im having an issue and I'm not sure if its the camera or the computer. all of a sudden im having issues capturing from my camera. In one instance i was getting artifacts (but not showing up on camera) that makes me think its something with my computer. Now in the situation im in at the present monument i cant even capture a whole clip i have tried 3 or 4 times to capture the same clip and it cuts out at the same point. It is playing back on my cam perfect... i tried 2 different editors CS5 and Vegas

Have you searched this forum for this topic?

If so, wwhich of the solutions have you tried and found not to work?

Hi, Tom................

Sounds like one or other of the firewire sockets or the cable itself has gone awol.

Try a new/ different cable in the first instance, then try another camera in case it's the camera port.

Check that all power cables and anything else plugged into your pc are secure in their sockets, and you don't have a dicky flourescent light fitting blinking on and off somewhere in the house

Check also that you haven't activated any new security/ virus software or anything else new running in the background, defrag your hard drives and keep your fingers crossed that one of the above nails it.


CS

jay i wouldn't of posted the question if didn't search...

Spent an hour down at the camera shop trying to figure out where my problem was. We were able to eliminate the fire-wire as the issue. We cleaned the heads and put a new tape in recorded a few seconds of video then captured it seemed to work but i wont know until i shoot some footage to test this theory out. the camera has very low time less then 30hours so i hope there's no hardware issue


thanks for the response

Hi, Tom...........

If the problem doesn't show in the cameras viewfinder but is appearing on the PC, it can't be a dirty head problem. If the data can't be read, the viewfinder can't make it up.

Try connecting the camera to a screen capable of taking Component HD, using the Component cable and,
using the tape(s) that gave the problem, see if it shows then. If it doesn't, it's got to be either the FireWire or the PC.

If it does, the viewfinder/ LCD is lying, though how, I can't imagine.


CS

Hi Tom,

I had the issue couple of years ago.After took it to the Canon Service Center they told me the camera head needed to be realigned and it did the trick the cost was minimum.

Good luck.

I'm not sure if it was the cleaning tape or capture settings (turned seen detection off) but everything seems fine now

jay i wouldn't of posted the question if didn't search...

Spent an hour down at the camera shop trying to figure out where my problem was. We were able to eliminate the fire-wire as the issue. We cleaned the heads and put a new tape in recorded a few seconds of video then captured it seemed to work but i wont know until i shoot some footage to test this theory out. the camera has very low time less then 30hours so i hope there's no hardware issue


thanks for the response

I see my response came off as more brusque than I meant, but your follow-up is what I had in mind.

A lot of the previous postings about XH problems are about diagnosing camera set-up and firewire problems, so it really helps to know that you were able to rule out setup issues and a defective firewire port on the camera. Since you've read the postings, can I assume you also ruled out your firewire cable as a culprit and that you checked to be sure that your Windows computer is referencing the correct --- "legacy" --- firewire driver?

I agree with Chris that dirty playback heads are unlikely if you really were getting good playback on the camera itself. Possibly, there could be playback issues that might not be obvious on the XH's small viewfinder screen, so I second Chris's suggestion of playing with the component cable to large screen. Also, the problem might be "durational," so let the playback go as long as it would be with capturing. (If you are only playing a few seconds around the points where the computer had problems capturing, it might not be long enough for the problems to show up.)

If playback turns up problems on the large screen, then a head adjustment may be the cure, as Mathew suggests.

If large screen playback indeed shows no problems, then the you have a computer issue(s).

I see you've just posted about turning off scene detection. That suggests your tape may have had a dropout. If you turn scene detection back on, does the tape now stop at the same place it did before?

If not or if the problem comes back, then the most obvious suspects would be your computer's media drive and your computer's firewire port. Some details about the computer set-up would be helpful. Laptop or workstation? Operating system? (Win XP, Vista, Win 7?) Media drive set-up? How full is the media drive?. Have you tried any testing with a second camera (say, a Canon HV model

its all good

It seems not to be a fire wire issue

I used a cleaning tape then shot a minute of footage then played it back on my tv everything looked fine.

