Dropped frame rate - what's acceptable?

[Nezza42]

What do you consider an acceptable dropped frame rate?

My system is as follows:

AMD T'bird 1Ghz
Gigabyte GA7xzr mobo
20 Gb udma66 7200rpm hdd with Win ME o/s
30Gb udma66 7200rpm HDD partitioned 20/10 with 20Gb Primary partition for Vid Cap (defragged prior to each cap)
Matrox Marvel G400

Source: SCART signal from analogue TV
Matrox set to capture 704x576 PAL High Qual (compression 6.6:1)
Capture using VirtualDub v1.4d multi segment "normal" capture mode (not AVICap mode)

The I've just file captured is 8.21Gb size, 49mins duration, 74,000 frames with 51 dropped frames.

Is this considered a good/poor or average dropped frame rate?

Any input greatly appreciated.

PS System optimizied as per recomendations in FAQ section, and, yes, I know it's not ideal to partition the capture drive, but I have no option - I require to back up sensitive data on my system drive to a seperate hdd!

thank again

Nezza

[Sciascia]

Coming off of a tuner that's not bad since dropped frames can be caused by your video quality as well as system configuration. 8.2G seems kinda big though... It's been awhile since I used MJPEG to capture anything that long.

Question for you. Which set fo drivers/vidtools are you using for WinME? I just installed it last night and was wondering what the best version was. Is there a YUY2 hack available for it? I really enjoy the option of using different codecs for capture.

[Nezza42]

Sciascia, thanks for the reply.

I'm @ work, so can't check what version numbers are but they are the latest (& I believe the last - as I don't think Matrox will be supporting the G400 anymore) available from their d/l site.

Yes, the Flying Dutchman patch enables YUY2 capture (search forum). I have the Picvideo CODEC & when I get some free time I'll try a side by side comparison with the Matrox h/w CODEC.

The large file size seems normal for me, I do use the highest res/lowest compression the Matrox offers.

Cheers m8

Nezza

[This_Idiot]

Nezza,

Everyone's own level of acceptance for dropped frames is different. Personally I've never bother too much unless quality drops below 1 in a hundred or thereabouts. If it happens in the middle of a critical scene then I'll recapture the offending bits several times trying a variety of options. If it isn't overly important then all I'll do is scrub the affected area to make sure it isn't causing field reversal (or whatever) and that it still runs smooth. If it shows up nasty then I'll start cropping frames.

Over the years we've had a huge variety of answers to this topic. I still get amused (sorry) by folks that spend hundreds of hours optimising their system to try and reduce their drop rate to nil, and then maybe an hour actually capturing and editing Aunty Beths 50th birthday.

Cheers
Chris
(T_I)

(Sorry Aunt Beth, I know you were real upset about the 2 dropped frames during your rendition of Danny Boy)