Capture issue

[Tom Miller]

im having an issue and I'm not sure if its the camera or the computer. all of a sudden im having issues capturing from my camera. In one instance i was getting artifacts (but not showing up on camera) that makes me think its something with my computer. Now in the situation im in at the present monument i cant even capture a whole clip i have tried 3 or 4 times to capture the same clip and it cuts out at the same point. It is playing back on my cam perfect... i tried 2 different editors CS5 and Vegas

[Jay West]

Have you searched this forum for this topic?

If so, wwhich of the solutions have you tried and found not to work?

[Chris Soucy]

Hi, Tom................

Sounds like one or other of the firewire sockets or the cable itself has gone awol.

Try a new/ different cable in the first instance, then try another camera in case it's the camera port.

Check that all power cables and anything else plugged into your pc are secure in their sockets, and you don't have a dicky flourescent light fitting blinking on and off somewhere in the house

Check also that you haven't activated any new security/ virus software or anything else new running in the background, defrag your hard drives and keep your fingers crossed that one of the above nails it.


CS

[Tom Miller]

jay i wouldn't of posted the question if didn't search...

Spent an hour down at the camera shop trying to figure out where my problem was. We were able to eliminate the fire-wire as the issue. We cleaned the heads and put a new tape in recorded a few seconds of video then captured it seemed to work but i wont know until i shoot some footage to test this theory out. the camera has very low time less then 30hours so i hope there's no hardware issue


thanks for the response

[Chris Soucy]

Hi, Tom...........

If the problem doesn't show in the cameras viewfinder but is appearing on the PC, it can't be a dirty head problem. If the data can't be read, the viewfinder can't make it up.

Try connecting the camera to a screen capable of taking Component HD, using the Component cable and,
using the tape(s) that gave the problem, see if it shows then. If it doesn't, it's got to be either the FireWire or the PC.

If it does, the viewfinder/ LCD is lying, though how, I can't imagine.


CS

[Matthew Amirkhani]

Hi Tom,

I had the issue couple of years ago.After took it to the Canon Service Center they told me the camera head needed to be realigned and it did the trick the cost was minimum.

Good luck.

[Tom Miller]

I'm not sure if it was the cleaning tape or capture settings (turned seen detection off) but everything seems fine now

[Jay West]

Originally Posted by Tom Miller

jay i wouldn't of posted the question if didn't search...

Spent an hour down at the camera shop trying to figure out where my problem was. We were able to eliminate the fire-wire as the issue. We cleaned the heads and put a new tape in recorded a few seconds of video then captured it seemed to work but i wont know until i shoot some footage to test this theory out. the camera has very low time less then 30hours so i hope there's no hardware issue


thanks for the response

I see my response came off as more brusque than I meant, but your follow-up is what I had in mind.

A lot of the previous postings about XH problems are about diagnosing camera set-up and firewire problems, so it really helps to know that you were able to rule out setup issues and a defective firewire port on the camera. Since you've read the postings, can I assume you also ruled out your firewire cable as a culprit and that you checked to be sure that your Windows computer is referencing the correct --- "legacy" --- firewire driver?

I agree with Chris that dirty playback heads are unlikely if you really were getting good playback on the camera itself. Possibly, there could be playback issues that might not be obvious on the XH's small viewfinder screen, so I second Chris's suggestion of playing with the component cable to large screen. Also, the problem might be "durational," so let the playback go as long as it would be with capturing. (If you are only playing a few seconds around the points where the computer had problems capturing, it might not be long enough for the problems to show up.)

If playback turns up problems on the large screen, then a head adjustment may be the cure, as Mathew suggests.

If large screen playback indeed shows no problems, then the you have a computer issue(s).

I see you've just posted about turning off scene detection. That suggests your tape may have had a dropout. If you turn scene detection back on, does the tape now stop at the same place it did before?

