Annoying Frame Drop Capture Problem

Hi group,

I'm having a problem with capturing video onto a PC.

I've built a system for the sole purpose of capturing video from my Sky+
box. (Composite video input.) Thing is, it drops frames at a stupid
rate, rendering any captured video useless.

The system was originally an Athlon-850, and I could usually capture on
that with no problems at all - one or two dropped frames here and there,
but nothing that would cause any major problems or loss of sync. Since I
stuck in the 1900 and did a clean install, it's been hopeless.

I went for the g450 card as I'd not had any luck with seperate capture
cards and wanted to try a different approach.

System spec:

AMD AthlonXP 1900+
ABit NF7-S v2 Mainboard
1Gb RAM (2x 512)
20Gb System Drive (SATA Ch 1)
60Gb Capture Drive (SATA Ch 2)
DVD-ROM (Primary Master)
CD-RW (Secondary Master)
Matrox g450-eTV Graphics / Capture Card
Onboard nVidia Audio

I'm currently using Matrox's own PC-TV software just to get the thing up
and running before I invest in an capture/editing package. As soon as I
hit the Record button in the software, it tells me it's already dropped
5 frames! By the time 30 seconds have gone by, it's dropped another 27
or so frames, knocking the audio-video sync out.

Matrox's software gives me the option of capturing in MPEG2 mode, or YUV
mode, neither of which work particularly well.

Surely an XP1900 is fast enough for capturing video without losing
frames? I'm running the latest nVidia chipset drivers, latest Matrox
drivers.

The 20Gb drive has been defragged and the 60Gb has been clean formatted,
which made no difference at all.

Any ideas?

(also posted to uk.comp.homebuilt)

Cheers,
Dave
--
(remove spamblock or reply to group)

I have tried and been sucessful capturing video with Ati 128 Rage Pro VIVO and Win98se,
1800+ cpu, 360mb ram, 60gb pata drive (25mb/sec write), Mpeg2, 720 x 480, 6mbit rate
in ntsc.

Also do you have your sata drives with DMA active? I don't know if they have that,
that may slow the drivers down, if not selected in the systems menu.

clueless about it, 1 gb memory should suffice, is the system optimised? turn off all
non-essential tasks.


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