Video Recording Issues on PC

[Bryce W]

I have a clients PC with video capturing issues. They bought an external USB to RCA device with the intention of converting some of their old movies on VHS to DVD.

Once the device was set up it streams the video fine, except for the video stutters when its recording.
The computer it is working on is a 3.2g with 2gig of RAM with Windows XP so it should be able to deal with it. The USB ports are 2.0 so transfer speed shouldnt be an issue. Ive disabled all non default windows processes and services in case one of them is slowing it down or causing conflicts. I tested the device itself on my test PC which is a lesser PC and it works fine while recording.

I dropped in one of my test video cards in case the video card couldnt crunch it quick enough and there was no difference (again, my test pc did it fine with a lesser video card too).

The software doesnt appear to be at fault because again, the same software works fine on my test pc.

Hard drives are in DMA mode so I suspect slow HDD's wouldnt be an issue.

Any thoughts?

[Dunne_Computing]

The software doesnt appear to be at fault because again, the same software works fine on my test pc.


But is it possible that the software may have or part of it "like a codec or driver" may have got corrupt during installation on your clients workstation?

Just a thought.

[Bryce W]

But is it possible that the software may have or part of it "like a codec or driver" may have got corrupt during installation on your clients workstation?

Just a thought.
Thats what I am thinking as well.

[studiot]

You haven't mention the capture device or software by name, but many are very temperamental and choosy about compatibility.

Are you quite sure the client's pc USB2 is in fact USB2? Again many on board ones just don't cut the mustard.

Can you try a known a good card?

[Doctor Micro]

I was thinking along the same lines as Studiot. Not all USB ports are created equal. Some are powered with sufficient amperage available, some are shared hubs with low power available. As an example, I recently had a customer's laptop with 4 USB ports, 2 in back and 2 on the side. He had a Linksys Wireless-G WiFi adapter that he was plugging in to the side ports and his WiFi performance was poor and erratic. Uninstalling and reinstalling the Linksys program and drivers didn't help, but during the course of troubleshooting, we just happened to put the adapter in one of the rear ports and voila! no more problems.

[Bryce W]

Ive removed as many codecs as I could find and reinstalled a codec pack designed for normal playback as well as encoding stuff. Issue remains.

As Doc Micro said, not all USB ports are created equal as I have seen this myself with things like an iphone that wouldnt sync on the front ports, but will on the back even though the front one works 100% with other things. I have already tried all of the back ports (there are no front ports) and the same issue. I dropped in one of my test USB-PCI cards and the issue still remains.

The device is this (http://www.kaiserbaas.com/KBA03003_video_to_dvd_maker.html) and the clients PC has all of the requirements needed and exceeds them.

I am noticing that when the lag occurs, the hard drive led lights up. The jumps and light are in pretty much in perfect sync with eachother. I have ruled out its the device itself as it worked great on my machines.

Im think I am looking in the wrong area for this issue and this was a pre-existing problem long before they bought this product, its like the machine hangs for 1/4 of a second while its trying to write to the hard drive. The machine also takes longer than usual to boot into Windows as it sits out at the logo screen for a bit.

While recording, it only uses a tiny slither of RAM and the CPU sits at around 50% (single core machine).

Again, drives are in DMA mode which is what I thought it might have been the issue originally. I think I am going have to test seek speeds or something.

Any further thoughts?

[hondablaster]

Ill take a stab at the cost of looking like a fool.

Could it be a virus scan/ spyware scan/ real time defragment program/ some real time optimization joke thats is tweaking with the HDD while you do the transfers?

Can you disable the file swap and try again.

EDIT: you disabled all non essential services. My bad. I looked like a fool :)

[hondablaster]

You know I was thinking does the HDD have anything on its slave. Or is it on its own.

I had video (divx) studdering issues way back in the day when I had two HDDs on one ribbon cable. If the PC accesses one full time and the other intermittently I would have studders.

When it comes to PATA I try to use only one drive on 1 ribbon cable.

[studiot]

I had video (divx) studdering issues way back in the day when I had two HDDs on one ribbon cable. If the PC accesses one full time and the other intermittently I would have studders.

Honda beat me to it.

Is there also a slower device (CD ) on the HDD cable? An IDE is limited by the slowest device on the cable.

Remember that in IDE you cannot read and write at the same time or to two devices at the same time.
************************************************** ***********************
Incidentally a wrinkle for video capture and video editing.

I try to set up a dedicated partition to store the video on. Video editing and especially capture performs best if you can arrange contiguous files space - and these are large files

Before each project I defrag the partition by reformatting it. This is much quicker than actual defrag and achieves the same effect.

So I start each project with a clean empty partition. When I have finished I store the result elsewhere and am ready to reformat for another project.

[seedubya]

I only skimmed the thread - so sorry if I'm repeating other people's suggestions.
- check that the drives arn't in PIO mode, if it's PATA (ignore for SATA)
- try installing the most up to date chipset driver, in particular for the UDMA / hard drive controller
- use Autoruns to temporarily disable all non MS startups and extraneous software (not hardware) drivers
- check the smart status of the hard disk

[anonymous Mac Tech]

- check the smart status of the hard disk

I agree that HD is suspect to me. Can you direct the capture to another drive? Possibly 2nd drive bay or through external?

BTW: very descriptive and great details Bryce. I feel like I've almost been looking at the machine with you.

[Fixedathome.com]

The software doesnt appear to be at fault because again, the same software works fine on my test pc.


Some good advice from everybody else re hard drives, drivers etc.

I see that it comes with both Power Director and Power Producer, both of which can capture. Does it have the same problem with both pieces of sw? If possible I would still want to test another piece of capture software aside from the Cyberlink programs just to rule it out.

[Bryce W]

SMART status of the drives reports as OK, though the spin up time is at 75% (but still marked as ok).

I put in a second hard drive and recorded directly to that and it worked fine. Seems to be a drive issue, whether it cant seek fast enough to run the app and constantly write, or its failing in some way.

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Thanks for the feedback Bryce.

[Kermit]

SMART status of the drives reports as OK, though the spin up time is at 75% (but still marked as ok).

I put in a second hard drive and recorded directly to that and it worked fine. Seems to be a drive issue, whether it cant seek fast enough to run the app and constantly write, or its failing in some way.

The 75% spin up time seems interesting.

Is there anything else on the same 12 V power line ? Or a loose connector?

Sorry I'm a bit rusty here, but don't HD's vary their speeds a little to make the data stream more constant?

Meaning the end of the drive (Outer area) is the area that the speed of the platters don't change much and the fastest transfer rate.

So a weak connection, like a to long power cable would effect the power needed to speed up or break down the platters...?

Maybe a twist or radio interference in the line.? Which you did change with trying on another machine as well as the other HD.

Kermit

[purple_minion]

It certainly sounds like a failing drive to me, I'd test that bad boy with a few tools. I've also had a modem cause a computer to lock up for an instant every few seconds. However it sounds like you have already diagnosed the issue.

In regards to video editing/capture being intensive, usually the most intensive thing is either your processor is the bottleneck and can't encode fast enough, or your drives aren't fast enough. I have a PATA drive on my mythtv box, and it can encode TWO streams at once, transcode another show to mpeg4, and I can watch a recorded show at the same time. That's FOUR streams at once going on simultaneously. Granted they are SD and the cards are hardware encoders but that is a lot of seeking for the drive. Encoding home movies should be a cake walk.

[l337]

Hard drives are in DMA mode so I suspect slow HDD's wouldnt be an issue.


i know sometimes hds can state they are dma but still run pio. so id run the reg fix thats on the net incase. or if u just play some audio on the pc u should be able to hearif its pio messing with it