Capturing video with the GY-HD100
 

I had a hell of a time trying to capture video (in HDV) with my HD100. In the beginning, I was sure the video was faulty. Some points for people to be aware of:-
1) When connected and the 1394 switch is in the HDV position, the device manager will NOT show the device connected as a DV etc. You have to check under Sound Video and tape devices. Even then, the video won't show a connection unless it is in the Tape Play mode and either playing or in pause. If you look carefully in the Device Manager, you'll see that it shows "JVC AV Subunit". If you see this, you will be able to capture.
2) There only appear to be two reliable ways to always get connected - CAPDVHS is a purely capture program but the tape must be FIRST in actual tape play mode (and running) for CAPDVHS to work. PowerDirector 5 is VERY reliable at capturing the JVC. Yes, it is an amateur program and some of it's features will be viewed with utter contempt by "serious" video cinematographers but it does work. I have seen criticism levelled at PowerDirector for being slow. All I can say is that it is actually quite fast - IF you have a dual core processor and a decent amount of RAM. I have tried PowerDirector on a number of computers - totally hassle free. Avid Liquid 7, Pinnacle Premiere Pro 2, Video Studio and Studio 10.5 have proved to be slow-motion nightmares in almost every instance. (Inability to recognize the camera, inability to capture and frequent hangups).

If you have a JVC GY-HD100, as you're aware, it's capable of stunning results - as good as anything I've seen but I've been taken to hell and back with capture problems. Try these two (ie CapDVHS and PD5) programs and you'll be glad you did.

If anyone out there is aware of another program that is more sophisticated (than Power Director) and still has rock solid capture abilities, please let me know.

John

Nightmare!
 

I'm hearing you John. I have a HD100 and not being a technical person and being relatively new to this industry it has taken me a while to get my head around this camera and I'm still only at the beginning.
I want to get out there and experiment and bring the footage back and edit but I just can't get it to recognise my camera when I connect with firewire. I am beside myself.
I tried to understand your post but I can't relate to it, I think because I am on a quad G5. I also am using Final Cut Pro.
The problem with asking people on forums like this is that they automatically assume you understand all the jargon and format speech which is very confusing, and it makes it so hard to get going.
I only know that I on PAL system not NTSC.
Please if you can spare the time anyone please give me a few pointers.
Or perhaps there is a beginners forum that somebody knows of.
Because unfortunately it's not just as simple as shoot and edit. There is a swamp in between.
Martin ODonnell

Have you tried cineform's HD Connect? It does a pretty good job if you are in pc platform. I have Vegas 6 and use the cineform codec to capture. I mainly do my editing with Final Cut Pro on an Intel MacBook Pro, using Mpegstreamclip to capture. I still find apple to be more stable than pc, IMHO.

Hi Martin.

Because you are in a PAL area, that most likely means your camera shoots 25 frames per second (fps). Now, Final Cut Pro (FCP) only supports 30 fps at the moment, which is the frame rate used in NTSC areas.

The good news is that FCP is expected to be updated within the next month so that it will also support 25 fps and 24 fps (which I presume are the two frame rates that you are likely to be dealing with).

In the meantime, there are a lot of "workarounds" for 25 and 24 fps which have been posted on this forum and the "Final Cut for HD/HDV" forum.

The main thing to grasp is that when you are shooting in "720p25" (which means 720 lines of progressive scan video at 25fps) you have two specific problems to overcome:

1/ Capturing the footage from your camera via firewire onto your computer's hard drive (there is free software you can get called "DVHSCap" which will enable you to do this).

These newly captured files on your hard drive are called ".m2t" files, which is short for "MPEG-2 Transport Stream". MPEG-2 Transport Stream is the method of compression that your JVC camera uses to get your images recorded onto those tiny mini-DV tapes.

2/ Converting your captured .m2t files into Quicktime movies and then importing these Quicktimes into Final Cut Pro. (There is free software called "MPEG Streamclip" which does a great job of converting your .m2t files at 25fps into Quicktime movies.)

Now you can edit your footage.

I've given some quite detailed (step-by-step) workflows of how to do this (including links to where you can download the free software from) in the following threads:

An early workflow I used (which also gives a lot of explanations) is given in post #5 of this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=65189


A much better workflow (the one I currently use) is given in post #8 of this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=70518


Good luck. And feel free to ask any questions. (And don't forget to use the "search" functions on this forum. It's a great tool!)

thank you
 

Thank you very much indeed David. I'm getting stuck right into it.

I am very grateful to you and other people on this forum who are willing to assist. It gives people like me a chance to struggle through the jargon and get going.

Thanks David, I'll be in touch.


Martin ODonnell