Tunes Man here.
I just recieved my firewire connection for my PC, and I successfully downloaded my first video clip from my dv camcorder. I'm having a problem similar to another forum member
in that when I first downloaded the video clip, it came out fine. My problem came when I decided to do some editing. I wanted to experiment with the clip and decided to divide the clip in a couple of places so that I could have it fade from one clip to another, just
to see if I could do it. After I did it, I played it back and noticed that in one second after each fade, the video just paused and then
continued again, and in the process missed a second or so of the video.
This unfortunately is unacceptable. If I was making a video to sell or making one I'd be satisfied with, these drop-outs would ruin the video. Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to de-frag my
pc?
Any help would be welcome. Thanks, Tunes Man.

[Stuart Wright]

I have had problems editing video and experienced the occasional drop-out. Even with a powerful machine I found I couldn't do ANYTHING else on it while I was transferring video from the camcorder.
Try again but with no other apps running.
And it always helps t have a defragmented hard drive.

[MarkE19]

Stopping ALL background programmes during capture should help. To do this I use a programme called EndItAll (do an internet search). This is a free download and works really well on all Windows versions. Saves a lot of hassle trying to work out what you can & can't do without!
Also make sure that your hard disks have DMA enabled and that you have several Gb of spare space.

Mark.

Actually, I didn't have any other programs running during the editing session, that's why I couldn't figure out why the video came out so bad. To update, I tried the same thing with another
video software, (the one that came with my firewire package), and it came out better. The only thing I can figure out is that it has something to do with the Movie Maker 2 software. As I said, I
did the same thing, I downloaded a video clip onto the new software, (which is called "MGI Videowave 4") and I split the video into several clips. This new software has a different way to do a cross fade. When I finished putting all the fade transitions in and played it back, it came out a lot better than with Movie Maker.
It wasn't perfect, but it did look a lot better.
So I'm not sure what the problem is. Capturing the video is no problem. After I capture the video, in it's raw state it is flawless. The problem is during the editing. Mark, I'm not sure what you mean by having my hard disk DMA enabled. Is that a program I have to download, or does my pc already have that capability?
Thanks for the help folks. Tunes Man.

[andy572]

Dunno which OS you're using, but - assuming it's a Windows derivative! - it can't be much different to the W98 that I use.

The good news is that you don't need any additional software to change the DMA setting of your drive.

Simply go to 'Control Panel' and select 'System'. Now go to 'Device Manager', making sure that 'view devices by type' is selected.

You should now see your system's components listed. Click on 'Disk drives' and your hard drive(s) will now be listed - as 'GENERIC IDE DISK TYPE 47', on my system. Right-click each of these listed drives and a option window will pop up. Select 'Properties' on this window and a window specific to the drive will appear. There are now three tabs: 'General', 'Settings' and 'Driver'. Click on 'Settings' and you'll see a list of options with tick-boxes alongside. If it isn't selected, click 'DMA' so that the tick appears and then click the 'OK' button.

You'll now be told that a restart is required and asked if you want to do so now. Select 'Yes', wait for the reboot and DMA should now be applied.

It's late (or early ), but I think that's all. Good luck.

Mark, I might take your advice and try to download that program you were talking about called EndItAll. I'm not sure what the problem is yet. I did defrag my pc but no difference. I'm thinking now about maybe getting an external hard drive to download my video. Don't know if that'll help but I've been wanting to get one anyway. To Andy572, I did check on my system's settings and my DMA appears to be on. I have Windows XP home edition, so checking it out was a different procedure than what you suggested. I downloaded the trial version of Adobe Premiere 6.0
to see if I could get some video on it with no drop outs but as everyone said, it's a bitch just to get started!! No luck there.
If I do decide to get an external hard drive, I'm a little confused as
to what hook up I should use with it. Evidently there are ones that use a USB 1.1, USB 2.0, there are ones that are 5400rpms and 7200 rpms and ones that use a firewire hook up. I guess I don't know which kind to get. My pc is a Compaq Presario 5420 with an 1800 megahurtz processor and has Windows XP home.
I've got one USB hook up left, but I've got two firewire hook ups open as well.
As I said, I don't know if getting another hard drive would help with this video editing, but I'd like to check it out.
If anyone can help me some more on this issue, I'd appreciate it.
Tunes Man.

[Duster]

Hi,

Getting a external HD will not help your problem, as these will be slower than the HD you have all ready, USB 1.1 or USB 2 are both too slow for what you want, also only newer motherboards support USB 2, which is faster.

I had the same problem as you, but a new firewire card fix it.
Can you not try a different firewire card?

Good luck

The problem starts when I try to edit the video. The raw video after I first capture it from my camera is perfect. After I try to split the video and try putting some cross fade transitions in, then it starts to break up.
I'm still experimenting. Thanks, Tunes Man.

[mij]

How many HD have you got? for editing you should have a second HD, and always capture and edit to the drive that does not have windows installed on it.

mij

[Duster]

Hi,
Another IDE HD would be OK, but not an external one, that doesnt use the IDE port, as these are too slow IE USB.

[Duncan Craig]

External Hard Drives will work provided they are Firewire, I use multiple Lacie d2 drives to edit programmes and commercial all the time!

Don't but Maxtor to work with DV footage thay are total crap. Fine for general use though.

