DV software not receiving video from FS-1
 

I just purchased a FS-1 last week. It records to and from my DSR-11 VTR just fine but won't work with my DV software.

If I try to send video to it from Avid Xpress Pro, Vegas Video or Scenalyzer, the FS-1 goes from STOP to RECORD PAUSE to RECORD, which tells me it's receiving the proper commands over the firewire cable, but the time counter doesn't increment and a new clip is not created.

If I try to capture from the FS-1 it receives the PLAY command properly and begins playing back the clip, but the dv applications receive no video. Scenalyzer, for instance spits out the following: "ScLive has not received any video from the driver. Close any other program that uses this capturing device."

These same dv applications have no problems capturing or writing to the DSR-11. This plus the fact that the FS-1 is obviously receiving PLAY and RECORD commands over the firewire connection suggests to me that it's not a problem with the cable.

I've tried this on a PC with Windows XP and a PC with XP SP2 with the same results. I sent an e-mail to support at Focus. So far all I've gotten back from them is a quotation from the manual about using the AVC functions.

Any ideas?

??
 

Tom,
Have you tried the HDD mode of the FS-1? This will connect the harddrive directly to your system where Avid can read the video files directly. There's no need to "Play" the captured video into the DV software.

HDD mode
 

Michael,

HDD works fine but I still need to be able to write to the FS-1 from Avid's timeline. Avid has a flaw in the way it creates Quicktime reference files which I encode with Cinemacraft to create DVDs. This flaw has been talked about in great depth on Avid's website. My workaround was to write to tape, capture it back with Scenalyzer and then encode with Cinemacraft. I purchased the FS-1 so that I could save wear and tear on the VTR by writing to the FS-1 instead.

Here's an update on my efforts to solve the puzzle: When the FS-1 is connected to an XP machine I see "AVC Compliant DV Camcorder" in the Imaging devices list in the Device Manager. When I connect it to an NT machine I see "Microsoft DV Camera and VCR" and Scenalzyer works! It seems to be related to AVC.sys and 61883.sys which exist on XP but not NT, but so far I have been unable to find a way to disable or delete these files in such a way as to cause XP to call the FS-1 a Microsoft DV Camera. Any help would be appreciated.


Tom

I defer
 

Sorry, Tom. HDD was the extent of my ability to help. I'm on Mac.