Pinnacle 8.12.7.0: Dropping frames problem

J

jwellings

Guest
Hi
Have used Pinnacle successfully in the past on my laptop.
Just gone to use it now for first time in a year and on capturing video from camcorder it's dropping frames like crazy. After a few minutes the frames dropped had exceeded 1000.
I've seen the thread about enabling DMA on my PC. I'm using XP SP2, and DMA is enabled already.
I've got loads of hard disc space, over 40Gb.
I've also done "data rate test" and it's giving a read rate of 876022 KB/Sec and a write rate of 7885 Kb/Sec, message says Drive C is capable of capturing video.
Any ideas why I'm now dropping frames when previously it worked fine?
Only thing I can think of is something's changed on the laptop in the year since I last used Pinnacle successfully.
 
Have you got a lot of applications running in the background you didn't have before ?

Try shutting those that are down & defrag the hard drive , then try again.
 
Hi thanks for reply.
No not a lot of applications in background. Those that were I closed down.
Have defragged as you suggested but frames are still being dropped.
Any other ideas?
JW.
 
Disable power save modes
disable screensaver
disable all programs that are not needed, including antivirus & firewall. I use a great, free program to do this called EndItAll2. Do a search for it or I can send you a copy if you PM me your e-mail address.

Mark.
 
Hi
I tried Enditall but to no avail.
Am still getting hundreds of dropped frames.
Also tried reinstalling Studio but no luck.
Any other ideas anyone?
Cheers,
JW.
 
I used Pinnacle for a while but had the same problems.
I did a bit of research and found that this is a common problem.
I've since started using Magix Movie Edit Pro and have found it steady as a rock with a decent range of features.
 
Make sure you have all the available updates for your version of Pinnacle Studio as it is well known for patchy performance.

Mark.
 
1. Close Pinnacle Studio and open only Video Capture Tool which should come with it.
2. Pull out Network Cable and stop any virus scanning software (a must)
3. Close all programs and bacground tasks
4. Optionally defragment your hard drive

WinDV (http://windv.mourek.cz/) is a best tool to do captures from CamCorders (instead of Pinnacle Capture tool). You can still use Pinnacle afterwards to edit captured video.
 
I had this problem about a year ago. I purchased a new case for my pc and fitted all the bits back in and the dropping frames started.

I sorted the problem by moving the Graphics and Firewire cards into different slots on the motherboard. Why did this work? Who knows.

Maybe coincidence, but it worked for me.

Hope this helps.
 
The graphics card AGP slot and the closest PCI slot often share PC resources. Therefore useing this PCI port for the firewire card would not allow it the full use of the MoBo bandwidth during video capture.

The above is only a possible cause, but IMO it is always worth trying to avoid useing the closest PCI slot to the AGP slot.

Mark.
 

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