If not or if the problem comes back, then the most obvious suspects would be your computer's media drive and your computer's firewire port. Some details about the computer set-up would be helpful. Laptop or workstation? Operating system? (Win XP, Vista, Win 7?) Media drive set-up? How full is the media drive?. Have you tried any testing with a second camera (say, a Canon HV model

[Tom Miller]

its all good

It seems not to be a fire wire issue

I used a cleaning tape then shot a minute of footage then played it back on my tv everything looked fine.

Here is some of the footage i shot the other day i know youtube compress it but it really looks bad even on my computer YouTube - Gregs testimonial

The system I have to use is an I7 laptop with CS5 8Gb of ram nothing special but its capturing to network drive that's connected to my main machine i7 2600k, asus maximus iv motherboard, GTX 570, 16gb of ram,Window 64bit Professional. nothing special with Hard drives just 3 drive with OS and program and 2 storage drives.........Unfortunately there is no Fire-wire port on this system. I did try to get a PCI card but due to a design flaw the card doesn't fit. I really dont want to spend anymore money on the system it already cost around $2000 and I'm planing on selling my XH and getting a hdr ax2000

one of the reasons i turned off scene detection because it kept leaving a frame of the previous clip in the next clip

[Jay West]

What am I looking for in the YouTube video? I just spent two days shooting a Dance festival and I am so fried that I did not notice anything except audio problems.

Your using a network drive makes me suspect a glitch in the network connections. Any chance of hooking that capture drive directly to the laptop and then moving it back to the editing machine after capturing is done? Do you have a 7200 rpm USB/Firewire/e-Sata drive you could hook to the laptop for the capture? What about trying to capture to the laptop's own drive and then copying the file across the network? (I know it is not recommended but it might be work better than your current workflow. In a pinch, I've captured HDV to my three-year old Gateway laptop's system drive.)

The AX2000 is very a nice camera. I have the similar NX5 and generally have been very pleased with it. That said, I still have my XHA1 --- couldn't find a buyer locally when I got the NX5 and then wound up continuing to use the XHA1. I do mostly multi-cam event shoots for which the XHA1 has remained useful, and also have used it when subbing out some jobs recently. I've been running the XHA1 with a Sony MRC1 compact flash recording unit for a couple of years now. The MRC almost always works as though it had been designed for the XHA1. WHich brings me to another point. if you are comfortable with your XHA1, and if the main reason for looking to the AX2000is going tapeless, you might consider going with something like the MRC or Datavideo DN60. Less than 20% of the cost of an AX2000. While these nits hook to the camera through a firewire port, you would only need a USB card reader to feed the video from the CF cards to your editing workstation. Ot, you could do the tranfer from the recorder to through laptop to the network media drive. AT that ppoint, you are only moving files so throughput is not the problem it would be when capturing from tape.

[Tom Miller]

The footage just looks really off to me

Yes i could move the drive back and forth its just a pain to have to climb behind the computer to move the drive. the drive i have in my deck top is a 7200rpm drive but its getting on the full sided. The drive Im currently working with is an external using E-sata


If i could i would like to keep my XHa1 its been a great camera but video being a hobby for me i cant afford to keep it. My thinking with the ax2000 is its designed to be tape-less and most of my videos are made with very quick shots i don't generally do long clips. Tape less isn't the only thing i want my second camera (generally let my second camera man on shoots i need 2) is just a little HDR sr11 that uses AVCHD yeah i know the image quality wont be exactly the same but i would think close. Not getting paid for any of my work I try to use the sr11 when its not really that important instead of loading $10 tapes in each time.

I got a chance yesterday to play with the Ax2000 at the camera store and i really liked it i couldn't believe it was a good 2 inches shorter then the the XH. My other camera option that I kind of like is the canon XF100 but then i saw the price of the cards and i would lose a lot of controls. i would chose the XF100 if i needed a second camera.

sorry if my thoughts are scrambled its been a long day

[Jay West]

The video from your SR11 will be pretty close to what you get from the AX2000, closer than your XHA1 unless you have been doing some serious fiddling with presets. Ron Evans has posted about his success in using his NX5 with his SR11. .

