Frame drops even with TBC?
 

Hello!

I am trying to digitize TV recordings using NV-HS1000 and TBC-3000.

I have been digitizing for a while (70+ tapes) but never encountered frame drops. Suddenly I have now encountered little frame drops during capture using VirtualDub.
Currently I have tested using following methods with the same tape:

1 hr recording with NV-HS1000 TBC ON +TBC-3000 = 1-6 dropped frames
1 hr recording with NV-HS1000 TBC OFF + TBC 3000 = 0 dropped frames
Is it possible that line TBC can cause frame drops?
Also I have been reinstalling drivers etc..

My capture workstation is dual-core P4@3,0 GHz w/ ATI AIW 9000 with drivers downloaded from this forum and it's running Win XP Pro 32-bit SP2.

How can I fix the problem without worrying about dropped frames during 4 hr capture and dealing with problems caused by this later on?

Try 1 hr recording with just NV-HS1000 TBC ON.

70+ tapes is a lot of transfer footage. It's wise to check / clean the VCR's tape path as we go. It's basic hands on maintenance. Not saying not doing this is the problem but it could be.

Let me guess, hdd almost full ? (even 70% that's a lot)

Hello!

Thank you for your replies.

VCR-s heads have been cleaned - no fix.

HDD is not full. Defraged and separate from OS.

I tried with JVC HR-DVS1 and countered same problem..after 45 mins 2 dropped frames were reported.

I will now try to capture AVI with MMC. Will report results ASAP.

You must identify what has changed. Something had to change. It's never "nothing has changed".

This doesn't matter. What happens now is that people will give the dumb advice to change capture software. As if it has anything to do with anything. Not it. Never it. Not in this exact scenario.

It depends on the TBC. Some "TBCs" are lousy, and shouldn't even be referred to as a TBC. But the TBC-3000? No. It should never cause drops. It's a solid model. The 4th gen especially. This assumes nothing is bad on it, be it caps or power. Where did that 3000 come from? If eBay, then who knows. Most TBCs do need some refurb these days, before putting back into regular use. If origin is suspect, remove it, try to capture without.

For dropped frames, also never it.

P4? Which exact CPU? P4 boards and RAM can go bad, though usually AMD suffers here most. Probably not it, edge case scenario.

The OS drive is often ugly. For example, if Windows temp files are generated on a bad sector, it will cause the OS to hang, even small hangs. Those can cause drops. Seen that. Scan the OS drive, full scan. Note that Windows XP scans are usually worthless ("no errors found" and yet errors exist), you need a good 3rd party utility like HD Tune.

Yes, always run multiple tests, eliminate variables one by one.

While decent advice, 70 tapes is not a lot. Most VCR maintenance is for multiples of 1000 hours of use, not (assuming SP here) 140. If you overclean, you still wear the heads. Don't do that. There is a balance between dirty (out of maintenance), or doing more harm than good by being a video head clean freak. Heads are rarely video drop issues anyway. Rarely as in essentially never.

Good guess. :congrats:

Never cleans video heads unless the error is specifically a video head issue. Far too often, "clean the video heads" is the snake oil fix-all that always fails. That's not it. That's never it. Video heads errors are very specific error, as it relates to image issues (and reduced tracking range). Never anything else.

Still try another drive.
Even run a test capture on the OS drive.

Then it's not VCRs. The leaves wiring (yes, these can cause drops!), TBC (again, not likely), more wiring, capture card, capture software (unlikely), computer hardware, computer OS.

I don't see how that would change anything. At very most, if it were somehow VirtualDub, the underlying cause would still be a bad spot on the OS drive affecting the software. But I just don't see this happening, as VirtualDub would likely not even load if bad HDD.

Well the one thing that changed was that I keep changing my HDD-s as they keep getting full when constantly recording and having less time to cut them.

It seems that it was faulty for this operation(?) (all tests passed successfully though). I will try to compare and share the results of HD Tune made for both working and non-working HDD.