Tips T0019

Turning On DMA For Your Hard Drives
If you are using your PC for video editing, you will want to transfer data to and from your hard disks as quickly as possible. This means that you should turn on DMA data transfer from within Windows By selecting DMA on the hard disk that you capture to, data can be transferred directly to the hard disk requiring very little CPU power to do so. This leaves the CPU free during capture to process the incoming video and perform any video compression.

Windows 98/ ME:
To make sure DMA is turned on, right click on "My Computer" from the Windows desktop and select "Properties". Click on the "Device manager" tab and open up the branch marked "Disk drives":

For each IDE drive, select it in the list and click "Properties". Now select the "Settings tab":

Ensure the DMA item is checked and click on OK. Repeat this process for every IDE driver you have in the list.

Click "OK" to close the System Properties dialog. If you are prompted to restart, click "Yes" to restart your PC.

Windows 2000:
To make sure DMA is turned on, right click on "My Computer" from the Windows desktop and select "Properties". Click on the "Hardware" tab. Click the "Device Manager" button to open the Windows Device Manager:

For each IDE channel, select it in the list and click the "Properties" button . Click the "Advanced Settings" tab: