Capturing into XDV using DVRaptor
 

Hi guys--I'm working on a client's computer using Xpress DV 4.0 on Win XP. I'm attempting to connect a DV camera to the computer through the firewire on the Canopus DVRaptor-RT but the computer does not recognice the camera on this port, nor will the Avid. When I open the Canopus capture utility the camera is recognized, however. The computer has one additional firewire port, and when the camera is connected to this port it is recognized. However, the client has 3 external firewire drives daisy-chained onto this single firewire port, and when the camera is added to the end, though it is recognized, there are dropped frames in Avid. Basically, is there any way to get the computer to recognize the camera when it is connected to the firewire port on the DVRaptor card? Thanks!

Peter

To the best of my knowledge, NO. Those special hardware cards
do NOT support OHCI to the best of my knowledge and that's
why they won't work (newer models might, I don't know). That's
why the products they support (almost always Adobe Premiere)
are also listed with such cards.

Since your builtin firewire port is OHCI compliant there is no
trouble in recognizing your camera. I think the DVRaptor is pretty
useless with XDV unless you can use a Canopus capture utility
(although this will write AVI with a Canopus DV codec which XDV
might also not support) or use it for analog things.

Otherwise I would replace it (or add) another firewire card (just
a plain 3 port firewire OHCI compliant card which costs something
like $20) to which you can hook the drives or the camera.

That should get it working. I personally have my drive connected
to my USB2 connection (I have a drive with both USB2 and firewire
connector) so I can hook up my camera to firewire. I'm not using
Avid, though.

Thanks for the reply Rob. Yeah, I thought about capturing using the DVRaptor utility but then I'd have to reimport the avi's into Avid, which would be a pain. I think I will take your suggestion and get the additional firewire card. Thanks!

Peter

Avid version 3.0 was the last to support the Raptor card.

By the way, try getting a firewire card that has the Texas Instruments (TI) controller. I've encountered a few dropouts when exporting to tape using a cheap non-TI firewire card.

And to prove that Texas Instrument chips are the "compatibility" factor, I use an old Pinnacle DV500 that was from my old Premiere 4.x system. It uses a TI chip and seamlessly works with XPro 4.3.1 but I still rely on Premiere 6.5 to get analog footage in or use a DV Transcoder.

ADDED: To easily get the footage into XDV, there's such a thing as Fast Import if you choose the right codec for the job when you're in the capturing process. Takes a lot less time. QT/Apple DV and the Avid DV Codec are some of the codecs that allows fast import. Dom Silverio did a test and these are his results:

QT Codec 16 seconds = 5 seconds import time [1.5 sec for audio + 3.5 for video]

MS based movie [ captured with Movie Maker]

26 seconds = 10.5 seconds [4 audio + 6.5 of video]

Check out Avid's site for firewire compatibility. Before, they explicitly recommended TI-based firewire cards, but now they recommend ADS Pyro OHCI cards, which if I am not mistaken, are TI-chip cards.

ADDED: Avid techs explicitly recommend against chaining a camera with other drives. Also, there are a lot of issues with drives and cameras sharing a single firewire controller in XDV/XPro. It's a caveat that others hate, but it's something that Avid editors have learned to live with. Just make sure the multiple firewire cards also do not share the same bus on the PCI Slots. Try checking out the Avid Support Forums also for your specific problems.

Good luck!