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  • Marvel G200-TV and Promise Ultra66

    Marvel G200-TV audio recording is distorted when recording video to an ATA66 Hard Drive connected to a Promise Ultra66 PCI IDE controller with audio quality set to 44kHz stereo.

    When I record video with audio quality set to CD-quality (44 kHz stereo), the sound is garbled and has ticks and pops. If I remove my Promise Ultra66 controller and connect the hard drive to the onboard ATA33 IDE controller, the sound records fine, but the video has dropped frames (when recording highest quality video). I have tested the Promise Ultra66 controller and it appears to be working perfectly (other than this problem).

    My system configuration is as follows:
    MB: FIC PA2013 rev. 2.0 w/ VIA Apollo MVP3 chipset, 100 MHz FSB, 2 MB Cache, Socket7
    CPU: AMD K6-2 400 MHz
    BIOS: Award (date: 06/99)
    OS: Windows 95 OSR2 (with latest updates)
    Sound: Diamond Monster MX300 PCI
    HD: Western Digital Expert 18GB, 7200 RPM, 2 MB cache, ATA66
    Video: Matrox Marvel G200-TV AGP
    Video Drivers: beta 5.15
    Video Tools: beta 1.5
    Marvel G200-TV BIOS: 1.6-20
    Software: Avid Cinema 1.0 for Marvel G200-TV
    IRQ: Marvel G200 at IRQ5. There are no IRQ conflicts.

    I tried Matrox video driver 4.33 with video tools 1.21 and still had the same audio recording problem. I tried Avid Cinema'a audio patch, but still had the problem. Since I observe the problem with both the Avid Cinema and the Matrox Video Tools, I do not believe that the problem is software specific. I would settle for recording at TV-quality audio since the problem is not noticeable at this audio quality, but the Avid Cinema software uses QuickTime 3.0 and records audio only at 44kHz stereo.

    Any suggestions?

    Tony

  • #2
    Gosh Darn it!!! Mine are arriving tomorrow!!!!

    Well I guess I'll try it out and see if I have the same probs. If I find a fix I'll post it here and please post a fix if you find one.

    Best of luck,
    Thien
    Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
    Motion Computing M1400 -- Tablet PC, Ubuntu Linux

    "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

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    • #3
      Oh yeah I forgot:
      My specs are VERY similiar to yours except I have a 350Mhz K6-2, different but similiar motherboard, IBM 9.1 GB HDD, and SB Live. I also use Premiere 5.2. It might possibly be quicktime causing the problem, but like I said my stuff is arriving on the 7th so I won't know for sure.
      Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
      Motion Computing M1400 -- Tablet PC, Ubuntu Linux

      "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

      Comment


      • #4
        Hi Tony,
        I think you got the same problem i got this Year in May with the Promise Fasttrak, but my one was present only if my SCSI adapter AHA2940 was also connected to the system. Do you have any SCSI adapter connected to the system? If yes, try to disconnect it, you can also try to change the PCI slot (suggestion form Promise) and get bios upgrade for both MOBO and Ultra66.
        But... to save time... change MOBO and CPU and use an Intel chipset!
        Is not a joke i lost a lot of time. I found there is somethink does not work properly with DMA access and MVP3 chipset (with the onboard controller the problem is solved decreasing the performance, your Hard Disk connected to MOBO should be able to get AVI at two time full resolution and more!).
        Here is my story:
        I added a Marvel and 8Gb IBM UDMA-33 HD to my system (Epox MVP3, AMD K6-2 350 and 2x3Gb Quantum UDMA-33 HD) in January, no way to get AVI file from Marvel without dropped frames (at full resolution). I decided to by a Fasttrak from Promise, i used the 8Gb hd for the O.S. and the two 3Gb with Fasttrak. Yes i was able to get no dropped frames but i started the second endless story with the audio glitches problem.
        To finally solve all problems, in june i changed MOBO and CPU (Asus P2B-F and PIII-450).
        After that i was able to get no lost frame also with the operating system and the AVI file (full resolution) in the booting partition of the same disk! With the Fasttrak raid i checked a decrease of the CPU usage from 40% with MVP3-AMD350 to 3% with IntelBX-PIII450.

        Regards
        Sebastiano - Italy

        Comment


        • #5
          Hi Sebastiano !

          What soundcard did you use when you had those problems ? PCI or ISA ?

          For me it looks as if the VIA-chipset has problems with handling multiple PCI devices at the same time.

          I´m very interested in this problems, because I´m using a FIC VA503+ mainboard with VIA-MVP3 chipset and I have ordered a Promise Ultra66 controller too.

          So far I bought AMD-CPUs and mainboards with non-Intel chipsets, because I didn´t want to sponsor Intel´s monopol.

