I've had one set of tapes from the PDX10, seems for some odd reason Vegas only captures one audio channel but in that case I didn't need the audio anyway and SClive will capture correctly.

Now I have another set of tapes from another client and a different PDX10. They managed to capture the tapes into FCP but a total audio disaster. They made copies for me to 'work on' from FCP and the audio is just totally distorted, not clipped, that I could have fixed, it's plain distorted, possibly major sample rate errors, hard to say.

So they sent me the camera tapes, recorded in DVCAM.

THey look and sound perfect out of my DSR-11's analogue outputs but no way will Vegas capture them, capture preview shows one frame of serious macroblocks and that's it.

SCLive fares no better and thinks maybe it's being sent NTSC frames in a PAL stream!

What gives with this camera, what have Sony managed to screw up so badly?

The stereo problem on the PDX-10 is a known issue frequently discussed here. However it only affects the PC platform, so it seems to be more of a Windows driver issue.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25252
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17454
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26190
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7958

I have used the PDX-10 extensively recording our operas and think the audio is really quite good. When DV magazine reviewed the PDX-10 it singled out the audio as one of the camera's biggest strengths.

"What gives with this camera, what have Sony managed to screw up so badly?"

I don't really think Sony has screwed up anything here. You'll find a lot of happy users. I'm moving your post to the PDX-10 forum because I don't think this issue has anything to do with the physical tape medium, and you're more likely to find someone using similar software/hardware who can help.

Thanks Boyd, never scrolled down far enough to see this forum.
Problem fixed, would you believe it all started with a faulty video card causing a DirectX error which accounts for the problems capturing vision. Doesn't make much sense to me either but a wiggle of the video card and problem solved.

I guess this has been covered before but SCLive manages to capture both channels from the PDX10.