Hi-

I am having trouble getting Windows XP SP2 to recognize my new HV20.

My intent is to capture with HDVSplit or CapDVHS, and I think I need to get XP to at least recognize my camera before I use these tools.

When I plug in the camera XP discovers the camera and installs several drivers, including "AVC", "61883" and "AV/C Tape Device" and "AV/C Subunit". However, the one or both of the latter two fail with a message "The data is invalid".

I have tried to install a "Sony D-VHS" driver as per some google searches, but this doesn't seem to help - I get the same error.

Does anyone have any ideas?

In case it helps, my laptop is a Dell Inspiron 8600 and I am able to capture in DV mode, just not HDV.

Thanks,
Kevin

Hmm, sounds strange, maybe have a competing codec/driver somewhere?
Check hardware, Device Manager, see if any yellow ? marks on items...
might also right-click the "AV/C Tape device" under Sound/Video/Game controllers, do properies, and either un-install or do Update Driver in properties.

re HDVsplit, make sure you get the 0.77beta patch version (Canon/other HDV support), otherwise it doesn't work to capture with Canons, only Sony.
W/ the patched/beta version, it seems to work pretty well.

You might also try downloading a trial version of some HDV-capable software like Ulead VideoStudio or Sony Vegas, maybe they will tickle your system/update drivers enough to get things working.

This was a concern of mine: having XP recognize the camera in HDV mode. Just for the record, has anyone else had driver problems? (I haven't connected my HV20 to my computer yet as I haven't upgraded from Vegas 5.) Are most people able to plug in and capture HDV video? (What software are you using to capture?) Or are most not even editing their stuff yet?

This was a concern of mine: having XP recognize the camera in HDV mode. Just for the record, has anyone else had driver problems? (I haven't connected my HV20 to my computer yet as I haven't upgraded from Vegas 5.) Are most people able to plug in and capture HDV video? (What software are you using to capture?) Or are most not even editing their stuff yet?

My WinXP Home SP2 recognized it just fine, both HDV and DV-Locked.
I can capture in Ulead MSPro8, DVDMF6+ (trial), and Sony Vegas7 (trial) just fine- although only Vegas captures M2T native, Ulead converts to MPG during capture so I lose timestamp/scene split info.

The latest HDVSplit .077beta works fine to split w/ timestamp filenames as well.

My WinXP Home SP2 recognized it just fine, both HDV and DV-Locked.
I can capture in Ulead MSPro8, DVDMF6+ (trial), and Sony Vegas7 (trial) just fine- although only Vegas captures M2T native, Ulead converts to MPG during capture so I lose timestamp/scene split info.

The latest HDVSplit .077beta works fine to split w/ timestamp filenames as well.

Thanks Colin - are you capturing 24p HDV? Or 60i?

Thanks Colin - are you capturing 24p HDV? Or 60i?

60i. I have no use for 24p for home movies of active kids and vacations :)

Regardless, I doubt the 24p vs 60i actual recorded mode would affect the OS detecting the camera, and since the 24p is kind of embedded in the 60i stream it shouldn't even impact the capture program (I think)... you just then have to do pulldown stuff to get the real 24p back out in the NLE.

Well, I worked around my problem, in case anyone else is experiencing similar issues.

After some diagnosis using the sysinternals' filemon program, I realized that "mstape.sys" & "avcstrm.sys" were missing from my "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers" directory. I found them in "SP2.CAB", and when I manually copied them into the correct place, the driver install completed successfully.

I don't know why XP was unable to extract the files from SP2.CAB itself. I'll dig into it further, but right now it appears to be working correctly.

Kevin