, if that doesn't help I am returning the drive and might try a Seagate Barracuda IV. I have heard the WD 120's have problems and that 8mb cache may be an issue as well. Does anybody know where I can get hard statistics on failure rates for drives?

 

Well With this extra Info I would come to the same Conclution that the Drive is Defective in some way..
I geberally use Maxtor Drives and Haven"t had a problem with them Yet and I build a Lot of Systems and useing these Drives and Haven"t had a Single Complaint "Yet"....I"m with you, You should take it back and get a Different Drive...I recently saw a Sale in the US on 200gb Seagate Drives for $99 at Tiger Direct and I only Paid $80 for my 160gb Maxtor Drive on E-bay so I"m sure you can find a Good deal on a Good Drive...I wouldn"t know were you would Find Failure Rate Statistics on WD Drives as I"m sure they Probably don"t make that information Very public....Cheers

 

Minion,

Thanks again, but guess what? It is not the drive

I just put in a brand new Seagate V 120GB Barracuda with 8mb cache...

Still dropping frames....

 

Minion,

Thanks again, but guess what? It is not the drive

I just put in a brand new Seagate V 120GB Barracuda with 8mb cache...

Still dropping frames....

 

Have you run the same tests on this Drive and are they still failing the Tests?? The only other thing i can think of Right now is Maybe you have a Bad IDE Controller on your Motherboard, You might try installing a PCI IDE Controller Card on your PC and use it to Plug in your Drive and see if that solves the Problem, Some Drives come with an IDE Controller Card and you can pick one op on e-bay for about $10..Well I hope you get it worked out....Cheers

 

Minion,

I was thinking the same, so if disabling the acoustic feature and doing the restart 20 times (which one post mentioned) doesn't work, I'll try a new IDE controller.

My CD and DVD R/W are on IDE1 cables and the two hard drives are on IDE2 cables. I have an ID3 cable free could I use that or not for my slave drive?

Thanks again!

 

Disk ControllersHere are the hard disk controllers that we have detected on your system:

Vendor Product
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Intel Intel(R) 82801DB Ultra ATA Storage Controller - 24CB

Can I plug my second hard drive into the Ultra ATA controller instead of piggybacking it on the secondary IDE channel?

 

Your Hardrives should be useing the IDE1 Port, It is usually Colored Blue so you know that it is the IDE1 Port and CD Drives go on IDE2 and on most Motherboards the Other IDE which is a Little Smaller is for the Floppy Drive, Most Motherboards don"t have 3 IDE Controllers for Drives unless one is a SATA Controller but those usually are only on Newer Higher end Motherboards but should be standard in the Next year or two....
Well anyways make sure that your Hard drives are useing the IDE1 controller and CD/DVD Drives are on IDE2...
And the Acoustic Management is allways on in Drives By default and to disable it you have to use a utility supplied by the Drive manufacturer to Disable it ,It is the Anti-Shock Feature they put in the Drives so they don"t get Damaged Durring Shipping that gets disabled after 10 restarts, But even with these Features Enabled it shouldn"t make them Drop frames Like that when Captureing to Mpeg because an ATA/133 Drive has a Burst Transfer Rate of 133mb per second and I can capture uncompressed AVI which uses about 80mb per second of bandwidth so not being to capture at 6mb per second means it isn"t even working at a Tenth of it"s potential..It is a Bit strange that the Master Drive which is on the Same IDE Cable isn"t affected by this Problem....
Well good Luck....Cheers

 

A couple of things to check...

1) Try IDE3...or even IDE4 for that matter if you have it. These are usually RAID/IDE combo ports.
2) Have you tried using one of the CD-ROM IDE slots?
ie. Run C: on IDE2 by itself, unplug the CD-ROM/DVD drives and put the new drive on IDE2 by itself.
3) Check your BIOS to make sure there isn't something setting your IDE port to only ATA33...or any other slow settings for that matter.

It sounds like more of a system thing than the HDD...especially seeing as you have replaced the HDD.

 

Reader...how's that Vid Card do for capturing VHS tape clips? Do you get pretty good quality?

I'm needing to digitize VHS tapes only and needing to get the sharpest grab possible

Thanks

 

Great suggestions, I'll check into some of these tomorrow morning. Like Minion said it is a bit odd that the system drive which is on the same ide cable records perfectly (27 DVD's full so far w/o a single dropped frame) and the new Seagate instantly drops frames...

The video capture from VHS, VHS-C and Video 8 is excellent, I'm very happy with it.

 

Woohoo! Thank you Adder01

"3) Check your BIOS to make sure there isn't something setting your IDE port to only ATA33...or any other slow settings for that matter."

The secondary drive was marked "off" in the BIOS(although it still worked), I changed it to "auto" and poof! Upon reboot everything works perfectly!

Thanks guys, I don't know what I would do without the internet and forums in fixing problems like this.

 

Thanks Reader...I'm checking those out. Do you know how much VRam yours has?

Thanks

 

tr100,

I have no idea how much vram this card has and checking on the internet I could not find any information. Doesn't it use the vram on your graphics card, I'm not sure...

From the captures I have done with my Hitachi DVD Camcorder and my older Canon Video 8 I really can't see any difference in quality from when I view them directly. When I capture HBO shows in "DVD" quality the results are superb with very fine detail.

The only slight problem with this card is when you check the "best video" box. What happens is the audio goes out of synch, rendering recording useless so I leave the setting off.

If you want I can stick a 1-2mb clip of either a video or hbo tv capture on the net and give you the url...

 

Sure...you bet. I'd really appreicate that.

Thanks...