Comments

jaegersing wrote on 11/12/2004, 5:52 PM
You should not be getting dropped frames at all if your system is working properly. It is probably a sign that something is disturbing the firewire data transfer. First thing to try is to switch off any background processes (especially anti-virus software) before capturing.

How to fix dropped frames? I wouldn't even bother to try. Much better to capture properly to begin with.

Richard Hunter

Spot|DSE wrote on 11/12/2004, 6:56 PM
You might read the MONSTER dropped frames suggested fixes on the VASST FAQ pages. www.vasst.com/login.htm
RalphM wrote on 11/12/2004, 6:57 PM
If this is elementary to you, please excuse the question: Are you capturing to a separate HDD, and has it been defragged lately?
usman152008 wrote on 11/12/2004, 7:37 PM
thanks for you replys. I switched the port that i had connected to befor and connected to another, 399 dropped frames (1st capture) reduced to 100 and somethiong frames which still left me unsatisified and switched to third port since my 1394 has 3 ports and dropped zero frames WOW. I am guessing that background process might have caused that eventhough there werent any. oh well. I just reformated my HD this morning. thanks.
riredale wrote on 11/12/2004, 8:12 PM
My computer has tons of applications running in the background, and I never defrag my drives. I haven't had a dropped frame in a very long time. Since drives and PCs are so much faster than what is needed to capture without dropped frames these days, it usually takes some major event happening behind your back to make the PC hiccup for a moment.

Check all your running programs and make sure they NEVER are doing something disk-intensive automatically. For example, it's fine if Norton Antivirus runs continuously, but don't set it to automatically go out to the web for antivirus updates, or to scan the drive for viri. Don't let the disk auto-defrag on a schedule that could impact your capturing. And so on.

Again, if you have a disk newer than 3 years old, and a processor faster than, say, 1GHz, you should have to work really hard to get it to ever drop a frame.
johnmeyer wrote on 11/12/2004, 8:36 PM
As I said in the FAQ on the VASST site, the only acceptable level of dropped frames is zero. You should never drop frames (at least not when capturing from DV).

Since a 1394 device was involved, I suspect either the drive, or a conflict with the card. If you have more than one 1394 card in your computer, they can conflict. I know this from first-hand experience, and I solved the problem by disabling the 1394 capability on my ATI All-in-Wonder 8500DV card.

Also, if you are running Windows XP, there is a 1394 problem that can cause all sorts of issues. There is a fix from Microsoft (also apparently included in SP2) that you can get by reading this thread:

Firewire 1394 Solutions

Finally, some 1394 Firewire drives have problems. My Western Digital 1394 drive was a complete disaster, whereas my Maxtor worked perfectly. I sent the WD drive back under warranty, and when it came back, it worked perfectly. There was nothing wrong with it, except that it was flaky when Vegas was running. Apparently a 1394 chipset issue, which they fixed with an ECO (engineering change order) that they must have applied when I returned it.
farss wrote on 11/12/2004, 11:15 PM
This probably doesn't apply here but worth noting. You can get dropped frames when nothing is wrong with the capture process. Serious errors on the tape can confuse the process and you'll have VidCap report dropped frames. DV Scene Detection seems to make this issue worse.
With clean DV, as noted you should never see dropped frames.
Bob.