Help dumping video to NLE - dropped frames,etc
 

OK, here is my basic setup.

Sony PD-150 connecting to PC via firewire cable

The PC is an AMD 1800+ CPU (clocks around 2GHz) w/ only 512Mb CAS2 ram

HDD is a 120 GIG Maxtor (4Mb cache, 7200 RPM). This is a 2nd drive. OS & software on C: drive, dumping video to D: drive

Both C: & D: have DMA turned on (Ultra DMA 5)

Instaled Premiere Pro 1.5 and DV Rack on C:

Ran Canopus' EZDVTest which test the amount of sustained throughpu that the drive can take, to make sure that it is OK for dumping DV to it. The test came up fine. My HDD access speed right now is PLENTY fast enough for DV.

My video is taped, so I am trying to capture off of a MiniDV Tape

So I open Premiere turn on the camera, set up Premiere for the camera specifically (Sony PD-150).

Start capturing.

The audio is fine. The video is completely jerky and awful. The display indicator shows NO dropped frames (Dropped frames: 0)!

I stop the capture and play back the video. VERY jerky. Video seems to freeze for almost a second, play for half a second, freeze for 3/4 second, play for a second, etc. Audio is fine. At this point I am wondering if this is a capture problem, or a playback problem, or both???

I tried turning off hardware acceleration in my systems video settings, but that did not help at all either.

Then I close Premiere and open up DV Rack (which has lower system requirements). This was the first time I have really tried to capture from tape w/ DVRack. Of course, as soon as the capture starts, the image on screen freezes (which I think is normal for DVRack?).

I "Eject" the DVRack "tape". I then open up Premiere and load up the video captured w/ DVRack.

Lo and behold, it plays fine! OK, well I guess my problems are not in playback.

I have tried other applications on other machines and gotten similar results. THough I have not tried DVrack on others' machine, I have tried Vegas, Premiere, and Avid Xpress. From ALL of these I get tons of dropped frames when recording live to HDD, but Premiere seems to be the best (least dropped frames).

So, what is going on here, and what steps can I take to fix this? DVrack records fine, but Premiere seems not to. Doesn't seem to be a HDD issue.

Clues?

Thanks so much,

Alex F

Alex,

Most of the reccomendations I've read for HDD capturing state 8mb cache, 7200rpm for best results. Could be the issue.

Are your capture setting set correctly in Premiere?

Could be the cache on the drive, though I would have to double-check the other drives on the other machines that I tried this on. I believe that one of the other PCs (a friends PC w/ Avid Xpress on it) had an 8Mb cache on it, but it was also a single drive PC.

The EZDVtest from Canopus was recommended on a site that I saw (it might have been on the adobe site), and according to it, the drive should be fine. I don't know exactly how the software works in testingf the speed of the drive, but I assume that it is measuring raw speed, and if so, then I think that the cache size would not be an issue (*IF* Canopus's EZDVTest software is indeed accurate)

As far as setting up Premiere for capturing, I believe that I have it set up properly. It is pointing to the right folder on the right drive, and correctly captures to that location. Also I set up the capture options using the presets in Premiere that are specific for the Sony PD-150 (picked the PD-150 froom a list w/i the wsetup in Premiere). Is there anything else in Premiere that I should be looking for as far as tweaking?

Why would Vegas and Avid have similar problems, and DVrack seem to work fine?

Alex F