Hello, I am dropping loads of frames on capture. Here are my specifications;

p4 1500 mhz processor
256 mb ram
master hard drive ; western digital 40 gb
slave hard drive ; western digital 120 gb
Geforce2 graphics card
Pinnacle studio 8 firewire card and software package (Updated recently)
Sharp vlwd250 mini dv camcorder
Windows XP

I have just installed the firewire card and 120gb hard drive. I have looked on loads of sites and forums and tried various advice like enable DMA, close preview screen during capture, stop background processes, set priority of studio 8 and other things which I am losing track of. Nothing has worked. Please could you help me.

You shouldn't really be experiencing frame drops with your setup - would you know the rating of your harddrives? i.e the spin speed of the disc (it'll probably be 5400 or 7200).

Have you tried capturing to both drives - you may find that one is faster than the other. You might also want to defragment both drives to speed things up a bit (but that's clutching at straws!)

Try using a freeware app for DV capture - Pinnacle Studio is reknowned for hogging system resources. There's a few links to cut down programmes in this thread http://www.videoeditingforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=10 (at the bottom)

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Hello there,
Thanks very much for your reply. The speed of the drive is 7200. I have tried to capture using ; Pinnacle, Premiere, Windows Moviemaker, DVIO, Win DV and Virtual Dub. They all worked and dropped frames except Virtual dub. Virtual dub did a test of both drives and said they dropped no frames. However when I actually tried to capture video with it it didnt capture anything at all. I'm sorry thats probably my fault but I have looked through all the help files and instuctions and settings options and cannot find any reason for it not to work. Anyway the fact that none of the other programs captured without dropping frames is saying some thing isnt it? I have optimised both disks today, no difference. The bigger drive is brand new and almost empty. By the way the amount of frames dropped is a third or more of the total. I haven't had any problems with the camera itself before. Such a large amount of frames; does this mean there is some essential mistake I am making or can that just happen anyway due to a minor problem?
I hope you can help as I have already jumped the gun and committed to myself to two different projects. I am desperate not to end up with egg on my face. Thank you again for your time.

You've done everything right: you've tried different apps, you've enabled DMA etc etc... In these situations I'm normally the kind of person that goes the whole hog and formats and re-builds a PC. But before that, lets clucth at some straws .

With your setup, there should be no dropped frames. Could I ask a dumb question? You are definately using your firewire connection and saving to your harddisk as a DV encoded AVI file? It's not an external capture card is it? Do you have any peripheral attached (external harddrive, printer etc) whilst capturing? Have you tried another Firewire cable? Could you test your camcorder on a friend's PC?

I'm REALLY, REALLY clutching at straws, but is it a PCI Firewire card? Have you tried uninstalling and moving to another PCI slot? You might also want to pop down to a PC retailer and buy the cheapest FireWire card you can lay your hands on - (if you have the same problem, just take it back)

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Good Afternoon - I have a similar problem with Premier and ULead. Lots of dropped frames. I have no problem with Windows Movie Maker. I use the firewire port through my Audigy 2 Sound Card. I was using the test version of Premier and ULead.

System Configuration
Athlon 2000+ XP
ATI 7000 4x AGP w/ 64 meg
40 GB ATA100 7200 rpm
Audigy 2 Soundcard (w/ firewire port)
512 MB mem (PC133 - my board takes 2700 DDR and I will upgrade to see if it makes a difference)

Camcorder is a Sony DRV-310.

The other question I have is why when I capture raw video does it take up so much space (6 gigs for 26 min)? How do I get the raw file down to move onto a DVD?

Hello again. I haven't posted for so long as I am skint and have had to let the problem linger. But there was a sale at my local computer shop and the man has given me another capture card for £1! I am going to try it tomorrow and then let you know.
To Mark Parrish : One thing I have read in all the advice for PC editing is that it is much better to capture footage to a hard drive of its own, separate from your main one and not with the editing software or apps on it.

You could try defragmenting your disk. One of the main reasons for a second disk for video capture (and prodcution) is that the you are not competing with system resources.