Here is some of the footage i shot the other day i know youtube compress it but it really looks bad even on my computer YouTube - Gregs testimonial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxVjo_EEcE8)

The system I have to use is an I7 laptop with CS5 8Gb of ram nothing special but its capturing to network drive that's connected to my main machine i7 2600k, asus maximus iv motherboard, GTX 570, 16gb of ram,Window 64bit Professional. nothing special with Hard drives just 3 drive with OS and program and 2 storage drives.........Unfortunately there is no Fire-wire port on this system. I did try to get a PCI card but due to a design flaw the card doesn't fit. I really dont want to spend anymore money on the system it already cost around $2000 and I'm planing on selling my XH and getting a hdr ax2000

one of the reasons i turned off scene detection because it kept leaving a frame of the previous clip in the next clip

What am I looking for in the YouTube video? I just spent two days shooting a Dance festival and I am so fried that I did not notice anything except audio problems.

Your using a network drive makes me suspect a glitch in the network connections. Any chance of hooking that capture drive directly to the laptop and then moving it back to the editing machine after capturing is done? Do you have a 7200 rpm USB/Firewire/e-Sata drive you could hook to the laptop for the capture? What about trying to capture to the laptop's own drive and then copying the file across the network? (I know it is not recommended but it might be work better than your current workflow. In a pinch, I've captured HDV to my three-year old Gateway laptop's system drive.)

The AX2000 is very a nice camera. I have the similar NX5 and generally have been very pleased with it. That said, I still have my XHA1 --- couldn't find a buyer locally when I got the NX5 and then wound up continuing to use the XHA1. I do mostly multi-cam event shoots for which the XHA1 has remained useful, and also have used it when subbing out some jobs recently. I've been running the XHA1 with a Sony MRC1 compact flash recording unit for a couple of years now. The MRC almost always works as though it had been designed for the XHA1. WHich brings me to another point. if you are comfortable with your XHA1, and if the main reason for looking to the AX2000is going tapeless, you might consider going with something like the MRC or Datavideo DN60. Less than 20% of the cost of an AX2000. While these nits hook to the camera through a firewire port, you would only need a USB card reader to feed the video from the CF cards to your editing workstation. Ot, you could do the tranfer from the recorder to through laptop to the network media drive. AT that ppoint, you are only moving files so throughput is not the problem it would be when capturing from tape.

The footage just looks really off to me

Yes i could move the drive back and forth its just a pain to have to climb behind the computer to move the drive. the drive i have in my deck top is a 7200rpm drive but its getting on the full sided. The drive Im currently working with is an external using E-sata


If i could i would like to keep my XHa1 its been a great camera but video being a hobby for me i cant afford to keep it. My thinking with the ax2000 is its designed to be tape-less and most of my videos are made with very quick shots i don't generally do long clips. Tape less isn't the only thing i want my second camera (generally let my second camera man on shoots i need 2) is just a little HDR sr11 that uses AVCHD yeah i know the image quality wont be exactly the same but i would think close. Not getting paid for any of my work I try to use the sr11 when its not really that important instead of loading $10 tapes in each time.

I got a chance yesterday to play with the Ax2000 at the camera store and i really liked it i couldn't believe it was a good 2 inches shorter then the the XH. My other camera option that I kind of like is the canon XF100 but then i saw the price of the cards and i would lose a lot of controls. i would chose the XF100 if i needed a second camera.

sorry if my thoughts are scrambled its been a long day

The video from your SR11 will be pretty close to what you get from the AX2000, closer than your XHA1 unless you have been doing some serious fiddling with presets. Ron Evans has posted about his success in using his NX5 with his SR11. .

It is easy to go tapeless with the XHA1, though, by simply adding a recorder unit. Set the Canon's menu to enable external control and you then run the recording unit by hitting the camera's record record button. Mounting them on the top shoe is convenient but makes hand-held shooting awkward. Several folks have posted here with ways of velcro-ing a recording unit in more convenient and less awkward positions. An MRC unit is about $750. There is a very long thread in the MRC sub-forum on using it with XH cams. The Datavideo DN60 units are significantly less --- about $460 --- and there have been several postings about successfully using them with XH cams. Panagiotis Raris may be the dvinfo member who is most knowledgeable on this subject.

