Bad playback on Canon HV40
 

I shot a small wedding tonight with two Canon HV40's that my wife brough home from her Broadcast class she teaches. When I tried capturing the videos have a ton of noise and garbage like pixellation, bars, and green spots. HDVSplit would drop the capture becuase of lost frames or packets.

Up until recently she had been using JVC tapes exclusively in these and recently switched to Sony because they are easier to get. Did the switch from one brand to another cause trouble? I suggested she run a cleaning tape through each camera before the brand switch. I'm not seeing all the garbage on the viewfinder during playback, only the resulting file.

So should we run a cleaning tape again or is there some other trick?

Try using a different playback device. If the viewfinder looks good then the problem should be in the hookup between the camcorder and computer. Doesn't sound like a tape problem.

Problem is I don't have a different playback device for HDV. She has recorded and captured on both in SD since switching brands and had no problems. I was filming in 30p HDV yesterday. The video looks fine on the viewfinder during play back. It's just during capture where it's screwed up.

It doesn't look like it's the tapes. I tried capturing live in HDV and the same thing happens. If I switch the camera to SD it works like normal.

Can a firewire cable or port start to go bad without going out completely and cause trouble capturing HD footage but not SD?

Edit:

I think I've narrowed it down to the firewire port on the laptop or the cable. I tested both cameras and if I take th tape out and switch to camera to capture a live feed I can capture in SD with no problems. If I switch to any HDV mode the image is messed up.

My wife is going to bring home another laptop with a firewire port and another cable tomorrow and I'll be able to test some more. Until then I'm left wondering obsessively.

Yes.

It could be a cable problem. Or a combination of them. A few years back, when I was recording video direct-to-disk using On-location with a laptop and an external firewire drive, I had a firewire cable that worked fine when connected between the drive and the laptop but only worked intermittently when used with the camera. So, it is possible to have a bad cable without a experiencing complete cable failure.

When you said that things "work like normal" with SD, does that mean you were able to capture SD footage from the camera using the cable? If the cable works for SD, then the you can rule out issues with the camera, cable or computer's firewire port.

Have you been able to capture HDV in the past on your computer while using HDVSplit or is this the first time you've tried it? If it worked in the past but not now, can you think of anything that has changed?

You may have issues with the computer or its hard drives. Lost frames, etc. on capture can be symptoms of issues with the computer when using HDV Split. Have you defragged the capture drive recently? Are you using the system drive for capture? (Generally, it is recommeded that you capture video to a separate drive which can even be a USB drive as long as it spins at 7200 rpm or faster.) Are you capturing to a drive that spins at 7200 rpm or faster, or are you capturing to slower drive? (Slower drives can cause the capture problems you saw.) Are you trying to capture everything on an older laptop computer? (Get an external drive.) How much disk space is available on your capture drive? (When free space goes below 25%, capture speed can start to seriously drop off and that will produce the symptoms you describe.)

It also is possible that your the HDVSplit file may have have become corrupted. Have you tried untinstalling and re-installing HDVSplit?

If this is the first time you've tried capturing HDV, what are your computer's specifications (operating system, cpu, ram, etc.)? Do you have enough RAM for HDV capture?

What will you be using to edit the wedding footage? Does your editing application have the ability to capture HDV? Are you using HDV Split only because you want to have all the scenes split out? Have you tried capturing with your editing application? If you cannot capture HDV with your editing application, you might try downloading a trial version of Cineform's NeoScene or NeoHD (from Cineform) and try using that capture utility. The trials are good for 30 days. (Note, if you are working with Pinnacle Studio, this won't work.)

Hi, Stan.................
 

The fact that everything works fine in SD but not at all in HD eliminates the ports and cable.

Try shooting some HD in 60i and see whether the laptop will swallow it, it may well have a problem with Canons 30P mode.

If it will, and the culprit with 30P can't be fingered, see if you can copy (using the appropriate Firewire cable) the 30P from one camera to the other but set the second camera to record in 60i (not entirely sure you can pull that trick with the HV 40 but worth a try).

If that works you should be able to pull your video into the laptop as 60i.


CS

Ok, lots of stuff in those replies. Thanks for the input.

It has been a few months since I used these cameras for an HD shoot. My wife uses them every week at school and always shoots SD.

The last HD project I did I shot at 24p and captured to my laptop that is dead now. It was a dual core and I captured to the system drive and had no problems. Now I am trying to capture to her laptop with the same cable I used before. She has a Dell i5 laptop and I am trying to capture to the system drive. Like I said, she captures SD to this laptop weekly with the same cameras but a different cable. I filmed 2 pageants a few weeks ago on these cameras in SD and transferred to the same machine I'm trying to transfer to now with the same cable I'm using now and had no troubles.

When I say SD works normal I mean I can capture SD from tape or live and have no troubles. There are no dropped frames and the file is not corrupted. If I try to capture any version of HD it is messed up.

This is the first time I have tried using HDVSplit on this particular machine. If I use the Vegas capture engine the same thing happens. It doesn't seem to matter how the footage comes into the machine, only what format it's coming in. I made sure to try capturing from tape and live on both cameras in different formats and it's the same result. That's what leads me to believe it's either the cable or the port on teh laptop.

My wife is bringing home her school laptop and her cable tomorrow and I'll try with those. That will tell me if the problem is what I think it is or something deeper.

Aren't you supposed to be able to downconvert HDV footage to SD from the camera during capture?

Yes, most definately...........
 

But as we were discussing HD, I hadn't suggested it, yet.


CS

The most important chunk of this project will end up as DVD so if I can downconvert and get the same results that fine for the time being. I was asked last minute to film a wedding. The had a local singer as entertaainment and I filmed some of his performance and will probably upload that as HD to Vimeo for him to use on his website.

I still want to get to the root of the problem so I can continue to work in HD though.

Stan.........
 

do a search on "Firewire driver update" here on DVinfo, I'm sure I remember an issue with some Dell PC's where the Firewire driver was the wrong version and it was giving similar problems to yours.

Else search the Dell download centre and see if there's an update there.


CS

Here...............
 

may be where to start:

How to get the Latest Driver Updates for your Dell! | Dell


CS

Re: Bad playback on Canon HV40
 

Thanks. I'll check in a bit and see.

Re: Bad playback on Canon HV40
 

I tried changing the drivers and it didn't fix the problem so I'll see tomorrow if it's something else.

Re: Bad playback on Canon HV40
 

Alright guys, here's the status now. My wife brought home another laptop today with Windows XP. I only had about 5 minutes after she got home to test it and tried capturing a live feed with the same camera and cable to that other laptop. It seems to work fine on that machine. After being pointed to the other posts and looking elsewhere I think it's some type of driver or maybe BIOS issue on that particular model of Dell.

Now I have a new issue. I went out to film a couple bands tonight with the Canons and I only had 2 new JVC tapes after we have been using Sony tapes in these cameras lately. They were new tapes so I didn't know for sure if it would be any problem. When I play them back now the video seems to slow down periodically. It doesn't become garbled or drop out, it just looks like it's going about half speed and then picks up. Audio sounds fine. Did I screw up by using the other brand tapes? Is it something that might be fixed by running a cleaning tape and then capturing the JVC tapes or is it something that was likely permanently written in the original footage? I tried capturing a bit of footage and it captures without dropping frames or anything.