Tunes Man,

If I understand it correct, you have no problems with the RAW DV file that you captured. You see a pause after you have done a fade in you NLE application.
Have you tried rendering it and output it as a native DV file, or for a test a compressed quicktime file (sorry I am a Mac guy). Then look at that rendered file and take a look at the output. Is that pause still there?
I had similar problems on my Macintoshes with Adobe Premiere and learned to just ignore those effects whilst being inside the NLE and not having rendered the footage. Also when transferring it back to my TRV900 I never saw the problem again.
This is most likely due too your video card not being able to render in realtime....

Cheers,
Jean-Paul

At present I only have the one original HD that's in my pc. Sounds like it would be more trouble than it's worth to bother getting an external one. The firewire iput I bought is a Belkin IEEE 1394 PCI
Card. The software it came with is MGI Videowave 4. Is there a problem with that particular hardware and software, or is there a problem with the original video card that's in my pc? I'm actually at my wits end trying to figure this problem out. I've tried downloading EndItAll to see if it would close my programs but that
didn't work. I'm at the point now where I'm thinking about buying a seperate laptop computer to use just for the purpose of video editing.
To dejongj's question: if I'm to understand you correctly, do you mean did I render the edited footage to my dv camcorder to see if the frame drop outs were still there? Yes, they were. I only rendered it from one software; Movie Maker 2. As I said, I also have MGI Videowave which I'm going to try and experiment with some more. I have the trial version of Adobe Premiere 6, but it's so difficult to learn to use and I haven't even figured out how to create a transition with it yet.
What did you mean about my video card is not able to render in real time? Is this something I can correct? At this point in time I guess I'll just have to make videos without any fade transitions. It seems like I might just have to leave out most of the special effects until I can figure this out. Thanks for all the help,
Tunes Man.

Don't worry about a video card that is not able to render in realtime unless you are rich or do this for a living. It seems you are doing everything correct. As I only know Premier, Final Cut Pro, Boris and Cinerella I can't help you with the specific software Movie Maker.
Not trying to start a Windows versus Unix war, but this is really an area where I find Unix based systems (Mac and Linux on my budget) a lot more stable and easier to use.
For example when I was using Premier on my Vaio laptop under Windows 2000 I had lots of computer power related problems. I then 'upgraded' to Suse Linux with Cinerella and I had not a single problem at all, even the camera with firewire was plug-and-play....And boy was it fast....

[Duster]

HI,

If you try and send the footage back to your camcorder without adding effects, does this work? or do you still get the dropped frames?

Hello all. Tunes Man here. Update: I've been working with my pc and the video editing and I'm pleased to say that I've solved my problem, (at least one of them). It's thanks to you folks who have replied to my initial query and helped me with all of your helpful tips that allowed me to be successful in this endeavor. As we all know, computers, video equipment, software, firewires, dv- camcorders and everything that goes with these items can be enormously complex, especially for those of us who are just getting started in this field, and trying to figure all these things out can be a little intimidating until you get the hang of it.
I've found out a couple of things. First of all, Windows Movie Maker has some good editing features, but returning a finished edited movie back to my dv camcorder was a dissappointment. I've figured out how to do fades and all the effects and everything that I was having problems with by simply disabling my
virus protector, however when I viewed the movie on my tv, the quality was terrible! I guess I don't mean terrible, but it looked no better than a picture that I would get if I copied a regular VHS tape to another. When I edited a movie on MGI Videowave 4, it was like night and day! The quality was great. That is unfortunate because Windows Movie Maker had some features that I really liked. So that's where it is. I will not use Movie Maker.
I might try out some different editing softwares, but at least the main thing is is the problem with the frame drop outs has been solved. Thank you all, Tunes Man.

[Duster]

Hi,

Firstly, well done for fixing it

Originally posted by Tunes Man
however when I viewed the movie on my tv, the quality was terrible! I guess I don't mean terrible, but it looked no better than a picture that I would get if I copied a regular VHS tape to another. When I edited a movie on MGI Videowave 4, it was like night and day! The quality was great. That is unfortunate because Windows Movie Maker had some features that I really liked. So that's where it is. I will not use Movie Maker.

Strange, Did you use the AVI file format? WMM is normally OK for quality.

I'm sorry for being a newbie at this, but what do you mean by AVI file format? If there's a way that I could correct this problem and be able to use Movie Maker, I would rather. Actually what I did was copied an edited movie clip that I made on the MGI Videowave software, and I transferred it to Movie Maker to do further editing,
and the result was the bad looking video I had. Maybe I should start the whole process from start to finish on Movie Maker and see what happens.
Thanks again. Tunes Man.

[Duster]

Hi

Originally posted by Tunes Man
Maybe I should start the whole process from start to finish on Movie Maker and see what happens. [/B]

Yes, this is what I do, and I'm happy with the video.

When WMM starts up, it will ask you what file format to use, to record your camcorder footage in, use AVI format, as its the best one, but it is also uses the largest amount of HD space.
15 mins = 1 GB of HD space.

I know now what you mean by which format to choose for downloading the video. It gives you three choices and I use the best quality which also indicates; (reccomended). Whenever I'm on WMM2 and try to do a fade transition or any transition, the video starts to break up. I've tried closing programs and always disable my virus protector but it always does the same thing. My solution has been to just use the MGI Videowave 4 program that
came with my firewire gear, and use it for any fade transitions and some effects, then when I'm finished editing, I copy the movie clip and transfer it to WMM2 to add any other effects and/or
music backround. When I'm finished I then render the movie back
to my dv camcorder and I can then archive it to dvd. It's too bad I
can't just use one software to do all my editing, (MGI won't let me
add additional sound track), but as long as I can do all my editing using the two softwares I guess I'll have to make do.
Thanks for the help. Tunes Man.