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The World’s Top Tips for

Pinnacle Studio Video Editing software

(with some Avid Liquid snippets)












Studio Capture Tips

Capture tips for all systems

Avoid blanks on your source tape - caused, for example, by removing the tape and replacing it to continue video record later.  Wind the tape back a second or so before starting to record new video.

NOTE: Pre-striping blank tapes is a waste of time when using Studio products: ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS follow the above tip to ensure there will be no breaks or blank spots in the time code.

 

Blank spots cause trouble!  If you do encounter a blank spot, wind the tape on to 5-6 seconds inside the new section, and capture with a new name.  Thus if the first capture on the tape is 'Our Holiday 2004', then name the next section something like 'Our Holiday 2004 Part 2'

If you drop frames during capture, shut down all other unnecessary programs running in the background (such as a virus checker) - but remember to enable them again afterwards!

Dropped frames during capture

Dropped frames mean, usually, that some other PC activity is interfering with the capture process, or  the hard driive - an external USB drive perhaps - cannot cope with the throughput.  You can reduce the possibility of dropped frames by cutting out ‘background’ activities - and/or by increasing the RAM.  The following steps could also prove useful ..

  • TURN OFF THE PREVIEW WINDOW DURING CAPTURING - On the Capture menu (in Capture mode), remove the check mark against "Display video while capturing". This means to watch the video whilst capturing, you will need to view it on your camcorder.
  • CLOSE DOWN ALL BACKGROUND TASKS - Before launching Studio DV, hold down the Ctrl, Alt and the Delete key. This opens the 'Close Program' window. Highlight an application listed in the window except Explorer or  Systray and select 'End Task'. You can only close one at a time so do this for all applications listed in Close Programs except Explorer or  Systray: you need those!. Note that some of the applications may control necessary devices on your system, so if a something no longer works, you will have to reboot your system, and include that application as one of those to be left running. Note that, you can switch off programs that you don't want to run when you boot up, as follows...

 

  • Select Start> Run on the toolbar at the bottom of the desktop
  • Type MSCONFIG in the box, and click OK
  • In the System Configuration Utility window, click on the Startup tab called
  • Remove all checks from the boxes except for System Tray (SysTray.exe) - and any device you know is absolutely necessary.

 

  • DEFRAGMENT THE HARD DRIVE - Hard drives can become fragmented over time, so it is important to defragment the hard drive on a regular basis. Alternatively, if you use a second hard drive for your captures (as you should, with Studio DV), and work on only one movie at a time, you can delete everything on the drive.
  • ENABLE HARD DRIVE UDMA/ATA33 - To check if UDMA/ATA33 is enabled on your hard drive, use the following steps.

 

  • Go to the System Device Manager
  • Double-click on the Heading "Disk Drives"
  • Double-click on the device GENERIC IDE TYPE xx (xx is some 2 digit number, usually 01, 02, etc)
  • Click on the Settings tab.
  • In the section marked Options, put a check in front of DMA.

 

NOTE: If you do NOT have a selection called DMA, then most likely you do not have the UDMA driver loaded or your hard drives do not support UDMA (or both). Please contact either your computer manufacturer or the hard drive vendor.

  • UPGRADE RAM - If you have less than 64MB of memory in your computer, upgrading to 64MB or more (128MB is best) will probably improve performance to allow capturing with no dropped frames.

 

  • You'll get a message stating that you may want to contact your hard drive vendor to ensure that the setting is supported. Click OK.
  • You'll be prompted to reboot your system. Click OK.
  • Run Studio, click on the Capture tab, then click on Settings. Click on the Test Data Rate button. Typical UDMA hard drives will give reads and writes of 10,000 to 15,000 Kbytes/second.
  • Now try to capture.

 

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Capture tips for all systems