Please Help - Desperate 1394 Performance Problems

If anyone can help me solve this problem I would be extremely grateful. I
have wasted hours already with absolutely no success.



I am trying to transfer DV video from my Sony DCR-TRV60E Camcorder to the
Firewire Port on my PC's audio card. In functional terms its fine, but the
performance is absolutely terrible. In my tests I lose 28% of the frames
(i.e. I'm only capturing 18fps instead of 25) and the audio is decimated.



The main features of my PC are as follows:



a.. Dell Dimension 5000
b.. Intel Pentium 4 550 CPU (3.4 GHz)
c.. Intel 915P/915G Chipset
d.. 800MHz Bus
e.. 1GB DDR2 SDRAM
f.. Adaptec AR1210SA RAID controller configured for RAID 1 (Mirroring)
g.. 2 x Seagate 160GB SATA150 drives, 7200rpm, 8GB cache
h.. nVidia 256MB PCI Express x16 GeForce 6800
i.. Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card with integral IEEE 1394
port
j.. Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2

I've already tried a few things to try and isolate or fix the problem, but
with no success:



1.. I've connected the camcorder to my second PC using the same Firewire
cable and captured video without any frame dropping or other problems. This
seems to rule out a problem with the camera or the cable.
2.. I've tried capturing video using different software packages,
specifically Windows Movie Maker 2.1, Pinnacle Studio 9.4 and Pinnacle AM
CAP. The results were consistent - 28% of all frames were dropped. Using AM
CAP the quality was scratchy even when I wasn't saving the data to file, so
this would seem to rule out any disk performance issues as the source of the
problem.
3.. I've installed Microsoft patch KB885222 (Performance of 1394 devices
may decrease after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2). It didn't make
any difference.
4.. I installed the latest drivers for the Audigy 2 Sound Card. It didn't
make any difference.
5.. I tried moving the Audigy 2 Card to a different PCI slot so that the
OCHI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller was assigned a different IRQ. It
didn't make any difference.
6.. I tried disabling hardware sharing the same IRQ as the 1394 Host
Controller; again it didn't make any difference.
7.. I tried disabling Norton Internet Security and Antivirus. This didn't
help either.

I contacted Dell Technical Support but they haven't come back with anything
other than a standard trouble shooting *** as yet. The Microsoft, Pinnacle
and Sony websites didn't seem to have much to offer.



I've just about run out of ideas now and would really appreciate some fresh
input.



Regards,



Martin


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