How do I go about connecting my camcorder to my PC and capturing live video to both my PC hard drive and camera's hard drive at the same time? On the PC I am running Vegas Pro 10 and my cameras are Sony XR500V and XR550V.

~Brad

You would do it the same way you capture in post. Just connect the firewire cable and open the capture app in Vegas. The one "trick" you need to do is to turn off device control. Vegas doesn't have to "play" so no device control is needed.

Cameras such as the Sony XR500V has not IEEE1394 output.
You need to use an HDMI capture card like BlackMagic Intensity.

Beware that file sizes for your PC captures would be way bigger because Vegas' internal capture program only captures uncompressed. You're better off getting the Blackmagic Card and using it's Media Express software. (that supports a more disk space friendly MJPEG codec)

Vegas' internal capture program only captures uncompressed
I am running Vegas Pro 10
Vegas Pro 10 can capture video not only uncompressed but also in XDCam HD 422. Of course, Blacmagic codec is much easier for processor.

Hold on, this is the first I've seen that you could capture MXF with the Intensity!

Just tested it out. You will need at least an i7 6-core to encode MXF in real-time reliably. MJPEG is going to be much less processor intensive.

Thanks for the responses. I'm sure I'll be able to figure this out once I get to that point.

The reason I was asking this question is because I have been asked to do video of performances at a regional dance competition. I was asked if I could burn DVDs of the performances on the fly for same day delivery of orders and I was assuming I would need to capture directly to a PC in order to even have a chance of doing this. It turns out that for this weekend I will be taking orders and delivering within 4 weeks instead of same day. However, it is something I want to consider for the future since many dance competitions are doing it that way.

At church, we have multiple cameras that are connected to a switcher. We then run the output of the switcher to a DV deck which also outputs to a DVD Recorder. The deck is also connected to a computer via firewire. We actually record the church service on DV tape, DVD, and capture to the computer live. So, if necessary, we could start creating DVD copies as soon as the service is over.