Heavily processor dependent?

[steve771]

Is this app so processor dependent that you cannot get smooth video no matter the quality? I have tried everything from near vhs down to 28.8 modem quality. The sound seems smooth enough, but the video is halting (as in it stops, then picks up again, sometimes a few frames, but more like a slide show). Dropping the quality to 28.8 helped a bit, but it is still not useable (and 28.8 video it pretty hard on the eyes). Maybe it is my system? I have a Celeron 466 (overclocked to 582) w/ Geforce card. I am trying to run this to a Casio E125. Any thoughts?

[Ron Laird]

Steve,
I am running with a 500 Celeron, and have pretty good luck at near VHS. A few dropped frames when it starts out, but it clears up in a few seconds once the hard disk catches up. I start every recording 1 minute early so that it can stablize. I may also drop a frame with lots of movement, but it is very watchable. I do make sure that is the only thing the CPU is doing. I stop all background processing and leave it alone.

Ron

[David Rose]

I'd have though the problem is more eleated to disk speed than processor power.
Is you disk SCSI or IDE ? If it's IDE then is it running in DMA 100 mode ?
You can see this from Control Panel|System|Devices (Device Manager if W2K). Right click on the Drive controllers and see what mode they're running.
AFAICS Windows doesn't use the BIOS for disk writing, so even if the BIOS reports DMA mode, windows might use PIO mode if you don't have the corrct drivers.
I have snapstream on a dual Piii 866 and it doesn't use more than 35% on one processor.

[steve771]

Ok, thanks for the input, I'll give it another try & double check DMA setting.

[steve771]

Ok, in the interest if this will help anyone else... I unloaded ALL programs EXCEPT "systray" and "explorer" (do this by hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL & closing them off. It helped quite a bit, but still my best bet is the Ipaq High Standard. Decent quality & decent frame rate. It does do a lag at start, so padding the recording is almost a must. Still not the greatest on my Casio E125 though...

[PBMax]

Steve711 how much ram do you have? I'm having a laggin problem myself. I only have 64 MB of ram so I'm thinking of upgrading.

[steve771]

PBMax, I have 192MB RAM, so I don't think that is the issue with the program. (but upping it couldn't hurt & the prices right now for RAM are pretty good!)