Is it a Hardware problem ???

[bill2]

Dear Experts

I have tried to edit DV footages using VS5 and MSP6 on my Toshiba laptop with AMD K6-II (475 MHz), 192MB, 4.6GB + 40GB ext. firewire HDD.

In most cases the comp. had stuck during rendring or while converting from AVI to MPEG. usually at the end of the conversion but sometimes during.

I have change from Win 98SE to ME but the simptoms are the same. I have tried to use TMPGEnc to convert and in more then half of the cases the computer has stuck.

Does anyone has any idea what could bossibly be the problem? Does my hardware isn't hard enough?

By the way, I have no problem using any application but video editing.

Thanks in advance.

[Brian Ellis]

Bill

Difficult to say, but is your capture OK? This often the most critical part and if it goes OK with no dropped frames, the rest should be a piece of cake, as it is not necessarily in real time. Some other common causes:

• bad fragmentation of your video drive
• insufficient disk space for temp or final files
• trying to create files > 2 Gb
• dirty registry (may be worthwhile to reformat the C: drive and reinstall everything from scratch

(this list is not exhaustive

Do you have any error messages at any time?

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

That hardware should be AOK for editing. Upgrading the OS to WinME probably would not do much. If anything, WinME might cause more problems than it is worth.

Besides what Brian has mentioned:

-What versions of DirectX and Windows Media Player do you have?

-Also, what settings are you using for TMPGEnc (2 pass VBR, etc.)?

-Is your laptop configured for power management?

-If your machine has a VIA chipset, are you using the latest 4-in-1 drivers?

[bill2]

hi mates

first of all - thanks for your replies.

1. as far as I know the comp. is alright in terms of hardware. is there any way to check it?

2. I use DirectX 8.1 (4.08.01.0881) and Win ME (installed recently after having the same problem with 98SE)

3. I have no idea what relevance there is to win MP but I'm using 7.01.

4. I do defrag the HD before, and at the moment I'm tring to convert a small (300MB AVI-DV) file into MPEG-1 file (constant CBR - 650 Kbps, PAL 625). is this OK or should I change it? (I like it to be as small as possible and with reasonable quality)

5. I do not think there should be any registry problem since I have just installed OS and minimum necessary appz.

6. could you please explain more on the chipset issue, how could I check it and what is this driver you asked if I have?

7. I have no problem what so ever to record footages from my panasonic DS-15 DV into the comp. (no dropped frame), just rendring and converting problem.

thanks again, I'm desperate to solve it.

[bill2]

hi mates

first of all - thanks for your replies.

1. as far as I know the comp. is alright in terms of hardware. is there any way to check it?

2. I use DirectX 8.1 (4.08.01.0881) and Win ME (installed recently after having the same problem with 98SE)

3. I have no idea what relevance there is to win MP but I'm using 7.01.

4. I do defrag the HD before, and at the moment I'm tring to convert a small (300MB AVI-DV) file into MPEG-1 file (constant CBR - 650 Kbps, PAL 625). is this OK or should I change it? (I like it to be as small as possible and with reasonable quality)

5. I do not think there should be any registry problem since I have just installed OS and minimum necessary appz.

6. could you please explain more on the chipset issue, how could I check it and what is this driver you asked if I have?

7. I have no problem what so ever to record footages from my panasonic DS-15 DV into the comp. (no dropped frame), just rendring and converting problem.

thanks again, I'm desperate to solve it.

[zeb7]

To me that leave 2 other possibility's
1. bios / ether display/pci/agp or power management
2. the CPU is overheating , maybe Tosh didn't think people would make their laptops work so hard ?

Too test for overheating visit a overclocking web sight ( they run into heat problem more often than other's )
their say the best test is something called "prime" , i guess it just makes the CPU work hard ( just like MPEG encoding ),
so if after 2 ( or more ) hours running this program with no freezes / crashes its not a CPU problem .


BTW ; If i run my CPU at 950mhz , It has the same problems as you describe.

also winME will make you're CPU overheat faster/more often.

[Ted222]

I have MSP 6.5 (also ran 6.0) and VS5 on my Lap, with no probs.
P3-500
256 Ram
WinME
32 gig HD

I think you might be having a problem with your exterior HD. Try just using the interior drive and see if that helps. You might have to just use the exterior drive for captures and storage.

Good Luck,

Ted

[bill2]

probably CPU overheat

Well mates

As you adviced I have run PRIME test to check CPU overheating for about 10 times.

