CS3 stops recording after 3.5mins when recording from VHS or non-digital input
 

Wondered if anyone has overcome this problem and can give me some tips. I have old VHS footage and audio tapes that I am trying to input on to a sequence in Premiere using the breakout cable and red/white yellow cable.
I have my settings for capture as:
* change my input device from DV-1394 to RT.X2
* change my input source from component to composite
* my capture format remians Matrox DV/DV Cam
Under device control:
* change from 'Matrox DV/HDV device control' to 'serial device control'
* when clicking on options, I choose 'none'
The recording takes place and is going well for about 3.5 mins and then it stops and the systems jams up for a while. I have the 3.5mins recorded but it will not do any more than that. My archiving project has come to a halt. Can anyone help?

Try to use a different VHS deck. I had a JVC that would drop a frame every once in a while and place in a blue screen...Premiere pro did not like it

Sara, I have RTX2 too and I have digitized hours and hours of old archive. Please try to disable Autosave in Premiere, as it makes more trouble than it helps.

I see you change your control settings to "serial device control". Don`t do that, that`s for professional decks with RS232 connection. Just leave it to Matrox DV/HDV. You will have to control your VHS deck manually anyway.

Also make sure you have the latest RTX2 drivers, Matrox is getting their act together and their product is finally usable after 2 years on the market. Latest drivers are version 3.6 and fix a lot of these seemingly random issues. I would bet my sister that your issue is a Matrox related issue.

And if anything else fails, just hook up your VCR to a DV camera and capture via firewire.

Hope this helps, please let us know.

Sara,

If you have a domestic DVD recorder, record the VHS tape on to DVD then capture from the DVD into the computer. DVD is of course compressed MPEG, but for VHS I have found the quality more than acceptable.

I had a huge VHS archive and I used to do a lot of analog-digital capture of VHS with various capture cards on my PC, and it was never a happy experience! The DVD path works much better for me, but your mileage may vary.

Is it possible that you are recording to a FAT32 drive instead of NTFS? What is the exact file size of the 3.5 minute capture?

Thank you all for your response.
* I have disabled the autosave but there doesn't appear to be any improve.
* Have switched my device contriol to Matrox DV/HDV.
* Have recently installed the Matrox Tools V3.5 from the supplier (the machine is less than 12 months old)
* Not sure where to look up to see if my RTX2 driver is the latest or not (is that the same as above) - where can I look? What would be the best site to update that if it is < V3.6
* I am recording on to NTFC and the file sizes are:
4:20 mins - 965MB
:52 mins - 196MB
:54 mins - 202MB

I would be happy to record onto my camera as this appears to be unaffected by these problems. It is just a little frustrating as I have been able to do all VHS and disc archiving/capture before on the old machine (pre CS3) but seem unable to do these basic functions on the new (too bad the old one is not working!!)
Any further responses appreciated.
Thanks, Sara

Hello Sara,

you can download latest updates to RTX2 on Matrox Support of course:

Matrox Video - Support - RT.X2 Downloads

I am almost positive this is a Matrox issue, I am quite used to having all kinds of strange issues just like yours. If you don`t need to capture HD, skip Matrox altogether (I mean, for purpose of archiving VHS).