Raid settings for video capture

[bebo77]

I've a Asus P4PE with Firewire and RAID/SATA onboard
During operation of video capture from my DV camcorder (using firewire controller IRQ22) i have notice a very lot of "disturb" in Avi file when i save it in my new Maxtor Diamond Max plus 9 Sarial ATA (1 HD Raid 0 Array - block size 64Kb on Promise Fast Track 376 IRQ23).
These video "disturbs" disappear when I save AVI in my IDE disk IBM DTLA 307030.
The transfer rate R/W are 28/18 Mb/s for IBM (IDE drive) and 43/52 Mb/s for Maxtor (SATA Drive). Bacause i'm capturing long video i would use the Maxtor disk. What can i do? There's somethings to change (Es. IRQ, Bios, Array, Blocksize)?
Thank you for your attention

 

[lunitic]

Raid settings should be ok, your transfer rates are high enough. Except maybe DMA mode, is DMA enabled on your Promise controller (I'm not really sure if this applies to a promise SATA controller)

Does the problem occur while capturing or while playing the AVI file?
Did you copy the captured AVI file to the IBM drive when the problem disappeared? Or did you recapture?
What file system (Fat or NTFS) do you use?
What's the CPU load when capturing / playing?
Do you have any other problems with the drives (funny noises, weird delays, errors)?
What's your system disk? (capturing should preferably not been done on the system disk)

 

[bebo77]

-The promise Array Management Utility say Mode settings UDMA mode 5.
-The problem occour while capturing only (or if i play a AVI captured in this way on SATA Drive).
-I recapture the file in IBM drive and no problem!
-the file system is NTFS for SATA drive, NTFS for IBM (OS Partition), Fat 32 For IBM (partition i've used for capturing).
-The Cpu is P4 2.53GHz. The load during play is 10-20%, during capture in IBM IDE is 10-25%, during capture in Maxtor SATA is 11-22%
-I don't have any others problems with the drive SATA.
-My System drive is the primary partition (NTFS) of IBM IDE drive

 

[lunitic]

Nothing funny here. I wouldn't use FAT32 for capturing, but I assume this was only for testing purposes.

Do you get any dropped frames while capturing? Does your SATA drive share resources with other devices (interrupt esp.)? Could you try to describe the disturbances a bit more precise?
(For now i'd bet on a shared interrupt problem...)


On second thought: did you try to capture on the IBM and copy the file to the Maxtor and vice versa? - just to make sure the problem is capture-related and not playback.

 

[bebo77]

The IRQ 23 of Fast Track is the same of PCI USB Host controller, while The VIA IEEE1394 controller use IRQ 22 as Fireport40 scsi host adapter(for Scanner) and ACPI system.
No dropped frames. The disturbs are some like square portion of screen that "flash" changing color in green or red and some time there are also some audio "clic" at high volume.
perhaps in previous message i don't explain that playing video file captured in SATA drive problems are the same.
Problems disappears when I play file captured in IBM drive or when I play video directly fom camcorder.
How can i change IRQ for Raid/Sata... I've no option in BIOS to change IRQ for onboard deviceses and in Windows 2k Pro isn't possible for ACPI system...
Thank's a lot for your time

 

[lunitic]

Often you can resolve a resource conflict with a PCI device by swapping it to another slot. Meaning that for the conflict to be resolved it should be with a PCI device.

My system allows me to reset the PnP assignments (I cant remember exactly the name of the option), on the next boot the bios will build a new assignment table. Win2k will respond by reconfiguring your hardware.

My best guess so far is that the SATA drive is somehow conflicting with the IEEE1394 controller. I don't like ACPI & IEEE1394 sharing irqs. But it could also be a software conflict. Could you move the firewire controller to another PCI slot (or is this onboard also?).


I believe there were numerous problems involving ACPI. If your system is up-to-date (hardware, firmware & drivers, os) this shouldn't be a problem. Still, you could give it a try... disable ACPI and fiddle around with interrupts.

a late thought, needless I hope, but are your firmware, drivers etc of the latest version?

 

[bebo77]

Also the IEEE 1394 is onboard and the irq i've told you is the same as factory.
The drivers are the latest i've downloaded the new bios from asus so I have something to try...
Disabling ACPI i should reinstall windows? I can still have power function like stand by?? Do you think Windows XP have something different that can help me in this way?

 

[lunitic]

No need to reinstall Windows. You lose advanced power functions. You could enable DPMI, I think this supports soft power off & standby modes but I haven't used it for a long time.

Now if I remember well one of the difference between ACPI and DPMI is that ACPI manages the PNP resources, where DPMI defers to windows. So when using ACPI Windows can't help you.