Capture issue

[Tom Miller]

I will have to try the legacy drive

After playing with Cs5 for 20 minutes by pushing "play" then record on the capture screen it worked. But that doesn't work all of the time. The first time I got it to capture it froze after 1 minute 53 seconds i rest it tried 3 or 4 times to restart the capture and got it to capture the full 18 minutes

[Bo Sundvall]

Hi

Have you tried the HDVsplit capture program? It's a freeware which I always use to capture from my XH-A1 and HV20 camcorders. It has a lot more options than capture from CS5. My experience is that capture from within Premiere is a bit buggy (but I can be wrong, its my personal opinion). Google HDVsplit to find the download.


Regards,

/Bo

[Jay West]

Tom:

HDV Split might help with your issues with the quality of capture, but I suspect it will not help with the problem of captures that either will not start or which quit randomly.

I can vouch for HDV Split's improved capture quality over at least CS3. The problem I had with CS3's capture utility was that the XH audio came in 15 to 20 frames out of sync behind the video when I had shot HDV. HDV Split fixed that.

But, when CS3 and Vegas could not capture from the XH, neither could HDV Split. Same thing is true for me under Win 7 and CS5. (Go into Device Manager and check the driver for the firewire controller --- the previous discussions of capture problems all say absolutely that this is the first thing you should check with capture problems under Win 7. Be sure that the driver for the firewire controller is the one with "legacy" in the name. On my computer, Windows has a nasty habit of secretly upgrading/resetting to a different and "better" driver which will not work for tape captures and which will not talk to my MRC tapeless recording units.)

A word of caution about testing HDV Split under Windows 7. When I start HDV Split, the comment box tells me I have an error and need to install "ffdshow" and also tells me that "audio is off" (or something like that.)

If you see that message, ignore it. HDV Split will capture from the XHA1, anyway.

Let me emphasize this: do not download and install ffdshow. There are numbers of postings in the Adobe Users Forums about problems that ffdshow causes with CS5 under Vista 64 and Win 7. Also, once installed, ffdshow seems to be extremely difficult to remove completely from your computer. Even worse is getting it with one of the free "Codec Packs" (such as K-Lite and "Commmunity Codec Pack"). Harm Milaard and others have numbers of postings that warn Adobe users to avoid installing those packs. They have recommended a clean OS re-install for some unfortunate souls who were having problems after installing these packs.

As I said, HDV Split will capture under Win 7 from an XHA1 without needing ffdshow, so ignore the error messages.

[Bo Sundvall]

Hi

Good pointing out the ffdshow problem with HDVsplit, forgot about that. I'll try to remeber that if i recommend HDVsplit in the future.

I have tried to instal ffdshow myself with no success at all and I agree with Jay, it's like a virus. Once it's on the machine it's hard to get rid of it. Capture works without ffdshow, the only drawback is that you can't hear the recorded sound, but that's only during capture. It will be captured to the computer. If critical, it's always possible to listen to the sound on the camcorders speaker/headphone.

Regards,

/Bo

[Jay West]

Good points by Bo.

Tom:

have you checked the device manager yet? Are you sure that your laptop's firewire controller is using the "legacy" driver? This should have been the first thing you checked.

If it is using the legacy driver, that leaves three possible culprits: (a) your firewire cable; (b) your laptop's firewire port; or (c) using the network drive for capture (assuming that it has worked well in the past.)

The most likely culprit is using a network drive over a peer-to-peer network. If you have not been doing this with regular success in the past, stop doing it, hook a USB/Firewire/e-Sata drive to the laptop and use that work around. If it has been regularly successful in the past, then you want to rule out the other two possibilities.

To rule out the firewire cable and firewire port, try capturing a clip to your laptop's internal drive. If you can do that, then you have ruled out the cable and port as the problem, and that leaves trying to capture across your network.

If you have problems with capturing to your laptop, then find a new (or known-to-be-good) firewire cable and try that. (Testing the firewire cable should have been the second thing you tried.) If a new cable does not work you, then the problem must be the laptop's firewire port. You either (a) take your laptop to a repair shop or (b) try a pc-card firewire adapter (probably much less expensive.)

Have I made myself clear?

[Tom Miller]

yeah.... i don't think u want to mess with anything that has the potential to screw my computer. ill just have to deal with playing with it until i get it to work i only have 2 more weeks of shooting

[Jay West]

Tom: for the benefit of any forum members who come along later and search on this problem, please tell them:

1. Whether you verified you are using the "legacy" driver for the firwire controller on your laptop?

2. Whether you verified that your firewire cable is good and that the laptop's firewire port is good?

3. Whether you tested capturing to the laptop's system drive and whether it worked or not.

4. Whether you tried capturing with the e-sata drive moved from the network to a direct connection to your laptop, and what results did you get when you tired it?

You are doing something here that is a bit novel --- capturing tape via a laptop across a network to a network drive in a peer-to-peer network. This is something other forum members might want to do. If this works, it may be helpful to others to know it. If it does not work, it is equally helpful to the rest of us to find out that it does not work or does not work reliably and maybe why it does not work. If you don't share, we won't benefit from your experience.

