HELP!!! Video editing problems!?!?!

[henderson2001mis]

I have just built a new system--P4 2.26 Ghz, 512k cache, 533 FSB, 512 MB PC 1066 RAM, ATI Radeon 8500 LE. I have a Sony DCR-TRV30 digital camcorder and am using an Adaptec FireConnect 4300 firewire card. I have used this same firewire card and camera with my old system, a PII 450, so I know that those components are good. With the old system the video is smooth and works fine, but with my new system when I am capturing the video, it is distorted and jumpy. I can't edit video at all because it is so distorted. I have tried both MGI Vidoewave and Adobe Premiere. What else could I check to make this work??? It is really frustrating because I built this really fast machine mostly for video editing and it doen't work now. Help?!?!?!?!

Thanks!!!

 

[JustinLerner]

It seems very odd that a PII450 would capture without dropping frames, but your P4 2.26G has problems. In my opinion, your PII450 probably ran as a Standard PC with APM (Advanced Power Managment) while your new PC runs as an ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) PC. This is only a guess since I don't have your system to test. IRQ sharing via ACPI is probably the culprit in your case. The other possibility is that you don't have ATA Channel DMA drive access enabled. Enable DMA access first (In Windows 2000 via Control Panel, System properties, Hardware manager tab, Hardware, properties of ATA Controller, Primary and Secondary Channels, Advanced options tabs.)

You didn't specify an OS, but I will assume you are using 2000 or XP.
Under APM, you could force components to share IRQ's and infrequently if set to Auto in BIOS the board could assign multiple devices to the same IRQ's. With ACPI, there is a tendency to share IRQ's. If you have a video card and video capture on the same IRQ with your network or sound card, this may be the source of the problem.

To test if this is the cause, in the Control Panel, System properties, Hardware manager, disable every device like USB, NIC, sound, etc which uses the same IRQ as your Firewire 4300. Then attempt a video capture (without sound). If your Firewire card doesn't share the same IRQ with your video card or any other devices, you should be ok. In testing, I would also disable all USB controllers just for testing. If the capture works good after temporarily disabling devices, then I recommend either reinstalling the OS as APM or creating a separate hardware profile which does not enable the conflicting devices (for the System properties, Hardware tab, Hardware Profiles create a copy of the existing profile and name it Video Editing). Use this new profile whenever you want to capture video.

If ACPI IRQ sharing is the problem, I recommend reinstalling 2000/XP with APM and not ACPI. To do this you must change the BIOS to APM and reinstall the OS pressing either F5 or F6 at the setup prompt screen that asks if you have any SCSI device drivers.

 

[rbV5]

Actually I would say you have a driver problem. DV capture isn't terribly demanding on your rig (as you know from your P2 rig) all your components look to be ACPI compliant, which IMHO is superior to APM especially if you have a number of devices. Disabling devices for troubleshooting certainly makes sense however, and if that points to a culprit, its far more likely that it has a driver conflit rather than an IRQ conflict due to ACPI problems.

Have you benchmarked your rig to see if it performs on a par with comparable rigs? You do have the latest drivers for your motherboard and components installed.

Listing the rest of your rig specs may be helpful as well.

Good luck.