Neo HDV
 

Heard so many nice things about it but I can't get it to capture. I'm using Vista. I can cut and paste the error messages I'm getting if that helps.

What camcorder are you using? Are you trying to capture HD or SD? Do any other capture programs work with your hardware?

XH A1 with Vegas 7. I'm able to capture through Vegas but HDLink has been finicky. It's able to control play, rewind and ff but as soon as I hit start (capture) I get the error while the camera keeps running. Sometimes HDLink won't launch at all and maybe one time it actually did capture and it seems to convert files. Nothing has been changed in my computer. My research tells me that Vista is the culprit.

For some reason, the driver that Vista uses for Firewire capture doesn't work consistently with certain camcorders. Here's a few ideas, that may cut down on the frequency or errors:

1) Make sure nothing else is running except HDLink and that includes your anti-virus software.
2) Turn DEP off in Vista just for HDLink.
3) Try changing the order of when you turn the camcorder on, versus when you run HDLink. In other words, run HDLink, then turn on the camcorder.
4) Try capturing by hitting the Play button, then hitting the Capture button.

None of this makes any sense, but it sometimes works.

I just set up a Vista system. Same problems. Jay is right though. After initially have error messages show up, when I shut down both HDLink and the camera, and then turned on Camera first and then stared HDLink. That seemed to work. Doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I have always (even with XP) had the problem of having to restart HDLink after a capture is completed, before I can go on to another capture. Don't know why Cineform has those issues...

Cheers for the input. I've always believed that the artist should be finicky and unpredictable but the tools should be reliable. The machines are turning on us.

I don't think it's the machines that are turning on us - rather, the developers of the operating system that runs on the machine.