dropping frames
 

Quick question. I own a DVX 100 camera which has been working perfectly for the last two years. However lately when I try firewire my footage over to my G5 into FCP 5 it keeps dropping frames. I thought the problem was that heads need cleaning, so I cleaned them but it still doesn’t work. This has never happened before. Anyone know what the problem is?? Cheers!

Dropped frames are almost always a computer problem. I have found several useful things to try. For me, I always run a free program called "EndItAll" before capturing video from any camera. This program turns off all unnecessary background programs which are running on your PC and makes it less likely that your processor will be busy while you are trying to capture video. I use the Sony Vegas editting program, so I turn on the computer, run "EndItAll", then open Vegas and capture the video. Also, make sure that "Scheduled Tasks" on your computer are disabled, so the processor won't suddenly go off and do something else. Finally, in Vegas, making the video monitor window smaller will greatly reduce the amount of processor resources that are being used. I watch the video on the camera LCD and make capture decisions from that with only a small monitor window on the computer screen. You can find "EndItAll" by Googling that name. Hope this is helpful.

Cheers Mark. im using a mac but ill try it out.

maybe your firewire cable went bad?? your hard driive may be fragmented. did you try to repair the disk permissions or run de-frag software???