Vegas 7d won't let me capture HDV...
 

Alrighty. I've had Vegas 7 (running 7d now) since it came out last year, and I've loved it. I have a Sony HDR-HC3 HDV camcorder, and I've captured and edited HDV right there in Vegas. It's been great.

Until now.

I recently reformatted my computer (WinXP Pro, SP2), and I plug my camcorder in via Firewire, and the the computer recognizes the camera, as does Vegas, to an extent. When I want to capture HDV, I go to File > Capture, and then I click on the devices button , and select IEEE1394/MPEGIIsomething. Nothing happens. The device drop down slot (below where I pick the device) is supposed to let me pick my HC3, but it doesn't. It just stays blank, and won't let me pick. I have never had this happen to me before.

As a note, I CAN capture footage using Vegas's external capture tool, but the DV it produces drops frames like crazy. I've never had that happen either.

Does anyone know what I can do to fix this? I tried reinstalling Vegas, but the problem still exists. I have to do a project in HD whose deadline is coming up quick.

Thank you very much for your time and thoughts.

Steven

The other day I had the exact same problem with a Sony HVR-A1u. I was ready to give up, but then I realized that I had put the camera in down-convert mode a few days before to capture sd video and forgot to set it back to hdv output. If your camera is the same as the A1u the playback screen should read HDV 1080i and I Link Convert should be set to off. It it is set to on it will result in the camera being recognized as a dv device and it will not load when one selects hdv caputre. There is also a vcr setting in the menu with options being hdv/dv/or auto. I set mine on auto and it will work correctly with whatever selection I have made in the I link convert dialog. I hope this helps and is not too confusing.

As for the dropped frames issue, make certain the heads are clean. I also had a problem with this once that was caused by a corrupt video card driver. In that instance it would sometimes stick and not capture at all and when it did there was a lot of dropped frames. Re-installing the driver solved that problem.

Thank you Will. I figured it out a few hours after I posted this, and now I feel really stupid. My cam was in down-convert mode, and now that it is in normal HDV mode, everything works great.

Thanks for your help.

SB

Don't feel stupid that kind of thing happens to us all.