HD Capture Problem with 8c
 

I've been having problems with capturing HD with Vegas 8c. The camera is a Sony HC7. I've never had capture problems until recently, and today was the worst. Nothing has changed significantly on my Windows XP PC for several months. If anything, it seems like my capture problems began with 8c, but I can't say for sure.

The problem is that sometimes the camera cannot be controlled by the internal capture utility. Sometimes the capture window will display device not ready. Other times Vegas just hangs until I power down the camera. Other times the camera controls, including reconnect, are just grayed out. With a lot of trial and error sometimes I'm able to begin capturing, only to have the capturing process stop 1/2 way into the tape. The camera is still playing the tape at this time. Eventually I managed to capture 2 tapes.

I don't have a clue where to begin looking for this problem. I suppose it could even be the camera. I changed firewire ports and it didn't make a difference. I did the usual disk cleanup & defrag stuff but it didn't help. Any suggestions on how to proceed? Thanks.

A couple of things I would try:

Does another capture app have the same issues? There's a free HDV capture app you can try. (HDVSplit)

Have you tried another firewire cable?

You might even consider trying Vegas 9 and see if that makes a difference.

HDVSplit
 

Thanks Ed! I tried HDVSplit and had no problems capturing video and audio. I'm going to continue using HDVSplit, but I am curious why the capture in Vegas stopped working reliably. If it really bothered me I guess my only choice is to reinstall Vegas. Instead, I'll just wait until I upgrade Vegas someday.

Thanks again!
Dave

Well here we go on this journey. I tried HDV split, but it crashes when I open it, Vegas when I had scene selection on, cut the crap out of my three tapes.

So Windows Movie Maker would be another choice without buying something? I have to wait till tomorrow to get my footage back to try another shot at Vegas. Annoying that Vegas cuts for no reason.

Steven,

Although HDVSplit worked for me as I mentioned in this thread, my next project again had capture problems even with HDVSplit. Ultimately I may have found the source of my capture problem, and it wasn't Vegas. I have a Sony HC7 HDV videocamera and the firewire uplink can be set to auto, hdv, or dv. The default mode is auto. I switched it to HDV and I was able to capture.

I'm not entirely certain this was the cause as my PC died before I made another capture. I've since replaced the PC and I haven't captured with it yet.

Dave

This is a common problem with camcorders that have an auto setting for selection of DV or HDV output. The reason is that the camcorder doesn't know what it will be playing until playing starts.

Usually, I do as David tried, which is to select HDV or DV out before connecting/powering the camcorder. An alternative is to start tape playback before Windows sees the camcorder, then it will conform to the tape and you're good till you power down.

This is a Windows issue; it will affect all programs you might use for capturing - Windows has to select the correct driver.

(don't blow your firewire port, always connect with PC & deck powered down, especially 6-pin firewire.)

Yeah, for some odd stupid reason, My XP machine with Vegas 8 has decided to split HDV Clips for no reason, I turned off scene selection and it still is splitting them. And since HDV Split is crashing on my XP machine, I'm trying a different machine.

Tried my Vista machine with a 4 pin firewire port, and that was worse. hmmmm

I've had Vegas "split" HD clips, but never SD...it's one of the things I hate about HD. Once I recaptured and it didn't do it the second time, when I didn't do anything else on the machine and allowed it to devote itself to capturing, which was a pain.

I have used movie maker to capture a time or two, it worked well on SD, haven't tried in on HD yet.