Well today i shot again with the XH a1 everything looks great played back on the tv perfect..... Now i go to capture NO luck again. I'm 99.99% its not the camera I must be doing something wrong with CS5 but i did the same thing i did on Friday and it it worked I'm really confused the link to the camera seems fine. i can control the camera with the capture screen but as soon is i hit record screen goes blue (normal) but the time code at the top will not indicate that its capturing. When i hit stop i get a frame from the whats on the camera.

Hi

I had the same problem myself. Intel i7 2600K, GTX470, ASUS P8P67 Deluxe motherboard with FireWire, CS5 and Win7 Pro 64. The PC worked as charm, CS5 no problem, games at full HD no problems. FireWire didn't work. The PC recognized the camcorder but I couldn't get the FW-connection to work with Premiere Pro or HDVsplit. I found an old external FW-card and installed it. Didn't work either until I changed the driver to Legacy (Control Panel > System > Device Manager > IEE 1394 Bus Host Controllers. Right click on controler device, select "Update Driver Software", select "Browse for .... ", select "Let me pick..." , select the Legacy device, click Next and let windows update the driver.)

Strange that the motherboard couldn't be used, but the workaround with the FW-card works so I will not put any more time to try to fix the problem with the integrated FW-port.

Regards,

/Bo

Well today i shot again with the XH a1 everything looks great played back on the tv perfect..... Now i go to capture NO luck again. I'm 99.99% its not the camera I must be doing something wrong with CS5 but i did the same thing i did on Friday and it it worked I'm really confused the link to the camera seems fine. i can control the camera with the capture screen but as soon is i hit record screen goes blue (normal) but the time code at the top will not indicate that its capturing. When i hit stop i get a frame from the whats on the camera.

Sounds like you are tired and floundering back over ground you've already covered. Try looking at this systematically.

Number 1: You already figured out that the problem was not with Premiere. Your first post said that Vegas would not capture, either. If Vegas won't capture, it is not Premiere that is making the capture stop or produce artifacts.

Number 2: you have ruled out the camera. If it were a settings problem, you would have no machine control over the XHA1. You and the shop ruled out camera defects such as a bad firewire port on the camera.

Number 3: what does that leave? It leaves (a) the firewire port on your laptop or (b) you've got a problem with the network connection to the hard drive on your main computer.

To rule out the laptop's firewire port being a problem, do three things. First, follow the oft repeated suggestion to go into Windows Device Manager and check the firewire driver settings. It should say something like "1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy)." This is a Windows 7 thing. If it does not say "Legacy" at the end, read the previously searched threads about how to update and change the driver. Second, test capturing again. If the problems stop, you've found the cause.

Third, if that does not solve the problem, try capturing to your Laptop's drive. If you cannot capture to your laptop drive, the firewire port is failing. If you can capture to your laptop's drive without the issues you have been having in trying to capture to a network drive, then problem is your network connection which may not always be up to giving you the bandwidth need to capture from tape. If you can capture to your laptop, do that and simply move the file to your target drive. Moving the file requires less bandwidth than capturing from tape.

I will have to try the legacy drive

After playing with Cs5 for 20 minutes by pushing "play" then record on the capture screen it worked. But that doesn't work all of the time. The first time I got it to capture it froze after 1 minute 53 seconds i rest it tried 3 or 4 times to restart the capture and got it to capture the full 18 minutes

Hi

Have you tried the HDVsplit capture program? It's a freeware which I always use to capture from my XH-A1 and HV20 camcorders. It has a lot more options than capture from CS5. My experience is that capture from within Premiere is a bit buggy (but I can be wrong, its my personal opinion). Google HDVsplit to find the download.


Regards,

/Bo

Tom:

HDV Split might help with your issues with the quality of capture, but I suspect it will not help with the problem of captures that either will not start or which quit randomly.

I can vouch for HDV Split's improved capture quality over at least CS3. The problem I had with CS3's capture utility was that the XH audio came in 15 to 20 frames out of sync behind the video when I had shot HDV. HDV Split fixed that.

But, when CS3 and Vegas could not capture from the XH, neither could HDV Split. Same thing is true for me under Win 7 and CS5. (Go into Device Manager and check the driver for the firewire controller --- the previous discussions of capture problems all say absolutely that this is the first thing you should check with capture problems under Win 7. Be sure that the driver for the firewire controller is the one with "legacy" in the name. On my computer, Windows has a nasty habit of secretly upgrading/resetting to a different and "better" driver which will not work for tape captures and which will not talk to my MRC tapeless recording units.)

