A1 and Premiere Capture question

[Charlie Durand]

Hey there DVINFO gang,

So I have my nice new A1 and have been using it for a couple weeks now. After maybe 20 total tapes I notice that occasionally the camera seems to pause for a few seconds when I'm capturing the video to the computer.

Adobe Premiere does not complain about any dropped frames but they definitely get dropped. If I go back and recapture the footage it works just fine.

This has happened maybe 4 times on four different tapes so far. Each time I was able to go back and recapture the footage so it doesn't appear to be the tapes dropping out.

I have also noticed that when this happens it throws the audio out of synch with the video for anything that gets captured past the "dropped" frames. Again, when I recapture the same footage everything is back to normal and the audio is back in synch with the video.

Has anyone else seen this?

My computer is still moderately fast. Pentium 3.4GHZ, 2GB DDR667, C: drive RAID 0 and D: drive Raid 0.

Editing is fine albeit rendering takes longer but that's to be expected.

Thanks!

Charlie Durand
San Jose, CA

[Philip Williams]

Well your machine should be plenty fast enough... so I guess the obvious stuff you've probably already thought of:

Some other process kicks in once in a while (spyware scanner, antivirus, etc..).

Badly fragmented and/or nearly full drive(s).

Capturing to drive with very active swap file (typically C, but some people move it).


There's definitely something funky there. I have a Pentium D 2.8Ghz that's on the sluggish side for editing but I've captured 45 minutes at a time without a problem (literally into one big 8.7 gig file). And that was with a typically fragmented and mostly full drive.

You should probably ask in the Premiere forum, since this might well not be a Canon HDV specific problem.

Good luck, let us know what you find.

[Steven Dempsey]

It sounds like it's a hardware issue. Not sure what to tell you beyond that. If it keeps happening, I'd have it serviced by Canon. Problem with these kinds of things is they are so sporadic that it's hard to duplicate the problems at will.

[Harm Millaard]

My initial thoughts are a bit different from Steven. I would look at two things:

1. Some background process is stealing CPU/disk performance during capture. This could be an anti virus application running, background disk optimization by Diskeeper or similar, or just too many processes running in the background. To check, run task manager and look at the number of active processes while running PremPro. It should be definitely less than 35. The lower the better.

2. It could be your disk configuration. Is your pagefile on C or D? Both logical drives are Raid0. How many physical drives are in each logical drive? Where are your sources captured to, where are your scratch disks located, etc.?

I do not think the Canon is the problem.

[Charlie Durand]

OK, so here is a little more info based on the replies so far.

I have had a Canon GL2 for years now and captured tons and tons of tapes. I have had this current computer for just over a year and literally have never seen it drop a single frame with the GL2. My previous computer would drop the occasional frame which was the reason for the upgrade.

I do not run anti-virus nor any kind of disk optimization apps. I keep my computer pretty clean so I know it's always going to work when I need it.

I have four hard drives in this computer. 2 in a RAID 0 for the C: drive and 2 in a RAID 0 for the D: drive. I capture to D: and my pagefile is on C:

I'm not blaming Canon as much as I was just trying to see if anyone else has experienced this. I'm sure I'll figure out what's going on and fix it. Maybe it's time for a new computer. Sad how they barely last a year any more.

[Peter Ferling]

If it's not a faulty or loose firewire cable/connection, then do you have any other I/O or firewire devices hooked up to the PC as well? I had an external firewire DVD burner that caused some interruptions.

The other issue is doing something on the PC while capturing, such as surfing the net or writing a word doc. PPro doesn't like working in the background, even on dual chip machine.

[Ivan Barbarich]

Hi Charlie,

Hi all...I'm new to the forum...go easy on me. lol!

I just purchased the A1 about a week ago.

I too have experienced EXACTLY what you described...When I capture, there is a sudden pause, and the audio goes out of sync..

I personally dont think its the pc (dual core 5200 AMD SataII drive), as when I play back the clip, and view it from the camera, the same thing happens..the glich is on the tape..caused by WHAT?..Is it the camera OR the mini DV tapes...I suspect the tape...this did not occure with the canon tape that came with the camera...I have tried another new tape (only third tape used)..happened again...tends to only happen at the start of the tape, but stuffs up the rest.

Ivan.

[Marc Young]

Originally Posted by Ivan Barbarich

Hi Charlie,

Hi all...I'm new to the forum...go easy on me. lol!

I just purchased the A1 about a week ago.

I too have experienced EXACTLY what you described...When I capture, there is a sudden pause, and the audio goes out of sync.

Ivan.

These problems are tough to debug without being physically present with the hardware. But here are a few things to try.

1. See if another app can capture the video.

2. Try another firewire cable. I have seen everything from bad cables to bad connections foul up transfers. I recommend Sony cables. More expensive, but more reliable than Belkin and other brands.

3. If you have a friend with a fast pc and hd, see if you can capture the video on his system. This will tell you if the problem is with the camera or your computer hardware/cable.

4. If you are really desperate, see if you can install a second copy of the operating system on another drive or partition. Equip this only with capture software. No other apps of any kind, including internet stuff. Boot up in this copy of the os, do the capture, and then restart in the other, normal working copy of the os. As long as the capture destination drive/partition is ntfs, it should be visible to both copies of the os. Let me tell you, visit cnet.com and download hijackthis. Let it create a log of what's running on your machine. You'll be surprised at how many processes and drivers you have running in a typical xp system. Debuging operability problems is a full-time job. I get really annoyed at how different apps interfere with one another.

[Ivan Barbarich]

Hi Marc,

Thankyou for your suggestions.

I think I have nutted it out..its not the pc, its the tapes I have used.
After using the Canon tape that came with the camera (and having no such problems), I purchased and used some standard miniDV tapes around $10aus, which gave me these pauses...the pauses are actually on the tape, it occurs everytime i play it back and watch it via the camera...
SO, I went and purchased SONY HD miniDV @$35aus..Cleaned heads before using...so far no problems.

Page 144 of the manual states...

If when playing back in HDV standard, the picture/sound stops momentarily (about 0.5 seconds) The video heads need to be cleaned.

This is definatly what was happening to me.

Thanks again,

Ivan.

PS..excelent forum!