DV grabbing speed, laptop HDD

[Gear]

The HDD on this laptop (Toshiba Sat. Pro 4600, P3@750), seems capable of almost 4 MB/s, according to VirtualDub disk test.
Is it enough to capture DV from a Sony DCR-TRV16E (with miniDV tapes), through a PCMCIA firewire card?
Is there a difference in speed (bitrate) when a tape is recorded in SP versus LP mode ? How much ?

I tried capturing through USB from the camera, but the picture seems too dark, and it's only 320x240 25fps - 12mbit USB.

Thanx,

P.S. Are the capture/editing softwares capable of using more memory for buffering when the drive cannot keep up ? (the lap has 384 MB).

[wkulecz]

If your goal is mpeg or streaming media clips give it a try. DV is ~3.6 MB/s so you are cutting it close if your "benchmark" is accurate.

I can capture to my Dell Inspiron 7500 PIII-700 internal drive, but it can't output back to tape. Seems output is more demanding than input.

Given that DV is ~13GB/hr you might just get an external 1394 drive and be done with it. Capture/Editing is always better with two drives.

--wally.

[Gear]

I have 7 tapes, that I want to burn on CD, I'm not sure whether mpeg/divx. For streaming, the USB stuff will do (although
not so good looking).

I'm not sure the camera supports DV input to tape, but normally I wouldn't need it. Maybe just for doing data backup (it could work in linux).

The space IS a problem as the HDD is 20GB,
and I have both linux and win on it.

Can someone recommend a good firewire drive, how it compares to an internal one, and of course the price tag?

[wkulecz]

Get an ADS Pyro 1394 Hard Drive kit (~$100) and a large hard drive "on sale" -- 5400 RPM is adaquate. I've put together 120GB 1394 drives for ~$230 this way. Might be a bit cheapter now.

--wally.

[Gear]

Thanks for the info, too bad they don't have a distributor in my country, because online cc is not an option.
The HDD 1394 Kit is a very good deal, the only downside that I see is the bigger volume I have to carry, and that the drives are not designed for mobile use.

I'll post a follow up, after I play a little with the capturing (bought an cardbus 1394)...

[wkulecz]

I fairly regularly wrap my ADS Pyro Hard Drive Kit in packing foam, stuff it in a suitcase and ship it. No problems yet. Been to all three US coasts, and overseas to Amsterdam, Vienna & Budapest.

Powered off, "normal" hard drives seem every bit as rugged as notebook drives.

--wally.

[Gear]

Update:

First here is my complete setup:
Lap: PIII750, 384MB, 60hz 14.1 LCD (maybe 75hz) with Trident CyberbladeXP 16MB, 20GB IBM disk (seems to do 12MB/s in 500MB file vdub disk test).
Firewire: 2-port Repotec OHCI Cardbus(RP-94CBUS)
Camcorder: Sony DCR-TRV16E (PAL).
OS: WinME, Linux 2.4.19
Software: Ulead Videostudio 6 Trial, VirtualDub 1.4.10, PowerDVD 3.0

After I installed UV6, when the ulead logo appeared, it said that it couldn't load MPEG vio driver - the path to uvs.ini (the mpeg dll is there installed). It does this everytime, and I can't export anything mpeg based (DVD,VCD,SVCD).

I captured 9:43 min. off the camera, roughly 2GB of DV Type1 AVi's. No lost frames, all ok.
Virtual Dub couldn't use the capture driver, and it said that it couldn't find RGB space ... (i don't remeber exactly).

In Linux, with a 2.4.20-pre7 kernel, and Kino, it didn't work very well. I'll check this later. Dv-grab gave me buffer underruns.

No comes the ugly part: whenever in the movie, the camera moved - 'scrolling through the landscape', the movement looks rather choppy, eye tearing, like it skips certain frames. This doesn't happen when the camera was fixed, with movement only in the scene.
Until now I watched the tapes on TV, directly connected the camera (analog cables), and this problem didn't occur.

If I play the file in WMP7, it looks worse, meaning I see even/uneven lines. In PowerDVD, those lines don't appear, but it's the same eye tear effect as played in UV6.
In PowerDVD, on my desktop (K6-2+@500, G200 8MB, 7years old 17" Samtron CRT), the image looked more alive, but same problem;

I also tried the TV-out of the lap, but as I expected it's the same.

I captured in field A,field B,frame based options and checked/unchecked the de-interlace option, with no change...

The AVi's(OpenDML) are in DV format (dvsd), @ 720x576x24bit, 25fps, 32khz, stereo.

Any advice would me most helpful.

I'll answer tomorow, as it's 4:20am...

[Gear]

I read on libdv.sf.net that for computer display a progressive mode camera would be better.
How does this sony camera work ?

[wkulecz]

Most single chip camcorders are interlace only, I don't know about your particular model, but you have to set progressive mode when you record with a switch or menu option.

Looks like you've rediscovered the fact that MS does a really lousy job at playing back DV.

Export your footage back thru the DV cam and view it on a TV with VS6. I think you'll either get gray blocks because the internal hard drive is not quite fast enough, or it'll look the same as viewing the tape played back in the camcorder.

--wally.

[Gear]

That's the problem, I didn't find any option ... and the camera didn't come with a manual. I'll check again all the options on the menu.
If anyone here owns/knows if this line of sony camcorders (dcr-trv) have progressive-mode, or knows some forums on this, I would really appreciate.

I'm not sure it's MS's fault, I'll try the TI-1394 control driver, w/ or w/o de-interlace option once my dad returns with the camera.

The camera specs says that it only has DV-out, and also, for the moment, all tapes are full.

I just downloaded a pdf for the trv17 model, i'll see what's in common with the 16e model ..