Capturing footage problem, DRIVING ME CRAZY!
 

Hey Guys, I figure someone here would know how to help me because I am genuinely driving myself CRAZY.

I recently shot some footage with my Canon-XH-A1 in HDV format (1080i) and am trying to import it into my Windows 7 (64 bit) based PC via firewire. I tried vegas, nothing. HDVSplit, nada. Premiere CS4, not a chance.

For whatever reason these programs are not able to capture my footage even though in all of them I am fully able to control my camera (ff, pause, rw, play, etc) Also when I think I finally think it's about to work the capturing will stop itself once it gets to a scene split (stoppage in recording).

Everything is set right on my camera settings; AV>DV is OFF. Comp. Out is set to 1080i.

I'm really not sure what else to do, I'm going nuts. Any help is very much appreciated.

Hi Gregory............
 

Can't take any cudos for this as even this is third hand, but check out post #5 on this thread (courtesy of the Google search)...........

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-vi...ustration.html

May just solve the problem, don't know.


CS

Didn't see that thread at first, thanks. However, did everything suggested and to no avail. This is incredibly frustrating, I don't want to have to down convert to DV.

Did your computer come w/ Win7 or did you upgrade? There is a chance that your firewire chipset is not fully Win7 compatible. You might have to try buying a Firewire card and see if you can capture through that.

Also do a websearch for Firewire and your paticular motherboard/computer. There might be an update available &/or other people may be having the same problem.

Bought my computer with Windows 7 preinstalled.

All the Sony and Canon HDV camcorders I've worked with have been set by default to output HDV > DV via Firewire. This in-camera downconversion is ON from the factory, and you WILL see device control in Premiere, but no picture. This is the most likely scenario for your issue.

I have an HV20 at home, but don't remember what Canon calls it in the menu....for Sony, it is "i.Link Convt", but you need to find the "DV convt" or whatever Canon calls it and turn it OFF. Also, set VCR to HDV, not AUTO.

Once that is set correctly, you need to RESET the system. Turn camera OFF and close Premiere also. Next, turn camera (VTR) ON and wait for beep or other notice that computer "sees" the camera. Once it does that, launch Premiere and capture HDV.

To verify this is the issue, open a Premiere DV project and try a capture. If it works, then the Firewire convert is ON in the camera and it is outputting DV.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

I looked through the menu again and I don't see anything that would catch my eye as a down convert problem.

AV>DV us set to OFF
HD Down-Conv is grayed out


Also, when playing back my media the HDV60i icon is above my media...


This is really beyond frustrating, I will be so thankful to anyone who can help me out. Thank you for all your responses thus far.

Can you post a screen grab of your project settings and capture window from Premiere?

http://gregorymstevens.com/vegas.jpg

Vegas: When I hit capture, it doesn't actually capture anything but plays the tape.

http://gregorymstevens.com/premiere.jpg

Premiere: Same thing, I can see video - doesn't actually capture.

http://gregorymstevens.com/hdvsplit.jpg

HDV Split: Says it started capturing, however, makes files that are "0 bytes" big.


Note: All programs seem to mess up when the camera has cut scenes. (Everytime I stopped and then started recording)




So frustrating!

My experience with the XH-A1 is that it either talks to the computer or it does not. To rule out the XH-A1 as the problem, you would need another camera to test. If have or can easily borrow another HDV camera, it does allow capture, then you might well have a problem with your XH-A1. However, since your screen shots show that the computer is reading timecode and since you have been able to run the "deck controls" in the capture programs, itseems unlikely that you have an issue with either the camera settings or the program capture settings. I'd suspect it is more likely the issue is with either the tape or the hard drive you are trying to capture to.

I've run into something this three times.

Once with my XH-A1 using HDV Split and Premiere (did not try Vegas) there was some kind of glitch on the tape right at the point I was trying to capture from. It was not a drop out. It just made the tape stop at that point whenever I tried to capture. It just happened that I was trying to start the capture right before that point and the capture would start and then immediately stop. By manually entering start and stop points for batch capture on either side of it, I got around the problem.

Another time, this happened when I was running under WinXP and trying to capture to a hard drive that was over 80% used, and I had not emptied the recycle bin. (The problem can be much worse if you are trying to capture to a system drive and you have one of those 5200 rpm notebook drives.) Also, be sure that your capture destination is a folder and not a drive root. In my case, I cleaned unused files from the disk, ran defrag, and the problem went away.

Finally, the last time I had a problem like this, I found that there can be issues with Win 7 and external firewire and USB drives. I found that Win 7 seems to arbitrarily decide that they are actually DVD drives and give you very slow i/o which can make it impossible to capture video to them. If you have been trying to capture to an external drive, see if you can feed a short segment to another drive (even the system drive if that is all you have.)

Windows 7 Firewire drive doesn't work very well, you need to use the Legacy driver.
Here is a link to an article that will give you step by step instructions

Fixing Firewire Problems in Windows 7

I had the same problems myself.

I have 1.09TB free of space currently, so I don't think disk size is the issue here. I also don't believe it is a defect with my camera nor a setting (although the setting options seem fairly vague)

My footage was recorded in HDV, and my camera is currently outputting HDV footage. I don't understand why it is impossible for me to capture it. In my research I found possibly changing the 1394 driver to legacy mode would help, however, that did nothing.

Please keep the suggestions pouring, I really don't want to have to down convert my footage.

I've got an EVGAP55 MB with OB Firewire. After days of frustration, video capture finally worked for me when I turned off AHCI in BIOS (in my case before reloading Windows 7). After that it worked. I have no explanation, but it might be worth a try.

I don't think I'm very comfortable messing around with my BIOS. Do you think that's really necessary? You would think Windows 7 would make video editing easier for the consumer!


Ugh, this is really making me nuts.

Gregory,
In Premiere, when you open the capture window, click on the settings tab.

Go down under Device Control and set the device to None and see if you can manually capture the video.

Also, do you have any other programs running in background like AntiVirus or other Utilities? If so turn them off and see if you can capture the video.

Did you reboot your computer after you installed the legacy driver?