It takes about 4-6 minutes until the CPU halt and the whole system get stuck.

I have tried to change the memory in order to reduce posibility of faulted memory but the results are the same.

Is there a way to reduce CPU clock so it will work slower but become more stable ???

Thanks for your advice.

[zeb7]

You need to lower the CPU multiplier or lower the bus speed , i don't know how to do that on you're laptop.
It may be in the bios but most likely on the motherboard.

Also if you take the laptop to a computer shop , ask them to check that the heat sink is still on (if that model has a heat sink)
On some laptops its possible that it has shaken lose or the clip has broken.

[Brian Ellis]

Aha! CPU overheating on a laptop? You know the most usual cause for that? Not placing it on a hard, flat, smooth surface or losing one or more of the rubber feet! Just a piece of paper underneath it can make all the difference.

A well-designed laptop has very critical cooling and the fan needs to work without obstruction at top efficiency. There is usually a designated airflow over the critical components and anything which alters it will cause problems. If you are in a dusty location, even an accumulation of dust on the fanblades can be sufficient to reduce the airflow.

OTOH, I can imagine that there may also be some less well-designed machines on the market that simply do not have adequate cooling, at all. I don't know about Toshiba: the last time I bought a laptop, about a year ago, I tried a Toshiba and rejected it but because speech recognition was poor with it. That is my sum experience of Toshiba. In my experience, Compaq laptops are hopeless (I was stupid enough to have bought a Presario a few years ago). My present AJP is excellent and gives me 100% satisfaction.

[bill2]

Well mates, it is very interesting to read your comments!

I have made some checks and as far as I can see this is probably the maximum cooling I could get from my poor machine. as you mentioned it is laying on a clean flat surface and the fun works most of the time so I can feel the hot airflow coming out of the comp.

I have made some reading as well regarding underclocking and UNFORTUNATELY, find out that it is brobably imposiable to change any of the parameters in this Toshiba.

I will be happy if any of you have already done such a thing in a laptop and could share his/her experiance with me.

[AndrewDV]

(stumbles from couch after a great Super Bowl)

Hi,

CPU overheating on a laptop may be a problem. Then again, I have worked with many "molten" laptops without a problem. If it helps the analysis, take a small fan (like one that fits into a office cubicle) and point it to the laptop.

Info on VIA chipset issues and downloads for the 4-in-1 drivers can be found at:

http://www.viahardware.com

Mysterious lockups, HDD overruns, crackles in sound cards, etc can happen on some VIA based motherboards in certain OSes (sorry to be ambigious with that, but the number of possibilities make it a chaotic model). In lots of cases, the 4-in-1 drivers eliviate this.

It may also be the OS. In general, WinME and its memory leaks are a potentially volatile situation. Given you have also run Win98se with lockups, that might not be it. You may want to do a dual boot setup with Win2k. With certain systems, I noticed how Win98-WinME are nothing but odd crashes while Win2k and WinXP run great.

Have you checked settings for anything using networking in the background? An example is WMP. WMP7 can use quite a bit of resources. One item that I notice is how it works its way into networking. After the OS loads, it waits for the most in-opportune time to check for updates. You do not see any application icons or similar. If the issue has to do with a problematic network setup (ie bad driver), you can get confusing lockups.

Hope it helps!

[bill2]

Well friends

I have some very happy news ... I made an experiment and connected my home vacuum cleaner (Hoover) to the CPU hot air exit so thet the air flow around the CPU will be much higher.

then I ran the CPU by using "PRIME 95" (a calculation software which utilize 100 percent of the CPU) ....

IT RUNS PERFECT !!! (while without the vacuum the CPU freez after 4 minutes)

well, there are some small problems like the terrible noise or my wife who threat to throw me out of the house ... but it's working.

I even start thinking of a startup which produce laptop's with a built-in vacuum cleaner.

[Dr Mordrid]

Well....one could begin wondering if the laptops fan has taken a bender. That would explain a lot....

Dr. Mordrid

[wkulecz]

I've seen fans designed to sit under the notebook to solve such problems. Clearly you are not the first. I think it was in Tiger Direct's catalog. www.trigerdirect.com

I don't endorse them. I've bought a couple of things from them and been satisified, but they specialize is stuff you shouldn't buy unless you really know what you are doing -- lots of recently discontinued items where the word on its being discontinued may not be widely known.

--wally.