Ulead HDV plug-in

[David Kennett]

Anyone here with experience with this? Can't get a trial of the plug-in. I've been using Media Studio Pro for some time - plus, I like the idea of editing in native formats - which the plug-in seems to do. I have so far been unable to talk to Ulead (my biggest complaint) to get some answers. I sure would apprecate some help with a few questions I have.

1. Once I have set the output for JVC HDV, can I incorporate other formats - such as an occasional DV clip? Could I then use moving path to letterbox or crop?

2. Can I import stills (1280x720 or larger)? Can I then pan-tilt,etc. with moving path as I can in DV? Could I import a series of pics - say an animation from Cool 3D?

3. Do ALL the MSP7 filters and effects work? I guess if the answer is yes, then I can do 1 and 2!

Thanks!

[David Kennett]

Not getting any answers here, I did a little more research, didn't find much more - then took the plunge anyway. Everything seems to work pretty much the same as DV, so I'm pleased with that! Havn't got the capture to work yet, but have workaround with JVC capture pgm. Playback from timeline is smooth (3GHz P4) with titles and dissolves - scrubbing is a but rougher - but not bad. I can now incorporate other formats - including stills with zooms and pans - and even HD WMV files. Goodbye KDDI!

[Steve Mullen]

<<<-- Originally posted by David Kennett : Havn't got the capture to work yet, but have workaround with JVC capture pgm. -->>>

Interesting. When I reviewed the plug-in, I spent hours on the phone trying to get Capture to work with a JVC. They claimed they had never had any feedback from anyone.

My review was finished only because I used the JVC Capture utility. I also wrote that Capture didn't work.

Curious -- when I tried captures each capture failed after about 25 frames. Is that happening for you?

Steve

[David Kennett]

Steve,

Thanks for the reply. I had read a review by Eric Franks in Videomaker, and he never even mentioned the capture - other than it existed.

In my case, the capture pgm does not even recognize the HD10 in MPG mode. DV works fine! I guess, I'll have to pursue the matter with Ulead. They are so hard to get hold of - and apparently unresponsive too!

Strange thing - After I installed the plug-in the pgm gave an error message and would not start. Re-installing the Ulead SP2 solved that problem.

I learned to use MSP6 some time back, and thought it was very easy to learn - especially for being a pretty complete pgm. After trying a few others, I still like the straightforward interface of MSP. Did you notice the plug-in will render out to WMV files. This should be handy as I forsee using WMV - until something better comes along.

I should get a speakerphone - just for waiting on hold for computer help lines!

[Graham Jones]

This came up elsewhere, myself and another guy both found the Capture Utility impossible to use - kept crashing - and we, too, had to use the bundled Pixela one.

[Mark Kubat]

surely ulead support has in some way shape or form acknowledged the problem?

any luck?

gosh, amazing that it can take edited HDV out to cam but it can't capture the native stuff? crazy. Oh well - at least capDVHS is a work-around....

weird....

pls. keep us posted - how is ulead stability for editing, etc. Overall, robust enough for HDV?

[Steve Mullen]

<<<-- Originally posted by Mark Kubat : surely Ulead support has in some way shape or form acknowledged the problem?

I suspect they probably got an HD1 on loan from JVC for a few days, wrote some code, returned the camcorder, and now are unable fix anything. And, now are too cheap to buy one.

The best thing folks can do post this failure everywhere. Ulead shouldn't be able to pull this stunt.

That's why I wrote my VS review noting capture did NOT work.

Why should anyone trust the FX1 capture works?

[Thomas Romeo]

I just installed Media Pro 7 and the HD Capture plug-in yesterday as an upgrade to a copy of Video Studio 5 that came with my firewire card.

After two attempts I got the editing software to work, but had no problem capturing 4 minutes of HDV by firewire to a USB2 connected 7200 rpm 250 gig Hard Drive. No lost frames.

What problems have you run into with capturing...crashes, dropped frames, etc.?

I am just learning how to use the software and ran into a problem playing back the entire clip in the Preview Screen - although I have no problem playing back in the Source screen.

I got the following error message:
Unable to compress the video with the specified frame rate or frame size. 18007:1:1

When I cut the clip size down, it did play back - albeit pretty nastily in the preview screen (jumpy, blurry)

Am I doing something wrong?

