Frank said:
I just tried MovieMaker for the first time. During
capture it stops for a second then continues on, like a
freeze frame every few min. I know my computer and HD and
video card are fast enough. I loaded the newest drivers.
Any ideas?
There are a range of reasons why this can happen.
1. Has the hard drive been defragmented (Always recommended before a capture
unless you do as I do. I have a dedicated hard drive just for capturing.
When I start a new project all of the old stuff is deleted from the drive
and therefore no problems in the defrag area)
2. Is the cluster size on the hard drive big enough (NTFS defaults to 4Kb my
drive E is set at 64Mb) this means less overhead for the hard drives
firmware and a smoother write to hard drive (It makes the total capacity of
the drive slightly bigger, but works against you if there are many small
files)
3. Is the hard drive using the fastest possible DMA mode (If not, you will
never get good results. DMA 6 is the current fastest with an IDE but most
will at best run Mode 5. If your IDE drive is using PIO instead of DMA then
you will probably never get a good capture)
4. Is the buffer for the hard drive big enough (If its a modern hard drive
then it almost certainly is)
5. Are their too many "other" processes running in both background and
foreground (I can play a few simple games on mine whilst doing a
capture...but it really is not advised)
6. Getting really picky...does the CPU have enough on board memory in L1 and
L2 if appropriate and is the BIOS set up correctly. Incorrect settings here
can cause the CPU to badly handle the flow of data. If that happens it
really does not matter what else is going on. If you have tinkered with your
BIOS settings, and provided that there is no other reason why you should not
do so, and assuming all else has failed first, then you might want to
consider using the BIOS menu and re-set the BIOS to its default normal
settings. Unless you really know what you are doing and only if you have
replaced the CPU with a faster one, do not select the TURBO settings (or
whatever its called on your machine)
7. Does the computer have enough RAM, and is it fast enough (If the machine
is say no more than 12 - 24 months old then it may well be fast enough...but
is there enough of it)
It is almost always true that the faster speed of a computer for any given
task, is always the speed of the slowest component.
Hope that the above at least points you in the right direction.
All the best...........