It is easy to go tapeless with the XHA1, though, by simply adding a recorder unit. Set the Canon's menu to enable external control and you then run the recording unit by hitting the camera's record record button. Mounting them on the top shoe is convenient but makes hand-held shooting awkward. Several folks have posted here with ways of velcro-ing a recording unit in more convenient and less awkward positions. An MRC unit is about $750. There is a very long thread in the MRC sub-forum on using it with XH cams. The Datavideo DN60 units are significantly less --- about $460 --- and there have been several postings about successfully using them with XH cams. Panagiotis Raris may be the dvinfo member who is most knowledgeable on this subject.

[Tom Miller]

Well today i shot again with the XH a1 everything looks great played back on the tv perfect..... Now i go to capture NO luck again. I'm 99.99% its not the camera I must be doing something wrong with CS5 but i did the same thing i did on Friday and it it worked I'm really confused the link to the camera seems fine. i can control the camera with the capture screen but as soon is i hit record screen goes blue (normal) but the time code at the top will not indicate that its capturing. When i hit stop i get a frame from the whats on the camera.

[Bo Sundvall]

Hi

I had the same problem myself. Intel i7 2600K, GTX470, ASUS P8P67 Deluxe motherboard with FireWire, CS5 and Win7 Pro 64. The PC worked as charm, CS5 no problem, games at full HD no problems. FireWire didn't work. The PC recognized the camcorder but I couldn't get the FW-connection to work with Premiere Pro or HDVsplit. I found an old external FW-card and installed it. Didn't work either until I changed the driver to Legacy (Control Panel > System > Device Manager > IEE 1394 Bus Host Controllers. Right click on controler device, select "Update Driver Software", select "Browse for .... ", select "Let me pick..." , select the Legacy device, click Next and let windows update the driver.)

Strange that the motherboard couldn't be used, but the workaround with the FW-card works so I will not put any more time to try to fix the problem with the integrated FW-port.

Regards,

/Bo

[Jay West]

Originally Posted by Tom Miller

Well today i shot again with the XH a1 everything looks great played back on the tv perfect..... Now i go to capture NO luck again. I'm 99.99% its not the camera I must be doing something wrong with CS5 but i did the same thing i did on Friday and it it worked I'm really confused the link to the camera seems fine. i can control the camera with the capture screen but as soon is i hit record screen goes blue (normal) but the time code at the top will not indicate that its capturing. When i hit stop i get a frame from the whats on the camera.

Sounds like you are tired and floundering back over ground you've already covered. Try looking at this systematically.

Number 1: You already figured out that the problem was not with Premiere. Your first post said that Vegas would not capture, either. If Vegas won't capture, it is not Premiere that is making the capture stop or produce artifacts.

Number 2: you have ruled out the camera. If it were a settings problem, you would have no machine control over the XHA1. You and the shop ruled out camera defects such as a bad firewire port on the camera.

Number 3: what does that leave? It leaves (a) the firewire port on your laptop or (b) you've got a problem with the network connection to the hard drive on your main computer.

To rule out the laptop's firewire port being a problem, do three things. First, follow the oft repeated suggestion to go into Windows Device Manager and check the firewire driver settings. It should say something like "1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy)." This is a Windows 7 thing. If it does not say "Legacy" at the end, read the previously searched threads about how to update and change the driver. Second, test capturing again. If the problems stop, you've found the cause.

Third, if that does not solve the problem, try capturing to your Laptop's drive. If you cannot capture to your laptop drive, the firewire port is failing. If you can capture to your laptop's drive without the issues you have been having in trying to capture to a network drive, then problem is your network connection which may not always be up to giving you the bandwidth need to capture from tape. If you can capture to your laptop, do that and simply move the file to your target drive. Moving the file requires less bandwidth than capturing from tape.