Capture Issue

[Nathan DuMoulin]

I'm having a serious problem with dropped packets during capture.

I'm capturing from a Sony v1u via onboard firewire, using HDV split. I have 2 identical computers (both quad-cores with 8gigs of ram SATA drives), one with Vista64 on it, and one with XP64. The problem is occurring on both systems.

Can anyone tell me why this is happening and how i can fix it? I have 30+ full tapes to capture, and I can't even get through one without encountering issues.

Thanks.

[Ervin Farkas]

The computers are probably not the issue - I have used an old AMD 1.6GHz junk to capture with HDVSplit. Are these workstations or regular computers with lots of other soft running? The only issue I had was the antivirus suddenly starting to scan; shut it off before starting.

[Nathan DuMoulin]

I've tried capturing from a fresh-boot, and I've also tried disabling the internet and any related applications. One computer doesn't even have anti-virus software installed, and yet it still drops a ton of frames.

CPU usage is at 1% during the capturing...so its not a problem there....and I'm even capturing onto a secondary drive that isn't being used by the OS.

I can't figure it out.

[Ervin Farkas]

Quite possibly you have dropped frames on the tape... scarry but possible. Can you take the tapes over to another, known good camera + computer to confirm? How does the footage look on a monitor/tv?

[Nathan DuMoulin]

The footage looks great on the viewfinder. Also, I'm using 2 separate Sony v1u's to capture on....one for each computer. The problem persists on both setups.

And I really appreciate your help Ervin.

[Ervin Farkas]

You have three elements in this picture (pun intended): the tape, the camera, and the computer. I'm afraid at this point you exhausted your options locally and must identify the offending element by testing on another setup. Either:
- try capturing with another camcorder onto another computer, or
- capture tapes coming from another source with your existing setup, or
- take your camera and tapes over to a friend and try on his computer.

The firewire cables are more than likely good.

[Chris Soucy]

You didn't mention whether or not capture using these setups ever did work?

With anything?

Is this "out of the box" failure or subsequent?

Have you tried downloading trial versions of either Ulead VS 11 or Adobe PE to see if either of them work?

If it wasn't for the fact that this is happening on both XP & Vista I'd say "Drivers", tho' it is possible if this is "out of the box" that it is an issue with the V1u's somehow.

Shot in the dark, but do you have anything on both machines connected via Firewire? If so, try disconnecting it/ them and see what happens.

You didn't mention, but I'm assuming, this is HDV data - have you tried capturing it in SD to see if that works?

On the XP machine, go to "Start", "Run", "MSCONFIG", "Startup" tab, "Services" then click "Disable all". Do the same for "Startup". Re - boot the system. Terminate the inevitable "You've messed with the system settings" message.

Try the capture again (you may have to enable one or more items in the "services" section for stuff to run, but it's worth the buggering around if this works).

If the capture now works, it was/ is something that's firing up automatically at boot which is interfereing with the capture. If it isn't needed, leave it disabled.

Otherwise, as Ervin says, another camera type has to be worth a try.


CS

[Chris Soucy]

Your mention of "secondary drive" got me to thinking.

If you have any external drives being used by auto backup software (Maxtor One Touch and Seagate FreeAgent Pro spring to mind, tho' there are shed loads of others) beware the backup software can play havoc with capture issues depending on how it is configured.

The "MSconfig" thing in the previous post "should" nail this, but not always, there was one system called "OneSafe" that, once loaded and run once, was virtually impossible to eliminate from the system, and caused no end of grief.

Just a thought.


CS

[Chris Soucy]

You didn't mention what you're using to edit this stuff (assuming you can ever ingest it).

Is it possible your version of HDVsplit can't ingest the Sony format on the tapes?

I've found references on Google to ingest problems with the particular Sony formats on the V1, with some software.

Think you need to make sure this is not the issue.

The latest versions of Vegas have been updated but I'm not up with what else is now compatible.


CS

[Nathan DuMoulin]

Wow. Thanks a ton Chris. Hopefully one of these suggestions will do the trick.

Again, thanks.

[Chris Soucy]

Did you manage to resolve your ingest problems eventually?



CS