If your are using direct to disc remember to check you i-frames...This is from the help file
"Direct-To-Disc
Advanced users may wish to experiment with the Direct-To-Disc feature. Instead of recompressing the video for recording, an attempt is made to save the exact stream as received from the camera. This may not be used with the Windows Media container format, and only H.264 streams are appropriate for the MP4 file format at this time.
Where this technology will be invaluable is for the recording of HD and larger frame video, as recompressing these formats is highly CPU-intensive. The down-side to using direct-to-disc is that you will not be able to add graphic and time overlays such as the time-stamp. You will need to rely upon the camera to add these itself. Also, recording must begin at the arrival of a key-frame (complete image). If your camera sends these only infrequently, you may miss the beginning of some motion-activated recordings unless you also use the pre-trigger video buffer."