JVC GRDX25 Firewire capture problem

[david2005]

I have a problem capturing video from my JVC GRDX25 camcorder using the Firewire/Ieee1394 port.

Whether I use moviemaker or Sonic MyDVD LE i get the same results, the both picture and the sound seem to stutter & jump every half second or so on playback (not at the same rate).

I have tried changing the Firewire card, but with no effect.

Any suggestions???

Also in Device Manager the camcorder is listed as 'AVC Compliant DV Camcoder' - is this normal for JVC camcorders ?



PC: Dell8300 P4 3Ghz 512mb Ram Windows XP sp2

Thanks in advance

[Greenbag]

Hi David2005,

I'm not an expert but it sound like your computer system is not fast enough/powerful enough to capture and or playback video smoothly. I have a pentium 4 with hyperthreading, 3.2 ghz processor, 1024mb DDR2 ram, 7200 rpm disk, 800mhz fsb and a 256mb video card and a 64mb audio card and I can just about do the capturing and editing. Past experience has shown that anything less than the spec listed above just doesn't cut the mustard.

[MarkE19]

Sorry Greenbag but your listed specs for NLE are way off! I have been useing a P4 1.8Ghz PC with 512Mb (since upgraded to 1Gb) RIMM RAM for the past couple of years with no problems. I've even got a friends PIII PC working for NLE. Its slow, but gets there in the end .

david2005, the list of things to do to get stable capture have been listed on this forum many, many times (often by me ) so a quick search for things such as 'dropped frames', 'DMA', 'EndItAll' should bring up loads of things to try before spending loads of money upgrading a PC that is plenty good enough to do what you want

Mark.

[david2005]

MarkE19,

Thanks for the tip. I have 2 drives C & D and was saving files to drive D.

In Device Manager the properties for the Primary IDE controller -> Device Transfer Mode is set to use DMA If Available for both device 0 and device 1. However only device 0 (drive C) is using Ultra DMA Mode 2 the other is PIO Mode

As soon as I save the video files to drive C they playback correctly.

Many Thanks

[MarkE19]

I seem to remember others mentining that Windows can get confussed and will only run one or both HDD's in PIO mode. To get it to run in DMA you need to uninstall (remove power and IDE cables) the drive and reboot. Shutdown and reinstall the drive. Windows should now pick up the drive correctly and run the second HDD in DMA (hopefully ), as long as the HDD can run in DMA mode that is.

Mark.

[Greenbag]

MarkE19

The spec I quoted is for the PC I am using at present but if you want to sit around for hours waiting for a video to render thats fine, I'm sure a 1.8Ghz suits a lot of people but not me.

[MarkE19]

I agree with you that faster is better, but my comments were in reply to your statement:

it sound like your computer system is not fast enough/powerful enough to capture and or playback video smoothly.

Which to me was stateing that david2005's PC, which was stated as being a P4 3Ghz 512mb Ram, was not good enough to do NLE which is clearly not so. In 99% of cases capture problems are more to do with the setup of the PC rather than the speed/specs of it. I did not want the poster to feel that he needed to spend a lot of money upgrading a PC that was already far better than the minimum specs required for NLE, but the problems he had could probably be sorted out just by spending a bit of time & effort and hopefully no more money

Mark.