A word of caution about testing HDV Split under Windows 7. When I start HDV Split, the comment box tells me I have an error and need to install "ffdshow" and also tells me that "audio is off" (or something like that.)

If you see that message, ignore it. HDV Split will capture from the XHA1, anyway.

Let me emphasize this: do not download and install ffdshow. There are numbers of postings in the Adobe Users Forums about problems that ffdshow causes with CS5 under Vista 64 and Win 7. Also, once installed, ffdshow seems to be extremely difficult to remove completely from your computer. Even worse is getting it with one of the free "Codec Packs" (such as K-Lite and "Commmunity Codec Pack"). Harm Milaard and others have numbers of postings that warn Adobe users to avoid installing those packs. They have recommended a clean OS re-install for some unfortunate souls who were having problems after installing these packs.

As I said, HDV Split will capture under Win 7 from an XHA1 without needing ffdshow, so ignore the error messages.

Hi

Good pointing out the ffdshow problem with HDVsplit, forgot about that. I'll try to remeber that if i recommend HDVsplit in the future.

I have tried to instal ffdshow myself with no success at all and I agree with Jay, it's like a virus. Once it's on the machine it's hard to get rid of it. Capture works without ffdshow, the only drawback is that you can't hear the recorded sound, but that's only during capture. It will be captured to the computer. If critical, it's always possible to listen to the sound on the camcorders speaker/headphone.

Regards,

/Bo

Good points by Bo.

Tom:

have you checked the device manager yet? Are you sure that your laptop's firewire controller is using the "legacy" driver? This should have been the first thing you checked.

If it is using the legacy driver, that leaves three possible culprits: (a) your firewire cable; (b) your laptop's firewire port; or (c) using the network drive for capture (assuming that it has worked well in the past.)

The most likely culprit is using a network drive over a peer-to-peer network. If you have not been doing this with regular success in the past, stop doing it, hook a USB/Firewire/e-Sata drive to the laptop and use that work around. If it has been regularly successful in the past, then you want to rule out the other two possibilities.

To rule out the firewire cable and firewire port, try capturing a clip to your laptop's internal drive. If you can do that, then you have ruled out the cable and port as the problem, and that leaves trying to capture across your network.

If you have problems with capturing to your laptop, then find a new (or known-to-be-good) firewire cable and try that. (Testing the firewire cable should have been the second thing you tried.) If a new cable does not work you, then the problem must be the laptop's firewire port. You either (a) take your laptop to a repair shop or (b) try a pc-card firewire adapter (probably much less expensive.)

Have I made myself clear?

yeah.... i don't think u want to mess with anything that has the potential to screw my computer. ill just have to deal with playing with it until i get it to work i only have 2 more weeks of shooting

Tom: for the benefit of any forum members who come along later and search on this problem, please tell them:

1. Whether you verified you are using the "legacy" driver for the firwire controller on your laptop?

2. Whether you verified that your firewire cable is good and that the laptop's firewire port is good?

3. Whether you tested capturing to the laptop's system drive and whether it worked or not.

4. Whether you tried capturing with the e-sata drive moved from the network to a direct connection to your laptop, and what results did you get when you tired it?

You are doing something here that is a bit novel --- capturing tape via a laptop across a network to a network drive in a peer-to-peer network. This is something other forum members might want to do. If this works, it may be helpful to others to know it. If it does not work, it is equally helpful to the rest of us to find out that it does not work or does not work reliably and maybe why it does not work. If you don't share, we won't benefit from your experience.

If some other DVinfo member comes along later and wants to try this, and then wants help in figuring our what might not be working, it is important to tell them what worked and what did not work for you. This goes back to the question in my first post in this thread: which previously tested suggestions did you try and find not to work? It was not meant to be rude. it was mean to build on the shared experiences that allow us to help each other.

Please understand that DVinfo is a community of shared knowledge. That is why it is important to let people know what you did that worked and what you did that did not work.

