TROUBLESHOOTING

 

Studio : All Studio and PCTV products

Premiere : All Pinnacle products including Adobe Premiere (DC30 series, DC50, DC1000, DC2000, DV200, DV300, DV500, DV500plus, Pro-ONE...).

If you are experiencing one or more of the following problems, the Pinnacle card you are using may not have been installed correctly.

Please read the entire document before proceding to the installation procedure. If you are not comfortable making low-level changes on your computer’s BIOS, please contact the manufacturer of your motherboard so that they can provide you with assistance in making these changes to your compute, or contact your dealer.

Important : Always use the latest driver available for your Pinnacle Product. All the latest drivers are available from Pinnacle Systems Web site, in the Support Section.

You can also have a look to the TopFAQ or FAQ's available for your product.

 

Problem:

Card not found

No frames captured

Dropped frames

Skipped frames

System hangs up

Poor overlay

No audio

Distorted audio

No output to VCR or camera

No input or capture

Jerky video

Black lines in playback

Audio/Video Sync out

 

 

Card not found

The problem mights come from an incorrect PCI slot or from an IRQ conflict.

  • Check that no error is occuring in Windows Control Panel.
  • Try to remove all the other PCI cards and move your Pinnacle card to a different PCI slot. Try all PCI slots.
  • If you can, try the Pinnacle card in a different PC to see if you can reproduce the problem.
  • If you still get the same trouble, please contact your dealer or send the product back to our local Service Center (see the information in the the Support Home Page or in the Service and Support Manual).
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No frames captured

The software is not able to capture frames to disk.

  • Check that you have free space on disk before starting to capture.
  • Check the settings of your Editing software
    • Adobe Premiere scratch disk Settings.
    • Studio capture disk
  • Also check that the Pinnacle board is not sharing IRQ with an other device.
  • Try to move the Pinnacle board to a different PCI slot.
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Dropped frames (Capture)

The capture software is reporting dropped frames during the capture.

  • Check that your hard disk is able to capture at the selected rate. To test your hard disk, you can use :
    • Premiere : Pinnacle hard disk test from Pinnacle Tools (DVExpert).
    • Studio : Click on the Capture tab, and then click on the Parameters button. Start the hard disk test.
  • If your EIDE (UDMA) hard disk does not have enough performance (an UDMA disk should at least achieve 10-11 MB/sec), check in the Windows Control Panel that the DMA option is checked.
  • Check that the capture disk is configured to your video disk, and not to your system disk (C:). Your system disk is probably fragmented. If your system has only one disk, you should think to add a specific hard disk dedicated for the video data.
  • Install the PPE tool (PCI Performance Enhancer) from the Pinnacle Web site.
  • Defragment your hard disk.
  • Check if your Pinnacle card is not sharing an IRQ with an other device.
    • Studio : If you get dropped frames during Capture in Preview, you can also disable the graphic overlay in the preview window to use less CPU ressources. Also configure your graphic board in 1024x768, 65000 colors.
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Skipped frames (Playback)

You see skipped frames during playback

    • Premiere : skipped frames are reported in the INSTANT Video window
    • Studio : skipped frames are reported at the bottom of the preview window.
  • Check that your hard disk is able to playback at the selected rate and that is is not fragmented. To test your hard disk, you can use the Pinnacle hard disk Tool.
    • Premiere : Pinnacle hard disk test DVExpert.
    • Studio : Click on the Capture tab, and then click on the Parameters button. Start the hard disk test.
  • If your EIDE (UDMA) hard disk does not have enough performance, check in the Windows Control Panel that the DMA option is checked.
  • Check that the scratch disks are configured to your video disk, and not to your system disk (C:). Your system disk is probably fragmented and playback will be jerky. If your system has only one disk, you should think to add a specific hard disk dedicated for the video data.
  • Install the PPE tool (PCI Performance Enhancer) from the Pinnacle Web site
  • Defragment your hard disk.
  • Check if your Pinnacle card is not sharing an IRQ with an other device.
  • Be sure that the video hard disk is not on the same IDE controller than a slower device as CD-ROM or ZIP.
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System hangs up

Some motherboard PCI chipset will not allow the Pinnacle product to send bus-mastering data to the graphic board (VGA) and this will cause the system to hang. This generally does not happen on motherboards using INTEL PCI chipset

  • Check on the Website of the motherboard manufacturer if a BIOS update is not available which will fix the problem.

The problem might also come from incompatibility with some graphic boards who are not handling busmastering correctly or which are not able to share IRQ with any other device on the system.

