[CUBE] TV Recording

[M. Jeffrey Coco]

Yes, but take that thought one step further.  If I'm not mistaken, Unix 
has a pretty sophisticated virtual memory routine. So your RAM could 
also be at issue for  two reasons,  if it's getting maxed out and the 
system is writing to the hard disc via virtual memory. This would 
certianly contribute to the dropped frames. I'd still try using the 
internal as a test. You can always move recorded shows to archive on 
the external after they're done if the internal is tight on space.

My big concern with files that get this big, is backup. Don't know 
about you, but I've spent the better part of a month, on  and off, 
ripping my CD collection, which is around 40 gig. I'd rather not have 
to do that again. So in addition to my 80 gig internal, and the first 
120 gig external, I'm thinking about buying a second external for 
dedicated back up.


On Saturday, February 15, 2003, at 06:12 AM, Rob In der Maur wrote:

> Thanks Jeff for your view on this. What I also noticed is that after a 
> reboot things are working much better; I mostly encouter the drop of 
> frames during TV capture when I have my Cube running for several days. 
> To me this looks like a memory problem: lots of apps might have leaked 
> memory during those days and have not returned that memory; hence the 
> memory I can use without swapping will diminish over time. As a result 
> more swapping, slower machine.
> Am I correct in assuming that leaked memory can only be released when 
> you do a reboot?
>
> cheers,
> Rob
>
> On Friday, Feb 14, 2003, at 13:12 Europe/Amsterdam, M. Jeffrey Coco 
> wrote:
>
>> Rob - I'd give recording on the internal the first shot. Why not just 
>> try a 10 minute test?  When I try to capture DV footage in iMovie to 
>> my FW external, even though it's a 7200rpm with a 911 chipset, blah, 
>> blah, blah....it still drops frames. I hear you on the music 
>> collection - mine's 40gig, and I'll probably be moving it to the 
>> external.
>>
>> I use an EyeTv. Files don't take up as much space as it uses MPEG1. 
>> An hour takes up about 1.2gig, but I'm sure that your picture quality 
>> is far superior.
>>
>> Good Luck,
>> Jeff Coco
>>
>> On Friday, February 14, 2003, at 04:57 AM, Rob In der Maur wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Cube experts,
>>>
>>> I need your advice on the following: I have a Formac Studio DV/TV 
>>> convertor which allows me to watch television on my Cube. I also 
>>> should be able to record TV through this device.
>>> When I'm recording, things start quite ok, but eventually video and 
>>> sound are getting choppy. It seems like the Cube cannot cope with 
>>> the amount of data it has to capture.
>>> I'm using Formac's native application for it as well as a freeware 
>>> application named Vidi. Both application just spit out the incoming 
>>> TV signal to digital video without doing any compression. It means 
>>> that 5 minutes of TV approx. generate 1GB of data. It all goes to an 
>>> external LaCie Firewire harddisk of 120MB.
>>> Now I just want get some feeling what is the root of all evil here:
>>> - is it the external firewire disk (should I optimize it one way or 
>>> another or should I use the internal IDE drive for capturing); I 
>>> also have my whole music library on it
>>> - is it OS X which simply cannot handle this
>>> - is it my Cube which cannot handle the troughput on the Firewire 
>>> port
>>> - is it my processor (500Mhz) and will an upgrade help
>>> - is it something else?
>>>
>>> Any advice appreciated.
>>>
>>> cheers
>>> Rob
>>
>>
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> 
> Rob In der Maur
>
>
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