Sure no problem

1.) haven't tested it yet will and later and edit this post

2.) The fire wire seems to be working correctly

3.)I have tested this issue by going direct to my laptops drive with no better results

4.) I have tested by attaching directly to laptop and still have the issue

The problem seems to be with CS5 how i got it to work was just playing with it (just keep trying to capture) its just a matter of rewinding and start the capture give it a few seconds if it doesn't start showing that it is capture just restart.


As far as capturing peer to peer it seems to work perfectly.I don't have full confidence in doing it this way but it works. My peer to peer is simply windows file sharing system.
Something that i find note able is trying to open a CS5 file that already has stuff on the time line it is next to impossible. CS5 is a PC hog let alone trying to do it over a net work.

If i had another way to capture right on to my desktop i would but this seems to be the best solution for my situation

Well, if the problem might be the memory getting sucked by CS5 when there is stuff on a timeline. I'm guessing the laptop might be a bit underpowered for running CS5. (Make sure it is not indexing files, conformining audio and making peak files when you try to start the capture.)

If CS5 (and Vegas) are using too much memory for the laptop to capture, then then HDV Split should fix things. It a very small memory footprint. ( (Just ignore the "ffdshow" error message that seems to turn up in 64-bit operating systems. It works fine without ffshow as both Bo and I have said.) Note that HDV Split does not do batch capture but, on my machine, once it starts, it usually shuts off capture and saves the file after it runs out of signal. If you do not want each scene in a separate file, uncheck the box for scene splitting before hitting "play" and "record."

I believe the issue with opening projects with stuff on the time line has to do with the speed of my net work. They laptop is slightly under powered but its not that bad its an i7 with 8gb and CUDA.

Okay, before you try HDV Split, the absolute first thing to check is to be sure that you have the "legacy" driver.

In Windows 7, click the start button, In the blank search space, type "Device manager" and press enter You get a list of devices on the system. Click the arrow next to "IEEE 1394 Bus Controllers." You get a list of controllers. Probably there will be only one. It should say something like "1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy)"

If it does not have the word "Legacy" in parentheses at the end of the name, that may be your problem. To fix it, double click on the name. When the next box appears, click the "Driver" tab. Click "Update Driver." Click "Browse my computer for driver software." At the next box, click "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer." The next windows will have a center box listing four or five drivers. One of them (probably the second one down) will have "legacy" in the name. Pick taht one.)

DO THIS BEFORE YOU DOING ANYTHING ELSE.

If you already have the legacy driver, then try HDV Split.

REPEAT, DO THIS BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE.

Hi all, just wondering if there is any update / new solutions to this issue.

Its been a while since I used HDV, but a friend of mine asked if he could borrow an old camera of mine (Sony HC1) for a small voluntary job he was doing, and after he shot it, asked if I could capture the tapes for him.

So I loaned him the camera, he shot the event, and now I can't seem to record the footage into my laptop.

I get the same 'garbage' that the op described (green pixels, stuck pixels, stuck lines etc...)

It plays back fine on the camera, but keeps aborting the capture (tried both CS5 and HDVsplit to capture)

I've checked that I'm running the legacy driver, I've tried different firewire cables, so its not that. not the camera or the tape, as the tapes play fine in camera, and capture to my PCs fine.

I think it is definitely an issue with my laptop. Is there a way to test the firewire port on the laptop to see if that's the issue?

I have 2 desktop PCs (one an old core2duo win xp machine with CS3, and my main edit PC which is a win 7, core i7 cs5 machine )

The footage captured in fine on both the Win 7 PC and the Win XP PC, but I can't seem to get it to work on my laptop

My laptop is also core i7, win 7 machine, i tried capturing to both the internal laptop drive and an external drive, but the same issues on both.

So it's not life or death as I can capture the footage on my desktops, but I'd like to get this fixed as I am planning on digitising all my old HDV tapes using the laptop) as I'm getting rid of my old xp dektop, and I dont want to tie up my main desktop PC with the capturing of 30 odd tapes)

Thanks in advance for any advice

JAmes

Capturing to laptops can be problematic depending on how they are configured, especially the power saving modes.
While not specific to your system some general areas include:
- Running AV software
- Using the same drive for video and the OS
- Having multiple devices connected to the firewire port
- External drives sharing the USB port or hub with other devices
- Any background or automatic processes that may be running (e.g.., a mail client in the background)

.