          But during the last months I have seen lots of problems with those combinations.

          My AMD-K6-III 450 MHz seems to be a fast CPU, but the memory throughput is only the half of a compareable Intel-system.
          My Maxtor UDMA33 drive works with the VIA-onboard UDMA controller only in the old DMA-Mode 2 without crashes.
          ...

          If my system will have problems with the Promise controller, I will give it my 8 year old son for gaming and I will buy a Intel-based system.

          Bye, Uwe.


          Comment


          • #6
            Uwe is 110% correct on the Super7 boards. The K6-x processors are great the the MVP-3 and AladdinV chipsets have some major bugs in them.

            One of the major bugs that could be affecting you is a busmastering problem that is present on all Super7 boards. ATA66 could be killed by this issue.

            The only fix is to replace the motherboard with one using an Intel BX or better (is there one better?) chipset.

            I love my Abit BH6 but the BX6 is also good. Plug in a Celeron466 and you're in business. As a plus you get SoftMenu which allows you to set up the "jumpers" in software. Great feature.

            As for your Marvels installation:
            uhhh...guy, change that IRQ for the Marvel. It's supposed to be on either 10, 11 or 12.

            First I'd get the new VIA drivers (released just a week ago) and install them. Then I'd remove all the other cards and reboot with just the Marvel in the system. It should go to 11 by itself.

            Also you want to avoid it sharing an IRQ with any drive controllers or the audio hardware.

            Now try capturing again. If it's still doing it then call back ;-)

            Dr. Mordrid



            [This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 09-07-1999).]

            Comment


            • #7
              Thank you everyone for your replies. I am quite impressed at the many responses that I received. This is an excellent forum with an outstanding support team.

              It seams to me that the responses and my observations lead to one hypothesis:

              The problem is related to the number of bus mastering devices in my system. My Diamond Monster MX300 PCI sound card, my Promise Ultra66 IDE Controller, my onboard PCI IDE controller, and my Matrox Marvel G200-TV are all bus mastering devices.

              Other observations of interest:
              1) When I remove the sound card, my Matrox returns to IRQ11 (from IRQ5) and the Promise Ultra66 is at IRQ10.
              2) There are currently no IRQ conflicts in my system; however, if I put any PCI device in PCI Slot 1, the PCI Slot 1 device and the Matrox Marvel G200-TV AGP share IRQ5. I am not using PCI Slot 1 for this reason.

              Any thoughts about whether changing sound cards to a non-busmastering card would make a difference?

              Also, if I interpretted correctly, one response suggested that I should be able to capture highest quality video (without dropping any frames) with an ATA33 drive connnected to my onboard IDE controller. Is this true?

              If not, I'm inclined to agree with the solution that suggests a switch to Intel. This would be disappointing, since I had a lot of faith in the AMD chip.

              Thanks for all your help.

              Comment


              • #8
                Hi Tony,

                Well we don't actually have a support staff. All contributions are from users just like yourself, usually those who have lived thru the pain of having to work these problems out.

                As far as PCI devices are concerned, I guess that the more you have, the more likely you are to get clashes. I'm not aware of any specific problems with the Diamond Monster, although your problem sounds very similar to problems reported with the SB Live early in the year - a new driver release from CL sorted that out.

                Your best bet is to try combinations of cards to see if you can eliminate which one is causing the problem. I'd start by trying a cheap soundcard personally. If this doesn't fix the problem, then it could well be the BM drivers supplied with your Mobo - I had a hell of a time setting up an AMD K6-2/300 with a VIA based motherboard and eventually found that the W95 drivers worked better than anything else.

                As long as you devote a single UDMA (ATA33) HD to AVI capture you should have no problem capturing at full rate. The required datarate is just over 3Mb/s, and you should be able to get between 5 and 7Mb/s with a dedicated AVI drive.

                Cheers

                Chris
                (This Idiot)

                Comment


                • #9
                  Hi,

                  I have only intel chipset experience. However:

                  1. If you use Intel busmastering feature of win9x, you can easily get very good throughput with any drive that can write at >5 MB/sec sustained.

                  2. There is actually no difference between 16.6, 33, and 66 MB/sec interface speed if you drive is working properly and is required to write and read at 3.6 MB/sec.

                  The CPU utilization will be low and everything will work OK.

                  I tried to enable/disable UDMA33 feature in my bios setup - this does not affect drive performance for video editing at all.

                  If you run tests, they will show the decrease in interface speed, which is only a speed of data transfer from RAM to disk RAM buffer. The drive itself is capable to write not more than 10-15 MB/sec, so even "very old and slow" DMA 16.6 interface is more than enough for video.

