Capturing DV in Veg 11 Pro

[Ron Cooper]

I haven't used DV capture for some time so I guess I'm doing something wrong, but I cannot seem to get the camera recognised in Vegas no matter what. - All I get is "Device not available".

I have checked and find in another editing program it came up no trouble at all and device control etc all worked, so it must be something in Vegas which is not set correctly.

Any Suggestions ?

RonC.

[Graham Bernard]

Hmm...

Have/had you been capturing in VP11 on this same computer? HAve you upgraded to Win7 since you had had success?

Grazie

[Jack Zhang]

You need to use "Video Capture 6.0" and not the internal capture tab. The internal Capture tab is specifically only for HDV/SDI capture.

Go to your Vegas Program folder and if you see vidcap60, that's what you need to use.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Many (all?) Sony decks are set to DV/HDV output = Auto. This isn't good for Windows or Vegas, as there are frequent driver issues. Windows uses a different driver for HDV than for DV...

In this case, the best solution is to go into the playback deck settings and switch to DV output. This assures that when Windows sees the deck, it selects the right driver, whether the tape is playing or not.

In the "Auto" setting, the deck typically tells Windows it is HDV until the tape rolls, then it switches to DV. The HDV state has already been recognized by Vegas or Capture on when Vegas is started, leading to this sort of problem.

Jack is right too; gotta' use the DV capture function in Vegas.

Grazie points out another common problem with Windows 7, there can be mysterious firewire problems. The fix has been documented by Microsoft, rolling back to a legacy driver.

[Ron Cooper]

Thanks for your excellent replies, but I have already been down all those paths. - ( My middle name should be Murphy ! ) However, since last time, I installed a new SSD hard drive & reinstalled Win 7 & Vegas with all the various up dates etc. Since then though, I have only been using AVCHD files.

I did try capturing in one program, only to find that VP11 would not recognise the captured files. This was after I went into Device Manager to check that the camera was there, & it was. So I downloaded a trial version of Power Director and it captured flawlessly. I then tried using it only to find limitations after being used to Vegas. - It also crashed twice but recovered.

This edit is an urgent freeby to show at my close friend & mentor, - Neville Thiele's funeral next Friday, for his family. So I tried capturing in Roxio which so far is working fine, - with VP11 just doing a quick auto convert when I pull the captured files into it.

However, I would like to sort out the problem with VP11, which seems odd, considering that these cheapie programs have no problem with capturing.


RonC.

[Leslie Wand]

if it's win 7 try using legacy firewire driver....

[Ron Cooper]

Thanks Leslie but I'm not quite sure how to do that. Can you please enlighten me.

RonC.

[Mike Kujbida]

•Go to Device Manager and click on IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers
•Click on the device listed underneath this heading.
•Right click this device and select 'update driver software' from the shortcut menu
•Then select the option 'browse my computer for driver software'
•Then select the option 'let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer'
•This then gave me three drivers to pick from (make sure the 'show compatible hardware' check box is ticked
•Select the driver named '1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy)'
•Install driver.

[Ron Cooper]

Many thanks Mike & Leslie. - I had already done that yesterday but I didn't realise that this was the legacy driver. However, it still did not solve this issue.

However, the problem is now solved, because although I had ticked the Vidcap 6 box and even checked it in windows and saw it there, just now when I re-checked it in Windows, it showed the folder was empty !

I am not sure what I did next exactly, but I ticked a few relevant boxes in Windows and then tried again in Vegas and it all worked, - amazing ! - All this, after many hours of more frustration which I seem to get every time I try editing.

Why "Oh" why, does Vegas have to be so complicated compared with other programs that simply do the job ! - (Why make things easy when you can make them difficult!)

Thanks again to all who responded.

RonC

[Graham Bernard]

And that's why I asked about your upgrade path to Win7. I had the exact same issue and needed to activate the Legacy f/w driver. It had to be activated ONLY for this VidCap process. My opinion is that your success started when you activated it. The actual success after several attempts by yourself has its start from you activating thategacy driver.

I'm loathe to suggest this as a test, as you're up and running, but if you revert to the NON-Legacy driver, you'll bring about your initial issue. Re-activating the Legacy driver should then bring VidCap to activity. But that's up to you. I'm saying all this 'cos others will be reading this thread and thinking it maybe an alternative issue, when it's not.

I'm glad you're working towards this Friday. You don't need any other pressure.

Best regards

Grazie