I currently have a WD 20.5 GIG 5400 RPM ATA/66 drive and when I try to capture video at full screen I am losing anywhere from 1 - 4% of frames. What kind of hard drive do I need so I will not lose any frames? Any help would be greatly appreciated Thanks

-- Cale Ferguson (5150@onramp.net), February 29, 2000

Answers

There are other factors to consider as well. eg. CPU speed, RAM size, TSR programs, interrupt sharing and etc. Your harddisk may not be the cause of your problem.

Daniel

-- Daniel S Lee (siangneng@sp.edu.sg), February 29, 2000.

I'm also using a WD HDD, Expert 20Gb, which may or not be the same as the one you have. I very rarely encounter dropped frames. One other factor I've found out the contributes to dropped frames is a crappy video signal with unstable sync. VHS-sourced material is notorious for this, especially those who think they can get away on a $50- special sale VHS player. If indeed you source from VHS or even 8mm (in any of its incarnations) use first generation material and on top of it use S-video connections. It's surprising to note, I've read somewhere, the typical amateur desktop video enthusiast has a video source that has an S-video output and his capture card which sports the same (ALL vidcap cards do) and then uses the stupid composite video connection anyway.

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@yahoo.com), February 29, 2000.

people are not using the super vhs if indeed they can,Thats horrible. I use the damn thing every chance i get. To answer the post your processor speed(mhz of system) also plays a big role. You could be trying to capture at a high rate but your system cannot handle the rate at which your trying to capture.

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), February 29, 2000.

You do not say what capture card your using. It sounds like an analogue system your running and that means it needs all the tweaks you can get into it.

If your into DV capture then there is something totally wrong because a lot of what the guys have said does not apply, for example I have a friend using a clocked up old pentium that staggers to a speed of 166 and he is getting drop free captures at 3.6Megs/second. My pentium is a 233MMX and that has no problem in DV capture. Both units however are running 7200rpm Maxtor hdd's

In analogue you run with defragged drives, TSR programs removed and you do not even take a breath - if you have done those things then your only option will be to back off the data rate to give the best results. You do not say what capture program your using and all of those things make a big difference, I have had 4 years of fighting an analogue system into submission and its not easy.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), March 01, 2000.