Write speed/recorded FPS suddenly lower than usual?

[Veggieleezy]

I've successfully recorded and edited two videos using Dxtory at a write speed of about 100 MB/sec to my target folder. Both videos came out at 720p and 30fps, which is what I was targeting, that's fine. However, when I tried to start doing a third video, suddenly my recorded files are barely getting to 20fps.

I've uninstalled a lot of unnecessary programs and moved my raw/edited/finished videos onto a separate hard drive, and still can't get above 20fps. I've checked my Dxtory's benchmark for my target folder, and it never seems to get above 90 MB/sec anymore.

I'm not sure what happened or what I should do to fix this, or even if there is anything that can be done to fix this, but any advice/thoughts would be appreciated! Thanks!

And here's my Environment info:

[ExKoder]

Power-saving mode or something, Isn't it in a non-performance state?

[Veggieleezy]

Didn't think that would factor into it, I'll check and try again.

[Veggieleezy]

Well, I changed the power plan I'm on, and now the write speed seems to be a little erratic at the moment. I just ran several benchmark tests and got speeds ranging from around 60MB/s to 107MB/s, and now it's back up to around 100 fairly consistently... Not sure what that's about...

And now I seem to have found a different set of issues entirely. When I hit the record button, the overlay tells me I'm recording at (ideally 30fps) whatever framerate. I record for a little while to test out the game I'm trying, and when I go to look at the test footage, there's no game on the file. No game audio, no video, just an audio file from what my microphone picked up.

I don't think I've changed any of my other settings recently. I really hope I haven't messed anything up by changing/renaming my destination folder, or if I've done something to mess up the recording process by fiddling with Sony Vegas. I'm still really new at doing all of this, I hope I haven't broken anything in my system. I'll put up another environment report, if that makes a difference.

*edit* After reading through some other posts on the forum, I found that if I were to open the files in VLC Media Player, they show up normally. I've tried that, and it seems to work, also in Sony Vegas. Very strange bug. I'll keep an eye on it, though.

[bonestegreat]

I'd suggest you defrag your drive and see if that helps.

[Veggieleezy]

I have no idea what that means...  *edit: never mind, found it, and ran it. It was at 5% fragmentation, so I defragged, assumed that was the proper thing.*

I also encountered another problem. I was able to record several short videos, but after a while, the framerate on the recorded videos just started tanking for no apparent reason. By tanking, I mean down to single digits for seconds at a time. I discovered this before rebooting and defragging, so once those are done, I'll try again.

If that issue comes back, what should I do?

[Malix]

could be any number of reasons, like over-eager antivirus app scanning the videofile, failing hard disk or just derpy display driver.

[Veggieleezy]

It seems to have sorted itself, I just recorded another video at 1080 without any problems. But I'll be keeping an eye on things.

[Malix]

checked your env-info, few notes

1. your computer is a laptop? laptop harddisks arent usually good for video capture, as they can have wide variety of different power saving features etc. this also applies to the OS as well. I'd assume recording without power plugged in might cause the powersaving to kick in quite aggressively
2. you seem to capture to C: -drive? you apparently have only 1 physical disk in the laptop? This is not ideal, as any other disk activity (like game loading levels etc) will disrupt the recording. A separate harddrive for recording would be the optimal thing to have, but might not be possible in all laptops. And external USB-disks usually don't have enough performance to be viable.

edit: typos. typos everywhere.

[Veggieleezy]

Yeah, it's not an ideal machine to be doing this on, but I'm givin' 'er all she's got, Captain! And I don't think I'll be pushing it quite as aggressively from here on out. I was mostly trying to get X number of videos recorded and done in Y number of days, but now that I'm almost at that goal, I'll switch to one a day so I won't be taxing it as much.

When you say "game loading levels", I think I've experienced this with Portal, but I'm not sure. Whereall have you experienced this so I can try to avoid it myself?

Maybe if I'm a good boy, I can ask Santa for the resources to get a DESKTOP machine... Since I'm living in a big boy apartment, I can potentially argue it being a reasonable investment.

Someday... someday... (Any advice on such a thing?)

[Malix]

When you say "game loading levels", I think I've experienced this with Portal, but I'm not sure. Whereall have you experienced this so I can try to avoid it myself?

Maybe if I'm a good boy, I can ask Santa for the resources to get a DESKTOP machine... Since I'm living in a big boy apartment, I can potentially argue it being a reasonable investment.

Someday... someday... (Any advice on such a thing?)

I've always had a separate disk for recording, just because. I'd imagine you'd have the most issues with games that do constat loading from disk, like texture streaming or loading new pieces of the map.
For instance, Unreal Engine games pretty much always stream textures and whatnot after level loading. Minecraft loads/saves level chunks all the time, RAGE... dem megatextures man. If your game loads everything needed in one go (causing mad framedrops during loading screen, but who cares as it's a loading screen).
In any case, your disk can only do so much in allotted time, if that time is occupied by dxtory recording & game's stuff, you're affecting the performance of them both.

Good luck with santa
If you can spesify, ask him harddrives that are not "eco" or "green", those are pretty much the same as laptop harddisks. They do all kinds of tricks to save power and this is mostly done with the expense of performance.
Multiple disks would be good for a nice RAID, but unless you want to go over 1080p and 60fps recording, you probably won't need it

[Veggieleezy]

Hey, I'd be a very happy puppy if I could get 1080p/60fps consistently even if I wasn't recording.