[Mark Kubat]

Hi folks.

Users on other forums are reporting that after initially failing to work, Ulead tech support has provided them with update to Ulead HDV plugin 2.0 and now they can capture.

I'm hoping the users here who reported can maybe confirm?

There is no trial version but one user reported that as far as a low cost solution, it does the trick on the PC side - He said he now is able to have 100% workflow ie. capture HDV, edit in Mediastudio pro 7, write edited HDV back to FX1 via firewire...

am curious about the "rendering times?"

I'll see if I can find out more.

Man, I'd hate to like spend $299 when like the free Vegas update is just around the corner...

[Brian Conrad]

I was one of the early adopters to the Ulead HDV Plug-in when it first came out last spring. I too had problems with it crashing during capture with JVC. Fortunately the market manager saw my post on a Ulead list and put me in touch with their HDV project manager. In my case I was trying to capture on a machine where I had installed XP Pro over Windows ME. Once I did a clean install it worked. That may not be an option for most but in my case it got rid of a few other bugs in the system too so it was worth it. And it is possible that the XP install is not the problem either.

Note there is a update for MSP too that may need to be installed. I also found a number of bugs and Ulead sent debug versions which created log files to help determine the source of problems. A big problem they had difficulty solving was that some clips would just cause the capture to stop at a timecode change. They finally solved that one (in fact it is mentioned as one of the fixes for the MSP update).

One problem that some JVC users reported that I had solved was that the camera did not like the TS file MSP created. I found that it was necessary to turn off SmartRender. I think if SmartRender is on it just muxes older footage with the newer. Otherwise it re-renders all the footage and then the camera will record. I don't know if this is true with the Sony. A lot of my files had mixed 3D animations, stills and HD footage which required the re-rendering.

One remaining problem I notified Ulead about was a problem capturing long clips like a 45 minute clip where the audio got ahead about 1 second. I haven't heard back on that and so far they have not made an update patch available for the 1.x users so I don't know if it is fixed in 2.0. I also contacted them on that as there are other 1.x users who would like to update too.

One thing, I am very happy that Ulead chose to make one plug-in for all cameras. They were originally to going make them camera specific. IOW, if you had the JVC and got a Sony too and wanted to use footage from both you would have had to purchase two HD plug-ins.

And I suspect MSP 8.0 will have this all built-in.

[Mike Hayes]

The answer to your question about the timing issue with capturing long clips is that they haven't solved the problem with the second version of the plugin (even though they have known of the issue for the last 4 or 5 months). A couple of days ago they at least acknowledged to me that there was an issue - which they are looking into - but don't hold your breath...(it might be seriously out of sync when they do fix it!).

[Brian Conrad]

I finally was able to update to the 2.0 version. One project that was out of sync became in-sync but another 15 minute capture had audio 2-3 seconds ahead at the 5 minute point. My connection with Ulead say they are still working on this problem. I also suggested they might want to make Transport Stream capture a "just in case" option since MSP will convert those to program streams when imported.

I solved this problem by using the JVC capture software which unfortunately breaks the footage up into little clips. I then reassembled them into one big clip with KDDI and then loaded that in MSP and the audio was in sync.

Yesterday I tried CapDVHS and found it worked with the HD1 too. Anyone try it with the FX1?

One problem I ran into with CapDVHS was that the cable I was using was defective and when I switched to another cable then the captures worked fine. So users might want to check their cables too.

[Mark Kubat]

Yep - I've used it - works great with Sony - better on low-end PC than say Canopus HDV capture utility... 10-15 min transfers no problems (don't have any longer scenes than this so far)

Can someone here comment on performance of Ulead plugin going back out to cam? Ie. writing edited m2t and shipping back out via firewire? Robust? Issues?

[Brian Conrad]

I've had no problems writing edited footage back out to HD1 with the plugin. One thing I learned was that you cannot use SmartRender to create the clip. Most of the time the camera would reject those clips but completely re-rendered clips worked just fine. It appears that SmartRender is turned off by default with version 2.0. I did notify Ulead about this solution last fall.

[Mark Kubat]

I should have clarified my query - how about ver. 2 of plugin writing out to Sony FX1 via firewire?