External HD Problems

fixler wrote on 5/14/2007, 12:15 AM
Hi

I am a getting a little desperate ATM as I am eager to start a major job and having capture trouble!!

I will be editing a 90min doco which I had hoped to store on a 500GB external drive to allow me to take the project between two systems, keeping backups of the veg files separately. I purchased and installed a new WD 500GB My Book Premium that runs on Firewire400. I wired it up to my system (DELL XPS 710) through the single firewire port on the motherboard. I then wired my DVCAM deck through the front panel firewire port (I imagine a hub) and attempted a capture. I immediately began dropping frames like crazy until my PC froze up and the HD required a format...

What am I doing wrong? I can capture to my internal drives from the deck wired in the same way and can also copy large AVIs over to the drive...

Any help would be so greatly appreciated!

Comments

Grazie wrote on 5/14/2007, 12:45 AM
I don't understand how these things work - however . .

My experience from notebook to my tower is this: Separate Card for Capture + PLUS separate card out to chained f/w. Meaning, I have a capture card - Canopus ACEDVio with its own firewire i/o AND a firewire port on my Mobo. To this I have plugged my Panasonic DVCAm/miniDV deck player and control centre. This works for me. This "approach" also worked on my laptop too, I "don't cross the streams!" - remember "Ghost Busters"? On my laptop I had an awful time of it UNTIL I got a dedicated PCMCIA dual firewire card. That cured all the stream issues.

Now, what YOU may have is a mobo playing traffic point duty with ALL the stuff flying about. I am NOT saying this ISN'T possible - I don't have the knowledge to admit or deny - but this IS my own experience!

BTW, I have daisy-chained-up five external f/w drives pumping to and from my mobo f/w plug. My Canopus JUST deals with f/w play, preview, capture and DV<>AV conversions. This works. No dropped frames.

Grazie


farss wrote on 5/14/2007, 2:06 AM
Just a guess but on somethings the firewire ports are duplicated, not even a proper hub used. I hope I'm wrong but if I am right then you might do better daisy chaining from one firewire port from the PC to the external HDD and then to the VCR.

Bob.
Grazie wrote on 5/14/2007, 2:13 AM
Bob? Is that to me or our friend here? - As I say this is working solid for me.
teaktart wrote on 5/14/2007, 2:35 AM
I have the same drive and have had some glitches but I also found out my video card was bad and needed replacing, so don't know for sure if the drive itself was a culprit
...
However,

I also got this email 5/7/07 regarding that drive :
=====================================================
***Please do not reply to this e-mail***

To our valued customers:

We recently discovered that the FireWire 400 cable that was shipped with your Western Digital My Book hard drive does not comply with our specifications. This FireWire 400 cable will not work properly with, and could even damage, your My Book hard drive. As a service to our valued customers, we are offering to replace this FireWire 400 cable, free of charge, in accordance with the limited warranty that accompanies your hard drive. You should dispose of the FireWire 400 cable that was included with your My Book hard drive. If you would like to receive a replacement FireWire 400 cable, free of charge, please click on the link below to validate your name and shipping address so that we may send you your replacement cable.

Thank you for selecting our products. We hope that we continue to number you among our customers in the future.

Link: http://websupport.wdc.com/rd.asp?

Western Digital Corporation

I registered my drive and maybe this is why I got the email notice, you may want to contact them for a replacement firewire.....

Teaktart
fixler wrote on 5/14/2007, 4:58 AM
Thanks all!

Teaktart it seems we may have an answer! I have just installed a separate FireWire Card and I'll see how I go now otherwise this drive is going back.

I also registered but did not receive anything yet...
teaktart wrote on 5/14/2007, 12:09 PM
Fixler:
I just about had a panic attack when I read that this bad firewire "could" harm the drive especially since mine was almost full...
In desperation I hooked it up with a USB 2.0and was able to get to and use my files. I later pulled a 1394 from another drive and am using that till the replacement shows up....

However, even with my new video cards I just got a pixelated capture to another ext hard drive using ConnectHD. I'm just not having any success using that app to anything but an internal hard drive. Which is a PIA because I then have to move all those GBs to the ext hard drive once I get a clean capture....
Put in a support ticket to Cineform over 10 days ago with screen shots and no reply from them....I'm not very happy with that.

Teaktart

p.s. I just remembered that I also got garbage when I tried to capture to the firewire port on the motherboard back when I first got this editing computer. Took it back to the builder and we ended up disabling that 1394 port on the mobo and I now only use the seperate PCI card with the firewire ports. There was some kind of conflict that was fixed by disabling that port, maybe that is what you have as well.....
Steve Szudzik wrote on 5/14/2007, 2:03 PM
My firewire cable for that drive wouldn't even get me as far as what you got. I couldn't even see the drive. I ordered my replacement cable 2 weeks ago and am still waiting for it to show up. USB is ok, but I'd rather be on FW.

--Steve
johnmeyer wrote on 5/14/2007, 2:06 PM
1. Test the drive by itself.
2. Test the capture by itself.
3. Repeat 1 & 2 using the second Firewire cable.
4. Daisychain them and try the drive and try the capture.

If I understand your problem, #4 is the only thing that doesn't work. Assuming you have, by now, tested the cables, in the manner described above, then you need to make sure that you have the latest Firewire Windows patches. There is separate patch for XP SP1 and for XP SP2. They both have issues that will manifest themselves during capture if you don't have these patches.

Read more here:

Firewire 1394 SP1 Solutions
johnmeyer wrote on 5/14/2007, 2:39 PM
USB is ok, but I'd rather be on FW.

I have both USB 2.0 and Firewire drives. I use them both for video editing, and actually prefer the USB drives because, even with the patches, connecting and disconnecting Firewire drives sometimes causes the DV or HDV capture to fail. This is immediately fixed by re-booting, but it is a pain that I can avoid by using USB. There certainly is no inherent superiority to Firewire. Yes, I know that there have been many posts that USB drives use more "system overhead" than Firewire, but even if that's true (and I don't know one way or the other), I don't think it makes a hill of beans differences in whether you can capture or edit successfully.
fixler wrote on 5/14/2007, 10:08 PM
Hi all. Firstly thanks again for being so quick in giving me your advice!

I have managed to fix everything (fingers still crossed). I returned the drive which has been know to have major FireWire issues and purchased a WD My Book Pro 500GB which does FireWire 400/800 & USB. I also installed a FireWire PCI card and have my drive connected through that while my DVCAM unit is running through my motherboard port.

The drive is working a treat and have not dropped a frame. Thanks again.
Steve Szudzik wrote on 5/15/2007, 7:17 AM
I haven't really seen too many issues with using the USB on the WD drive, but the firewire vs usb benchmarks for that drive have a 10mb/s difference favoring the firewire. For pure capture, yeah, it really doesn't amount to very much but when shuffling the video between that storage disk and my "working" disk, even 10mb/s helps. Of course if I was really concerned I would have gone for the ES model and used eSATA.