                  UDMA 66 is by now only a marketing move. There are no drives that have media reading/writing speed higher than 25MB/sec, so the "fastest and newest interface" is completely useless for sequential reading/writing operations.

                  DMA 66 will work for speed only when the drives become capable to use its improvement.

                  Grigory

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Problem fixed!

                    Thanks for all of the responses. The solution turn out to be to disable ATA66 mode on the 18 GB drive so that it is recognized as an ATA33. This mode change was accomplished with utility software available on the Western Digital site. I disabled ATA66 mode on the drive and the Promise Ultra66 card automatically configured itself in ATA33 mode.

                    As one of the responses noted, the video capture rate is not influenced by high burst rates, so ATA66 was not an advantage. The Matrox Drive Benchmark reports the drive bandwidth at 12 MB/s in ATA33 mode, plenty for the video capture. The advantage of keeping the Promise card in my system is that it provides 2 additional IDE channels (supports up to 4 additional IDE devices) with only one additional IRQ (it is recognized as a SCSI controller by Win95). I have the system configured with CD Drives on the onboard IDE controllers and the Hard Drive on the Promise Ultra66. This way, the CD-R is a master on its own IDE channel, the CDROM is a master on its own IDE channel, and the 18GB HD is a master on its own channel.

                    If anyone can explain why the Promise card operating in ATA66 mode corrupted the sound, I'm still curious. Disabling ATA66 was the fix, I just don't know why. Now everything is working perfectly. Sound captures perfectly at 44kHz stereo with highest quality video capture and 0 dropped frames.

                    Note that for some reason, with the configuration that I noted in my original message, the Matrox Marvel G200-TV is assigned IRQ5. It works fine at this IRQ on the FIC PA-2013 motherboard (VIA MVP3 chipset).

                    Tony

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      TnT,

                      Were you able to capture video and sound with ATA66 enabled? I resorted to keeping my system drive at ATA66 and my recording drive at ATA33. Works great this way, but I still never figured out why recording to an ATA66 drive doesn't work. Promise hasn't been much help with this.

                      Tony

                      System Config:
                      PA-2013 rev 2.0 E-O036, 2MB Cache
                      Award BIOS Rev 115I36
                      AMD K6-2 400
                      128 MB PC100 RAM
                      Matrox Marvel G200 AGP with 16 MB RAM
                      Promise Ultra66 PCI ATA66 Controller
                      Maxtor 10GB 7200RPM, 2MB Cache HD on Promise IDE1 (ATA66 enabled)
                      Western Digital 18GB 7200RPM, 2MB Cache HD on Promise IDE2 (ATA33 enabled)
                      SoundBlaster PCI 512

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Sorry for forgeting to reply earlier, but after I installed it I did a total reorganization of files on my HD and then school, and now I'm cleaning out my room! Anyway, I have not tried recording video yet, I will steal an antenna from my parents and plug it in real soon.
                        Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
                        Motion Computing M1400 -- Tablet PC, Ubuntu Linux

                        "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Tony, I just tried it and I get the audio distortion too. I will have to see if IBM has similiar software.

                          Thien
                          Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
                          Motion Computing M1400 -- Tablet PC, Ubuntu Linux

                          "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            ATA/66 controller. All I can say is WOW! Figuring out how to set up the board with minimal IRQ sharing was a challenge, but the results were worth it. I tried doing the same setup on an U/W SCSI set up on the same machine, also with good results. Recording at max resolution in MJPEG format with no dropped frames or sound degradation. I just wish my camcorder was up to the potential of this card (Marvel G200-TV).

                            My Current System: Win98SE, Abit BE-6 P3 450, 384MB RAM, Matrox Marvel G-200 TV 16 MB (AGP), Adaptec 2940U2W (Slot 1), SBLive! (w/ OD I/O Card) (Slot 4), 3Com 905B-TX (Slot 2), ADS Cadet (ISA Slot 2), 2x WD AC28400 ATA/66 drives (UDMA #1), 2x WD 9.1 GB Enterprise A/V (UW), WD 4.5 GB Enterprise (UW) (Channel #2), Panasonic/ Matsushita CD-R (SCSI2), Nakamichi CD Changer (SCSI2) (Channel #1). Currently Running a Creative/Matsushita 5x EIDE DVD-ROM. (EIDE #1)



                            ------------------
                            Junior Member
                            Hey, Donny! We got us a German who wants to die for his country... Oblige him. - Lt. Aldo Raine

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Could you give us the specs for the UDMA/66 HDD and what type of processor are you using? Tony's and my system are very similiar with a K6-2 and 7200 RPM, 2MB Buffer HDD and we are getting the audio crackling/slight distortion.
                              Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
                              Motion Computing M1400 -- Tablet PC, Ubuntu Linux

                              "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

                              Comment

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