P4C800 Deluxe firewire dropped frames

When using Pinnacle Studio 8.10 to capture DV from my new Sony TRV80 camcorder it drops about 10 frames per minute. I have done all the typical things to ensure that the non-required processes are stopped. I ran EndItAll, defragged the disk, configured windows GUI for "performance" and it still droppes frames. I can capture DV to my old P III 1GHz computer using the same software with no dropped frames.

Pinnacle has provided help and I followed their advice to get things this far. When I started last week, it was dropping 100 frames per minute.

This is a fast computer, it should not drop any frames.

This system is a ASUS P4C800 Deluxe 2.6GHz Pentium 4 overclocked to 3.25GHz. It runs mem86 over night. It runs Prime95 over night. The CPU temp is 46 deg. C. while running two instances of Seti@home(ie. full load).It has been very stable. I have the latest of all drivers and there are NO PCI cards installed.

So, I started to "tune it down" and I found that if the "Performance Mode" is set to "Auto" in the BIOS or if it not set to the standard frequencies of 200MHz FSB and 400MHz memory, then it drops frames. I had to set everything to standard in order to get the firewire port to work without droping frames.


So, I installed a PCI firewire card and set the overclocks back to their “normal” settings of FSB to 250MHz and the memory at 320MHz and all is fine. I can capture video through the PCI firewire port without dropping any frames.

So, the bottom line is that there is a problem with the integrated firewire port on the ASUS P4C800 Deluxe when it is overclocked. ASUS has been informed.

Has anyone else had a similar problem?

I've had nothing but problems with the onboard firwire port when I try to transfer songs to my iPOD. I also have a P4C800 Deluxe and a 2.6 oc'd to 3.25 and I'm always getting timeout errors and even BSOD once in a while when I transfer a large amounts of songs. My system is totally stable running Prime and Memtest....I even got a replacement iPOD thinking that it was the problem.....nope, same stuff happening with the replacemet. I haven't tried a PCI firewire card but I'm going to be getting one in a few days. IMO, there definitely are problems with the integrated firewire port on the ASUS P4C800 Deluxe.

Greg -- Thanks for the informative and detailed post. I have extensive experience capturing from my Sony TRV30 on 3 different machines. I use EditStudio 4 (www.puremotion.com) for capture and editing. My P4C800 Deluxe system is by far the most powerful of the 3 systems, but is the only one which gives me significant dropped frame problems (although not nearly as bad as yours had been). I am convinced that the root cause of the problem is the Via firewire chip which it uses. I have seen posts in several forums over the last couple of years indicating that people have found Via firewire chips (and some of their other products) to behave very erratically, particularly in digital video work.

I am in the process of ordering a pci firewire card, TI chip-based, from FirewireDirect.com. I suspect it will fully resolve the symptoms I am seeing, which I've reduced from one or several dropped frames per few minutes, to about one or two per half-hour. Besides the things you mention in your post which you found reduced your dropped frame rate, if you or anyone has AOL installed on your system, use task manager to disable its background process "wanmpsvc.exe". Doing this made a big difference in dropped frame rate for me, even though of course I was not running AOL (or anything else network related) while capturing.

Also, I capture to a second internal hard drive in my systems, or occasionally to an external firewire hard drive. I don't know if you are doing this or not. If not, it seems reasonable to expect that having a single hard drive simultaneously support Windows, plus the editing program, plus writing of the captured file will worsen any tendency for frame-dropping.

Thanks again,
-- Al

After I got things working I used TaskInfo to see that Studio 8 was only using 8% of the CPU time while capturing DV. This was while I was running two instances of Seti@home.

So, it doesn't require that much CPU power to capture DV. But, you have to have a fast hard drive. Most recent drives will do fine.

I have only one drive in this system, so it was capturing to the same drive as all the software was running from. Although, I did install a spare drive and captured to it for testing but it had no effect on the dropped frames.

I hope ASUS realizes that they need to fix this problem with the integrated firewire port. But, it is only a problem when the P4C800 is overclocked. I could capture DV using the integrated firewire port all day without dropping a single frame, as long as I was running at stock speeds.

