Firewire Bad Frames During Capture Problem FIXED

[Jerry Jones]

I was getting about four "bad" frames during a typical forty minute capture using various OHCI compliant IEEE 1394 cards.

The bad frames would each feature what appeared to be "static" noise.

The frames would never occur in the same place twice.

At first, I thought maybe it had something to do with the chipset of my ATI DV Wonder (AGERE) IEEE 1394 card.

So I replaced it with a Texas Instruments-chipped ADS Pyro.

At first, I thought I had solved the issue.

But those very infrequent pesky bad frames re-appeared.

Then I went back to basics.

I did a CONTROL-ALT-DELETE and was surprised to see so many tasks running in the background.

To make a long story short, the problem had nothing to do with the chipset of the Firewire cards.

It was background processes.

After I closed them down to bare minimum - I was able to capture extremely long segments with no bad frames.

I'm passing this along to those who might also experience this issue.

Also, I'm wondering if anybody has had experience with a program called WINTASKS 4 by LIUtilities.

http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/whitepapers/paper8/

This program is supposed to be able to replace the odd names of background processes with the *real* name of the program behind the process, making it easier to distinguish between processes that should and should not be terminated during capture.

Anybody had any experience with it?

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Nick Piercey]

Hi Jerry,


Caught your thread a couple of weeks ago…

I have a P4 2.53, 1GB ram on an MSI 845 motherboard.with Pyro Firewire Card. I use a Canopus ADVC100 for DV captures and occasionally a Sony D8.

I mostly record TV programmes to put on DVD so have used AVI_IO, Scenalyzer and iuVCR. Although these days I don’t use AVI_IO, because it doesn’t record Type 1 DV files.

I’ve noticed these static glitches and wondered where they came from, but here’s the strange thing. I only get them with Scenalyzer.

I initially thought it could be because I had the preview option turned on in Scenalyzer, as this uses more processor power, but I’ve still got these static glitches with no preview displayed.

Here’s what I did this morning…

Recorded 45 minutes of TV using Scenalyzer and at the same time printed, downloaded and generally “used” my computer.
Ripped the audio with Cool Edit Pro and saw three glitches.

Did exactly the same but with iuVCR. Printed, d/led etc ripped the audio… no glitches!

Tried capturing using iuVCR with the preview window on, recorded 22 minutes while printing, surfing and burning a VCD! No glitches. So maybe some capture programs are better than other.

Any thoughts?


Best wishes,


Nick.

[miya]

Jerry,

What capture app are you using? I have never had any corrupt frames over firewire with only a Celeron 900, so it seems very odd to me that background processes could slow down a much faster system to such a degree.

I use Avid exclusively for my DV work, perhaps you should try some new apps. Ulead's products have always been more trouble than they are worth to me.

Originally posted by Jerrold Jones

Also, I'm wondering if anybody has had experience with a program called WINTASKS 4 by LIUtilities.

http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/whitepapers/paper8/

This program is supposed to be able to replace the odd names of background processes with the *real* name of the program behind the process, making it easier to distinguish between processes that should and should not be terminated during capture.

Anybody had any experience with it?

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

Couldn't the same thing be accomplished by searching your harddrive for those "odd" names?