External Harddrive: improve quality?

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External Harddrive: improve quality?

Postby LeperDoctor » Tue Feb 19, 2008 4:04 am

Whenever I convert Vobs to .Avi, the .avi files are all jerky and skip. I read a FAQ that mentioned lack of space on your computer can lead to dropped frames, resulting in the jerky / skipping scenes like I have. In that case, increasing memory should work.

But my computer is older, and I need the programs / files that I have on it; I can't delete. But I found out about external hard drives the other day. Would adding an external hard drive better held the video quality, or is it useless? I'm only really considering it for AMV-making help.
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Postby Zarxrax » Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:17 am

1. Lack of space does not cause "jerkiness".
2. More space won't improve video quality.
3. Jerkiness can be cause either by slow hard drive or slow processor.
4. External hard drives tend to be not as fast as internal ones (someone correct me if I'm wrong) so it may lead to jerkiness in itself.
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Postby BasharOfTheAges » Tue Feb 19, 2008 9:31 am

If you have so little HDD space that the system starts thrashing from the pagefile it will slow your system down. But we're talking about having HDD space on the magnitude of what you have for RAM. It is most likely a combination of processor / HDD seek time.
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Postby Kariudo » Tue Feb 19, 2008 9:56 am

yes, external hard drives are markedly slower than their internal brethren.

Lack of space won't be causing this problem, but you will need more space to store your clips (or the finished version of your amv). Internal hard drives are cheaper than external, but if you're not sure what needs to be done (for installing an internal hard drive) I'd just stick with an external.

What you may be experiencing is the multiple angle problem
a few frames will play, and then the same few frames will repeat, then some new frames and then they repeat again.

If that sounds familiar, then you need to re-rip your vobs.
In dvdDecrypter, use ifo mode instead of file mode
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Postby TaranT » Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:08 am

Kariudo wrote:yes, external hard drives are markedly slower than their internal brethren.

Not necessarily...(use eSATA).
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Postby LeperDoctor » Wed Feb 20, 2008 4:17 am

Kay, awesome! I'll re-rip the Vobs, and if they're still odd, I'll see what I can do about my processor speed. Thanks for all the help!
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Postby Zarxrax » Wed Feb 20, 2008 6:50 am

How fast is your processor? And is this on a laptop by any chance?
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Postby LeperDoctor » Wed Feb 20, 2008 10:11 pm

Zarxrax wrote:How fast is your processor? And is this on a laptop by any chance?


This is on a laptop, actually. I have a Pentium 4 CPU 2.2 GHz processor, if that means anything. <.<;;
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Postby BasharOfTheAges » Wed Feb 20, 2008 10:14 pm

Kariudo probably had i right with the multiple angle problem or it's a similar type of bad rip issue. I edited with an external HDD on an older laptop for years without the kind of problems you're describing.
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Postby Zarxrax » Thu Feb 21, 2008 2:52 pm

In the case of a laptop, adding an external hard drive might help. Laptops typically contain very slow hard drives.
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Postby Kariudo » Thu Feb 21, 2008 8:20 pm

it's better than having no space, but my laptop with an Athlon64 3200+ took roughly 20-25 minutes to index a disk worth of .vobs when they were stored on my 7200rpm external USB2.0 (as opposed to about 7 minutes on my 4200rpm internal)
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Postby Zarxrax » Thu Feb 21, 2008 9:01 pm

Kariudo wrote:it's better than having no space, but my laptop with an Athlon64 3200+ took roughly 20-25 minutes to index a disk worth of .vobs when they were stored on my 7200rpm external USB2.0 (as opposed to about 7 minutes on my 4200rpm internal)


Are you sure your laptop was using usb 2.0?
I thought my old pc had it, but it really didn't. When I got my new pc built and started transferring files to usb, they were going like 100x faster, and I was like O_O
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Postby Willen » Fri Feb 22, 2008 2:24 am

eSATA > FireWire 800 > FireWire 400 > USB 2.0 > USB 1.1

And for some older systems (mainly Apples) you have SCSI, which is found more often used with professional servers and workstations. Also used is Fibre Channel and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), not to mention Networked Attached Storage (NAS) which isn't really an external drive but a file server (which can itself be connected to external drives) but provides similar functions.

USB 2.0 (aka. Hi-Speed USB) can have speeds vary quite wildly. I have a memory card reader/floppy disk drive combo unit, a portable memory card reader that plugs directly into a USB port (no cable needed), and of course my digital camera (Sony DSC-V3). All of them are USB 2.0 High Speed devices, but reading the same Memory Stick, the camera is the fastest, followed by the plug-in card reader, with the built-in combo floppy/media reader bringing up the rear.

Even different computers can have different results due to the type of chipset/controller that is used, the drivers installed, and other design factors. It's possible that on the same computer, you might get better transfer speeds from certain USB ports than others due to them using a better USB controller. Many older motherboards had USB 1.1 built-in with the board's chipset and USB 2.0 added on with a secondary chip. Usually Windows XP will warn you if your USB 2.0 device is plugged into a USB 1.1 port.
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