Thanks again. I should have mentioned in my previous post that I am using a P4B 2.4 gHz (533 MHz FSB) (temporarily, until Intel's next round of price cuts occurs in a few days!). Under this circumstance, it doesn't seem to make any difference whether I overclock or not, in terms of dropped frames. I normally run overclocked to 2.8 gHz, which is stable with both Prime95 and Memtest86. Best regards,
-- Al

I have the saem problem with Studio 8.
Interesting, if I use DVD Workshop, no issues.

Well...I got a firewire card. iPOD works fine.....no problems whatsoever. So there's definitley a problem with the onboard firewire afaic

Is it a Firewire/RAID conflict of some sort?

Hi

ctal pointed me to this thread in another forum (Asus orientated) as I too am having problems with Dropped Frames using Adobe Premiere Pro and using one or other of the onboard Firewire ports on my M/B. Using the port on my Audigy 2 ZS results in faultless captures but that's not the point is it?

The P4C800 Deluxe and the P4C800-E Deluxe are expensive, if not top of the range M/B's and this problem lies quite clearly at the door of Asus. From my research this problem affects many people some have the problem and some don't.

Would people like to comment on whether they are using SATA drives and/or using a RAID setup and if so, which RAID controller(s) they are using and at the same time indicate whether or not they are experiencing dropped frames using the onboard firewire port(s).

The reason I ask this is because a couple of people have suggested a Firewire/RAID conflict and it would be good to get to the bottom of this problem as it really does seem a basic but serious issue.

I have started some feedback to Asus on this matter - it remains to be seen what, if anything I hear from them, but I will post anything I get.

TIA

Paul

Rozel -- Thanks for your efforts. My system drive is a WD Raptor 10,000 rpm serial ata drive, connected to ICH5 SATA (non-RAID) on my P4C800 Deluxe. I also have two WD 120gB 8mB cache 7200 rpm parallel ATA drives connected as master and slave on the primary IDE channel. The Promise RAID controller is disabled. I get about one or two or three dropped frames per half hour of capturing, regardless of which of the 3 drives I capture to.
Regards,
-- Al

Re: Is it a Firewire/RAID conflict of some sort?

rozel said:

Would people like to comment on whether they are using SATA drives and/or using a RAID setup and if so, which RAID controller(s) they are using and at the same time indicate whether or not they are experiencing dropped frames using the onboard firewire port(s).

The reason I ask this is because a couple of people have suggested a Firewire/RAID conflict and it would be good to get to the bottom of this problem as it really does seem a basic but serious issue.

Click to expand...

I'm not using RAID...just the primary IDE channel for my HD's...

Hi again,

Just had a very helpful response in a NG who's pointed out the basic fact that it could be an IRQ problem!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sure enough on checking things, the M/B manual (page 2-15) clearly states that slot 4 shares the same IRQ assignment as the Onboard 1394 controller!

This then is probably it, as after checking, I had installed my Audigy 2 ZS in slot 4 and probably takes precidence over the onboard controller.

I can't check things for certain as I'm changing things around somewhat later this week - I am removing my internal pci modem from slot 2 and replacing it with a USB model. I will though, be installing a pci Pinnacle DV500 card so my thoughts now turn to what slots do I use for my: -

1. Audigy 2 ZS
2. Pinnacle DV500

having reference to the table on page 2-15 of the manual.

Comments anyone?

Paul

Hi Paul -- fyi, I have nothing in PCI slot 4, and "system information" shows no conflicts or overlaps for my Via firewire chip with any interrupt, i/o port, or memory address used by any other device. However, my dropped frame problem is not nearly as severe as others have reported; I only get about 1 to 3 dropped frames per half hour, as I indicated in a previous post. Best regards,
-- Al

When I made the original post, I had NO PCI cards installed and was dropping many frames per minute. I had to set everything back to stock speeds in order to get the integrated firewire port to work. I even had the disable the "Performance Mode" in the BIOS, at stock speeds, to get it to work.

Now, I am running the "new System" indicated below with a PCI firewire card in slot 4 (4th away from the AGP slot), "Performance Mode" is still disabled in the BIOS. PAT is enabled & HT is enabled and no dropped frames.