Frame dropped during capturing

[Alex Chan]

I have one internal hard drive and one Maxtor external hard drive. When I capturing video from my GL2 to the external drive, it was so smooth and no frame dropped after a 60 mins tape transferred. However, when I transfer video into my internal hard drive, it has a lot of frame dropped.
Both my hard drives are Maxtor 120GB and 7200 rpm. The external hard drive is in USB2.0. My question is why the internal drive has frame dropped and the external doesn't have any?

Can I do the editing with the footages inside the external drive?

Thanks.

[Greg Gelber]

Does your internal drive have any other files on it; meaning is this drive dedicated to media or does it have other programs and files on it? Also, if this drive is your system drive, that's a big no no but I'll assume your not doing that. The best way to digitize footage is to stripe a pair of drives together and dedicate your audio to one and video to the other. This can't always happen and I'm not sure it's a good idea with one external and one internal since their probably not running the same specs. In the least, make sure the goto drive is just for media only and that should clear up the problem.

[Dan Euritt]

Originally Posted by Alex Chan

I have one internal hard drive and one Maxtor external hard drive. When I capturing video from my GL2 to the external drive, it was so smooth and no frame dropped after a 60 mins tape transferred. However, when I transfer video into my internal hard drive, it has a lot of frame dropped.

by "transfer", do you mean that you were capturing video directly to your internal drive off of dv tape? or copying a file from the external drive?

you can successfully capture to your internal system drive, i've done it a number of times, but if you have things like background processes, real-time virus scanners, etc. running at the same time, it could interfere with the capture and cause dropped frames.

[Greg Gelber]

Just curious why you'd put media on your system drive as cheap as drives are these days. If your computer crashes, you media is gone too. Extra internal and external drives will be spared.

[Dan Euritt]

i think the point that you are making here is why hammer a system drive with video data? my answer would be, sometimes you don't have any choice :-\

[Alex Chan]

Thanks for the reply. Here is what I have.

I have 2 internal drives. C: for WindowsXP D: for Video and audio
1 External hard drive.

I connect my GL2 and capture the video into the drive.
When I capturing to the Maxtor 120GB, it has nothing wrong, no frame dropped.
But when I tried to capture to D drive, it has a lot of frame dropped.

I wonder why is that?

Is is ok to capture video to an external hard drive and also do the entire editing with the external hard drive?

[Greg Gelber]

You betcha as long as it's at least 7200 rpm drive.

[Greg Gelber]

Originally Posted by Dan Euritt

i think the point that you are making here is why hammer a system drive with video data? my answer would be, sometimes you don't have any choice :-\

No, my point is your at risk of losing media in the event of a system crash so why not have a dedicated media drive that is outside the system loop. If your system drive is up to snuff for editing, you can hammer it all day long with media and no harm will occur. Just trying to protect a fellow man, man.

[Alex Chan]

Originally Posted by Greg Gelber

You betcha as long as it's at least 7200 rpm drive.

You mean it is ok to capture directly to the external hard drive as well as to do editing just with the external hard drive right? Cause this is what I plan to do. So far i have no frame dropped when capturing to the external drive.