neo hdv - what is it's second conversion doing?
 

just running the neo hdv trial, used it to capture an hdv from my A1..
I checked convert to avi and also keep the m2t.

So, I end up with an mt2 and also an avi with my base file names.

however, now it's encoding again, to a file with a -001 appended to the base file name. it almost got that done, and created two files (xxx-001.avi and xxx-001.mt2) the same size as my original capture and encode, but got an error and reported it's trying again, now a -002.

the only thing I notice is that windows (explorer) is reporting the duration of my avi as 25 mins, but the tape (and subsequent capture) ran a full 60 mins.

I can see if it stopped after created the initial avi and m2t, but does anyone know what it's trying to do?

I have hdv scene detection unchecked. Also I told it to stop on dropped frame, but it didn't report any.

actually, now I see a buffer overrun, try defragmenting your capture disk. not sure where that fits in, but my question still stands (I think) as to why is it trying to create a second set of files and why is my first set only 25 out of 60 mins?

any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!

If you do have scene changes anywhere it is best to have scene detection selected to prevent audio sync issues. Not much point in keeping the M2T as you have that on tape. :)

Do happen to be using FAT32 filesystem? 25mins is about 4Gigs of M2T data, just wondering if that is a coincidence.

David - thanks, appreciate it. the drives are NTFS, so I'm not sure what's happening.

I did figure out that when I tell it to keep the m2t file, it starts chunking up the files into pieces.

I had differing results when I told it just to convert the avi. For the first tape, it did that, and I ended up with a 24 gig file for 1 hour of hdv - this is what I would have expected, one file and while it did take a while to convert, it finished reasonably.

for the second tape, even though I didn't say to keep the m2t, it stated chunking up the converted file into segments of ~2.172 gigs each anyway. The process ran real long (would have thought it would finish overnight, e.g. in maybe 6 hours), but it didn't.. was still running, then bluescreened (that was my 2nd or 3rd try with the second tape..first try was to keep the mt2 file, when I confirmed that it was chunking the avi file when I kept the m2t). during the conversion into chunks, the log would report an error, with a msg that the process was being interrupted and was resuming (I can't recall the exact msg.. went to get it just now but it looks like I can't see the log history, just the log from the current session). Overall, I tried the second tape 2 or 3 times, but could not get it to convert successfully into a cineform avi.

I did check the knowledgebase online at the time, but didn't find anything related, either in general re that type of error or anything specific..

at first, I thought that I just didn't understand the workflow, but rather it looks like the app is trying to make decisions on how to process the file based on system conditions,etc. but I can't tell what's wrong or how to remedy it.

I tried all of this over the weekend, but now have to put that PC back to regular production use, so may not be able to try again until I get this job out, maybe end of week or at the weekend. I hope my trial does not expire before I can figure this out (11 days left). When I had the prior version installed as a trial, I found the editing performance to be acceptable, so to me, it was worth the batch conversion time to be able to pick up better performance in editing, assuming all else equal (e.g. codec quality). (side note - at first I thought that the old version may have been causing a conflict, so I uninstalled everything and then reinstalled just the neo branded product, which shows on the log as hd capture appl. 2.2.5, neo v 3.0.0 build 126).

I'm running XP SP2 on a 2 ghz machine, nvidia dual head card.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. As I mention, I really would like to get this to work, and am happy to try a few different things in order to do so.

thanks again.

At 2GHz your system might be underpowered -- unless it is a Core 2 Duo. On slower PCs the firewire can drop packets under heavy CPU load, these can cause the capture to stop and force a scene break. You may how to capture M2Ts then convert in a second step.

Here are the minimum system requirements for direct conversion to AVI
http://www.cineform.com/products/Neo...s_Requirements

thanks .. let me try that and see what happens..I think I was under the impression that the convert was a second step, not real time..I don't think the 2ghz could deal w/ capture and also convert in real time.. I'll post back..thanks again

thanks..the separate capture then convert is working much better....no thrashing of files due to CPU. (and, my 2ghz took ~3 hours to convert the captured m2t of 1 hour, so no way it could have converted real time).

however, I am getting an EC_ERRORABORT message when converting the captured tapes.

on tape 1, it happened right near the end, (1 hour of hdv so ~13 gigs), so I thought it was the end of the tape.

however, on tape 2, I get it after 550 megs (of 20 gigs est) have been created, and on the 2nd and 3rd attempt for that tape, it happens after 965 meg created, then 966 meg created.

any suggestions? based on the different time it happens through the tape, I'm not sure what the error msg is or what to do about it.

All our tools were updated on Friday -- try the new download to see if that helps.

hi David - thanks.

I used the download from late Friday, neo hd 3.0.1 build 129 (hd link capture 2.2.5).

I had read in other threads about some type of (manual?) reset which might help with this..if there is one, I don't mind doing it.

I'm on XP SP2, and my capture drive for this projects is FW400 7200RPM.

Any thoughts on this would be great or if there's any info from logs I could send would be fine, np.

I don't know the answer to this one. I just seems to be behaving so if there are errors in the captured scquence. The ERRORABORT is a general error to say the conversion "graph" stopped, the most likely component is the MPEG2 decoder. Are you about the convert the rest of the sequence?

ruh roh, rastro....

hmm...I haven't tried skipping the 'errored' part.. I thought if there were some problem with the mpeg gop, it would crap out at the same place each time, but when I saw that it was stopping at different points, I was no longer sure what it might be..maybe something more environment related or something.

This is HDV from a canon HX-A1 recorded in standard play (e.g. 60 mins on 1 tape) captured from the same camera I used to shoot it.

well, I'm not sure what to do, other than to try my capture again... if there was a trace to figure out whether it's environment related or some other cause, I'd be interested... but, it's happened on 2 out of 2 of my tapes so far

maybe I'll try to capture again and see what happens...

any other thoughts, pls. let me know, as I'd love to be able to buy / use the codec for editing (vegas 7).

thanks again!