  • Try to move the Pinnacle product to a different PCI slot using a different IRQ. Some BIOS also permits to change IRQ settings for PCI slots.
  • Be sure that the color depth setting of your VGA card is set to more than 256 colors (16 bits - 65000 colors is recommended) and with a standard resolution (eg. 800x600 or 1024x768).
  • Be sure that DirectX is correctly installed. Eventually install the latest version, or reinstall the Pinnacle Product with DirectX installation (Custom installation).
  • Check that no other device capture is installed in the system and getting in conflict with Pinnacle product.
  • Try with a different graphic board.
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Poor overlay

Video data are transfered to the graphic board (SVGA) to display the data to the graphic monitor. Display is managed by DirectX interface from Microsoft. Two overlay modes are available : primary surface and surface overlay. Best performances are achieved with surface overlay compatibility (will take less CPU ressources). Not all the graphic boards are supporting this overlay mode, and this support might also change according to the graphic driver version.

  • Check with the latest video card driver available. Also check if a generic driver is available from the graphic component manufacturer.
  • Install the latest version of DirectX.
  • Check that the Pinnacle card is not sharing IRQ with a different device.
  • Configure your graphic card to 1024x768 - 65000 colors.
  • Try with a different graphic board
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No audio
  • Connect speakers to the right audio output.
    • Premiere : If you are using DV500, DC1000 or DC2000, you have to connect the speakers to the BlueBox audio outputs.
    • Studio : Connect speakers to the audio output of your sound card. Audio Playback in Edit mode is done through the audio card
  • Check that the Pinnacle card is not sharing IRQ with a different device.
  • Check your audio cable.
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Distorted audio
  • Check that the Pinnacle card is not sharing IRQ with a different device.
  • Check your audio cable.
  • Check your audio settings.
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No output to VCR or camera
    • Premiere : Check the Premiere presets and be sure that you are using one Pinnacle preset for your board. If you are using a different preset, no output will be availble.
    • Studio : The project has to be rendered before to export the video to the VCR or the camcorder (Studio DC10plus and Studio DV/DVplus). Note : the video output is not available in Edit mode.
  • If you are recording to a VCR, check that the right input is selected on the VCR.
  • If you are using a Cinch to SCART adapter to record to your VCR or to display on the TV, be sure that your adapter is configured in the right direction (TO VCR).
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No input or capture

  • Check your editing software presets.
    • Premiere : Check the Premiere presets and be sure that you are using one Pinnacle preset for your board. If you are using a different preset, no output will be availble.
  • Check you input cabling.
  • Check your input selection for Capture :
    • Adobe : Right click on Adobe Premiere Capture window and select Parameters.
    • Studio : Open the Capture Settings window and select the right input. On Studio DV or Studio DV plus, capture is only working with DIGITAL devices
  • Check that your Pinnacle card is not sharing an IRQ with a different device.
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Jerky video

Jerky video is generally coming from hard disk playback transfer problem.

  • Check that your hard disk has enough performance to playback the video at the selected transfer rate (use the Pinnacle hard disk test). If you are using an EIDE (UDMA) hard disk, be sure that the DMA option is correctly configured in the Windows Control Panel.
  • Check the Capture disk settings :
    • Premiere : Check that the Premiere scratch disks are correctly configured to the video disk. Default setting is on the system drive (C:).
    • Studio : Be sure that you captured to your video disk and not to your system disk. Default setting is on the system drive (C:).
  • Install the PPE tool (PCI Performance Enhancer) from the Pinnacle Web site
  • Defragment your hard disk.
  • Check that your Pinnacle card is not sharing an IRQ with a different device
  • Install the Pinnacle card to a different PCI slot.
  • Change IRQ in the BIOS (if possible)
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Black lines in playback

This is generally due to a bad PCI transfer performance. Install the PPE tool (PCI Performance Enhancer) from the Pinnacle Web site

  • Check that your hard disk has enough performance to playback the video at the selected transfer rate (use the Pinnacle hard disk test). If you are using an EIDE (UDMA) hard disk, be sure that the DMA option is correctly configured in the Windows Control Panel.
  • Check that your Pinnacle card is not sharing an IRQ with a different device
  • Install the Pinnacle card to a different PCI slot.
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Audio/Video Sync out

This is generally due to a bad PCI transfer performance.

  • Install the PPE tool (PCI Performance Enhancer) from the Pinnacle Web site
  • Check the settings of your editing software :
    • Premiere : check that you are using the right presets in Premiere, according to your video source (PAL/NTSC) and the right frame rate (25/29.97 FPS).
    • Studio : check that no dropped frames were reported during a capture in preview mode.
  • Check that your Pinnacle card is not sharing an IRQ with a different device
  • Install the Pinnacle card to a different PCI slot.
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