How to capture HDV to a PC using 100% free software

[Lorin Thwaits]

Having spent nearly two grand, you bring home the latest high definition marvel from Sony. Excited, you open the box and start checking out the cam. Sweet. And after recording a half hour or so, it's time to see what it looks like. Plugging the unit into the firewire port on your PC, it starts asking for drivers you don't have. Upon searching the box the unit came in, no luck. What do you do? This new page I created walks you through the driver you need and how to use CapDVHS and VirtualDub to work with HDV content for free! Of course much more flexible editing is possible with other tools, but this can be a fun start to seeing HDV content on your PC.

http://hdvforever.com/hdv/hdrhc1/fre...re/default.htm

Enjoy!

-Lorin

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Except that V-dub isn't 709 colorspace capable. Unless I missed an update somewheres.

Pointing to the Sony DVHS drivers in your XP load (if you need to at all, I didn't need to with the PAL version of the HC1e) is no different than performing it with the FX1 or Z1 cams.
Nice page though, glad you're enjoying the cam, I'm loving mine, too.

[Lorin Thwaits]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

Except that V-dub isn't 709 colorspace capable. Unless I missed an update somewheres.

It looks like it is from the source code. In vDub mod, check out line 2091 in mpeg_decode.cpp. (This is in the lookup table of constants for doing YCbCr to RGB conversions.) Here is the whole table used there for reference. Note the second entry:

static const long Inverse_Table_6_9[8][7] = {
// crv, cbu, cgu, cgv, radd, gadd, badd
{117504, 138453, -13954, -34903, -16228689, 5065481, -18910197}, // no sequence_display_extension
{117504, 138453, -13954, -34903, -16228689, 5065481, -18910197}, // ITU-R Rec. 709 (1990)
{104597, 132201, -25675, -53279, -14576620, 8917830, -18109946}, // unspecified
{104597, 132201, -25675, -53279, -14576620, 8917830, -18109946}, // reserved
{104448, 132798, -24759, -53109, -14557520, 8778945, -18186343}, // FCC
{104597, 132201, -25675, -53279, -14576620, 8917830, -18109946}, // ITU-R Rec. 624-4 System B, G
{104597, 132201, -25675, -53279, -14576620, 8917830, -18109946}, // SMPTE 170M
{117579, 136230, -16907, -35559, -16238238, 5527474, -18625621} // SMPTE 240M (1987)
};

Looks like this table comes straight from the ISO/IEC 13818-2 recommendation, so it should be treating 709 properly.

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

Pointing to the Sony DVHS drivers in your XP load (if you need to at all, I didn't need to with the PAL version of the HC1e) is no different than performing it with the FX1 or Z1 cams.

Very true. I figured the steps would be confusing for many novices, and since the HC1 is geared more for that crowd I decided to make the page. I wonder how many people did have the same experience I did, needing to install a seemingly unrelated Sony DVHS driver. Perhaps if you use the right camera for your region then it's not an issue. It definitely was essential for me, using a Japanese HC1 with a US copy of XP.

Definitely a fun camera. It has severely cranked up my post-processing CPU requirements, but all for the better since it's such a nicer resulting image!

-Lorin

[Jason Mar]

Originally Posted by Lorin Thwaits

Definitely a fun camera. It has severely cranked up my post-processing CPU requirements, but all for the better since it's such a nicer resulting image!

-Lorin

Lorin,

Thanks for the great resource. I'm planning on buying the prosumer FX1 and a new workstation for editing soon . Since I'm new to video editing, any tips on processor, ram, ... is appreciated. Also, how long does it take to reencode video in hd? One guy on here posted 1 minute for every second of video. That can't be right.

Thanks