Theresa,

You won't need any specific capture card. Just use your firewire port. Oh, you wanted analog out. Well, guess what? You already have it. Your XL2 will act as an analog pass through so you can hook up a vcr or whatever it is that you want to go analog out to. You don't have to record to tape to get the analog out. That's why it's considered a passthrough device.

good luck,

-gb-

My PC doesn't really have a native firewire port.

It is the DV500's card that has a firewire port, but I really couldn't get it to work with either Vegas or P-Pro or even at DV500's DV/IEEE1394 capture mode (the "Unable to connect to capture driver" thing... I can usually only do digital/firewire capturing when I'm using DV500's Pinnacle AVI capture mode.)

You can get a firewire card to put in place of the capture card for next to nothing. Also, keep in mind that no matter what mode it's shot in, the signal off the tape is still always 60i so it's really up to the NLE to understand how to interpret 24P. You should get something, albeit with jerky motion if your NLE doesn't do 24P.

-gb-

ok, I finally bought a firewire card, an InnoDV DV1000. I can finally see my footage streaming in at Premiere Pro.

I couldn't get the "Capture video" function working in Vegas though... what's wrong? (sorry for sounding too much like a newbie, I guess I'm just too overwhelmed =( )

I can't tell what's wrong with the new card, but Pinnacle's cards have been trouble for years. They are designed to work only with Pinnacle software (surprise!) so the solution is to get a rock-bottom, dirt-cheap, plain-vanilla, ultra-generic IEEE 1394 card. It's been years since I tossed my Pinnacle (should be Barnacle) card. I recall something about OHCI compliant chips vs. Texas Instruments chips, but the ports I have now are built into the mobo (Intel) and PPro 1.5 works like a charm. I use it to capture off a Sony DSR-25 DVCAM deck.

While there is no technical reason not too, you should at least be aware that when using some capturing programs the 24PA flag is detected at the beginning of the capture and stays constant throughout. Where this could be an issue is if you record 24PA at the beggining and then switch to 60i later, the 24PA flag may still be set for the 60i footage. Your editor may try to drop what it thinks are duplicate frames from the 60i footage.

It can be an inconvenience and you may have to do multiple captures for the 60i and 24P segments to insure proper pulldown.

i'll be using premiere pro, will that be a problem?

((btw, I'm thinking of boxing away my DV500 board, and eyeing the Canopus DVStorm2 Pro... what do you think? Same functions like analog/digital IO but Canopus' better? Or should I wait for another two to four years and just buy myself an Apple/FCP?))


I think nothing's wrong with the new firewire card. It's just that it seems I couldn't connect Vegas' Video Capture function to the card (as in Vegas' Video Capture function does not run when I press its icon). Vegas' Preferences menu isn't giving me any hints.

(visited the Vegas site, went to support, says I have to download the 6c update or something because some systems really behave that way. downloading it now... will update you later if the Video Capture function finally works)

The card's ok with Premiere Pro, I can see things, but I really want to do it the Vegas way >=)

Theresa,

The firewire card should be a transparent part of the process at this point. It's fully supported by the OS and any modern day NLE should be able to work with it barring a program glitch such as what you described. I hope the 6c works okay for you.

I finally gave up on Pinnacle Liquid Edition awhile back and went with Mac/FCP. Have been really happy with it and it's so much nicer connecting to the internet without having to have a myriad number of software programs in place to guard the computer.

Anyway, this thread is not really relevant to the XL2 so we better end it or I'll have to find it a new home. :-)

-gb-

Yes??? That is the exact app that I have the problem with! I usually use vegas 5 to capture my video and Premiere pro to edit. However I have not tried using the "scene detect" capability in PPRO. I think it has it. Vegas does this by default and that is why I started capturing with that app. Essentially the capture software starts a new .avi at each new scene on the tape. Therefore every scene redetects the cadence and it is set properly for each clip individually. Another thing that can cause this is a dropout on the tape. That can mees with the recorded cadence also.

Again, you may be able to set Premiere Pro to do this but I have not looked into that yet. It is also important to note that sometimes this is not an issue. I have seen it when I have just 24PA on my tape but I have multiple sessions. Meaning I recored 2 segments at different times.....thus the 24PA cadence may not be in sync on both sections of the tape. Premiere seems to lock on to the first segment and then carries that cadence into the second.....regardlees if it is in sync or not.

Good Luck. As I said, I have captured many tapes without incident in Premiere but occasionally it loses track and messes up everything! In Vegas it is alway dead on....at least so far. Plus I have learned to love having many discreet .avis to work with rather than one large one.

Focus problem in 24p
 

Hi everyone, I'm playing around with my week old XL2. I notice that when i'm in 24p mode that set with auto focus it doesn't focus well or at all when i'm doing ECU shots. I have a full batter and i'm really holding it very steady but its still out of focus. Am i doing something?

Hello Mike... have you tried focussing on a single/flat plane at the same distance as is causing the problem?

I just tried focussing on my laptop monitor, to check if my XL2 did the same, and it doesn't.

The other thing you can try, if you haven't already, is to manually override the auto focus, it is allowed, and works well.

But you say the problem is peculiar only to 24p mode, so I must assume that you've tried all I've suggested. -- phil.

Lame answer but learn to use manual focus... the DVX doesnt even try to focus in 24P. If you are in lower light, forget it....


ash =o)

The Canon autofocus does not work at 24P. This is stated in the manual. The autofocus is sampling the image on the ccd's and 24fps doesn't provide fast enough updates.

-gb-

24p vs 25p
 

My apologies Mike, I assumed, wrongly I see, that 24 & 25p would behave the same when it came to autofocus.

Interesting that the XL2 won't auto-focus in 24p NTSC, yet it does in 25p PAL. I guess there's a technical reason for that (maybe the pull down pattern) that I don't know.

The manual for the PAL XL2 says, "In 25p mode autofuocus takes longer than in 50i mode."

That's definitely my experience, and in low light, if the focus is way off it's easy to grab a manual focus.