If some other DVinfo member comes along later and wants to try this, and then wants help in figuring our what might not be working, it is important to tell them what worked and what did not work for you. This goes back to the question in my first post in this thread: which previously tested suggestions did you try and find not to work? It was not meant to be rude. it was mean to build on the shared experiences that allow us to help each other.

Please understand that DVinfo is a community of shared knowledge. That is why it is important to let people know what you did that worked and what you did that did not work.

[Tom Miller]

Sure no problem

1.) haven't tested it yet will and later and edit this post

2.) The fire wire seems to be working correctly

3.)I have tested this issue by going direct to my laptops drive with no better results

4.) I have tested by attaching directly to laptop and still have the issue

The problem seems to be with CS5 how i got it to work was just playing with it (just keep trying to capture) its just a matter of rewinding and start the capture give it a few seconds if it doesn't start showing that it is capture just restart.


As far as capturing peer to peer it seems to work perfectly.I don't have full confidence in doing it this way but it works. My peer to peer is simply windows file sharing system.
Something that i find note able is trying to open a CS5 file that already has stuff on the time line it is next to impossible. CS5 is a PC hog let alone trying to do it over a net work.

If i had another way to capture right on to my desktop i would but this seems to be the best solution for my situation

[Jay West]

Well, if the problem might be the memory getting sucked by CS5 when there is stuff on a timeline. I'm guessing the laptop might be a bit underpowered for running CS5. (Make sure it is not indexing files, conformining audio and making peak files when you try to start the capture.)

If CS5 (and Vegas) are using too much memory for the laptop to capture, then then HDV Split should fix things. It a very small memory footprint. ( (Just ignore the "ffdshow" error message that seems to turn up in 64-bit operating systems. It works fine without ffshow as both Bo and I have said.) Note that HDV Split does not do batch capture but, on my machine, once it starts, it usually shuts off capture and saves the file after it runs out of signal. If you do not want each scene in a separate file, uncheck the box for scene splitting before hitting "play" and "record."

[Tom Miller]

I believe the issue with opening projects with stuff on the time line has to do with the speed of my net work. They laptop is slightly under powered but its not that bad its an i7 with 8gb and CUDA.

[Jay West]

Okay, before you try HDV Split, the absolute first thing to check is to be sure that you have the "legacy" driver.

In Windows 7, click the start button, In the blank search space, type "Device manager" and press enter You get a list of devices on the system. Click the arrow next to "IEEE 1394 Bus Controllers." You get a list of controllers. Probably there will be only one. It should say something like "1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy)"

If it does not have the word "Legacy" in parentheses at the end of the name, that may be your problem. To fix it, double click on the name. When the next box appears, click the "Driver" tab. Click "Update Driver." Click "Browse my computer for driver software." At the next box, click "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer." The next windows will have a center box listing four or five drivers. One of them (probably the second one down) will have "legacy" in the name. Pick taht one.)

DO THIS BEFORE YOU DOING ANYTHING ELSE.

If you already have the legacy driver, then try HDV Split.

REPEAT, DO THIS BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE.

[James Strange]

Hi all, just wondering if there is any update / new solutions to this issue.

Its been a while since I used HDV, but a friend of mine asked if he could borrow an old camera of mine (Sony HC1) for a small voluntary job he was doing, and after he shot it, asked if I could capture the tapes for him.

So I loaned him the camera, he shot the event, and now I can't seem to record the footage into my laptop.

I get the same 'garbage' that the op described (green pixels, stuck pixels, stuck lines etc...)

It plays back fine on the camera, but keeps aborting the capture (tried both CS5 and HDVsplit to capture)

I've checked that I'm running the legacy driver, I've tried different firewire cables, so its not that. not the camera or the tape, as the tapes play fine in camera, and capture to my PCs fine.

I think it is definitely an issue with my laptop. Is there a way to test the firewire port on the laptop to see if that's the issue?

I have 2 desktop PCs (one an old core2duo win xp machine with CS3, and my main edit PC which is a win 7, core i7 cs5 machine )

The footage captured in fine on both the Win 7 PC and the Win XP PC, but I can't seem to get it to work on my laptop

My laptop is also core i7, win 7 machine, i tried capturing to both the internal laptop drive and an external drive, but the same issues on both.

So it's not life or death as I can capture the footage on my desktops, but I'd like to get this fixed as I am planning on digitising all my old HDV tapes using the laptop) as I'm getting rid of my old xp dektop, and I dont want to tie up my main desktop PC with the capturing of 30 odd tapes)

Thanks in advance for any advice

JAmes

[Don Palomaki]

Capturing to laptops can be problematic depending on how they are configured, especially the power saving modes.
While not specific to your system some general areas include:
- Running AV software
- Using the same drive for video and the OS
- Having multiple devices connected to the firewire port
- External drives sharing the USB port or hub with other devices
- Any background or automatic processes that may be running (e.g.., a mail client in the background)

.