ADVC-100 capture problems

jquad250 wrote on 3/21/2002, 9:51 PM
Just installed advc-100 and SIIG 1394 card. I'm running VV3.0a build 107. VV sees my analog camcorder fine. The vagas capture program is very slow to react and pull downs are also slow. DV device control is disabled. When I try to capture, video is present and sound breaks up and I'm locked out. Have to ctrl / alt / del to get out. File is not captured. Any help would be great. Thanks - j.p.

Comments

deef wrote on 3/21/2002, 11:27 PM
Does the device show up in Video Capture's Video menu as "Microsoft DV Camera and VCR"?

What OS/system/hard drives/motherboard?
rwsjr wrote on 3/22/2002, 5:26 AM
I've been having a similar problem--I've been able to get great captures, but not without a degree of luck. I see "Microsoft DV Camera and VCR", but I have found the capture program to be very sluggish and not responsive. I thought I might have a driver or IRQ conflict. I also can't access the various menus when the ADVC-100 is turned on.

I'm also interested to hear how to smooth this out.

My system is Win ME/900 Mhz Athlon/WD 7200 RPM 60G HD and Quantum FB 6.5G 5400 RPM HD
jquad250 wrote on 3/22/2002, 9:07 AM
Thanks deef for responding. Yes, "Microsoft DV Camera and VCD" is displayed in the menu. I'm running 98SE, 1 gig AMD processor, 256 meg ram, 1 Maxtor 30 gig HD (5 gig open), and a 64 meg graphics card. I'll have to check on the motherboard although it was matched to the processor by the vendor. If it helps, I've been running VV3.0 for many months using video source material from the net and scanned stills and VV runs flawlessly. SIIG card came with Unlead 4.0. I reluctantly installed it and it captures without issue although the program is not very good by design. This is the first time I've tried to capture with VV.
Ron Lucas wrote on 3/22/2002, 11:44 AM
My system is sluggish when using VV30a capture utility - and only while it is in communication with XL1s camera. Meaning, if I disconnect my XL1s from the 1394 port, start VV30a capture, the system is fast. But when I connect the XL1s and start VV30a capture, pull down menus and navigation in the capture utility is definately struggling. Capture seems to work, although I get dropped frames every so often. I do believe there is a conflict happening somewhere when this program is running and communicating with a DV device.

My system is:

Dell4300 1.6Ghz P4, 512MB RAM, Adaptec 1394 card, WinXP Pro, VV30a.

Ron
Ron Lucas wrote on 3/22/2002, 11:47 AM
Oh yeah, when I use the demo for Scenalyzer, I can move around the program just fine. No slugish behavior when connected to my XL1s.

So, two problems exist with VV30a capture that are not present in Scenalyzer:

1 - Sluggish software behavior using VV30a capture while connected to XL1s.
2 - VV30a captures 32K audio from the same tape that Scenalyzer captures correctly at 48K.

Ron
deef wrote on 3/24/2002, 1:20 PM
The issue with the Canons has to do with these devices holding onto the 1394 bus incorrectly. Sony's do not exhibit this behavior. This is probably a result of Video Capture pinging the device for it's status (tape, transport, timecode) and the Canons not being able to handle the through put.

I've seen the stalling with the Canopus converter also, I'm looking into what's up with this device.

The 32K audio we know about, we'll try to address these issues in a future release.
rwsjr wrote on 3/24/2002, 7:45 PM
I think I have been able to get mine to work by making sure my analog device is on and the input select is set to "analog in." It seems pretty smooth now.
Ron Lucas wrote on 3/24/2002, 9:12 PM
I appreciate you confirming the 32K audio problem. I'll gladly wait for an update to correct this.

Since the Scenalyzer capture utility is able to function smoothly with my XL1s, but the VV30a capture utility is sluggish, could there be a possible update to VV30a capture that will address this so navigating within the VV30a capture utility is not so slow and sluggish?

Thanks,
Ron
Wayne wrote on 3/24/2002, 10:06 PM
I am also using the ADVC-100. I have seen some strange things the last few days. When I captured analog today using the ADVC-100 I was getting about 1,100 dropped frames for a 7 minute video. I didn't notice til I attempted to print to tape (Sony D8) that the capture device was set to WfWWDM32.dll - what is this?
The video captured with no problems. I did discover than the audio can be brought in at 44.1k 16 bit, 48k 8-bit stereo and mono and 48k 16 bit stereo and mono. This is only available under audio when the transport is set to the WfWWDM32.dll.
With the capture set at 44.1k and my timeline at 48k, the audio was about 10 seconds longer than the video, strange. I recaptured at 48k and it then matched the video length.
When I attempted to print to tape with the transport still set at WfWWDM32.dll, I would get an error that the video format was not compatible with the print device. When I selected the transport device to be Microsoft DV Camera and VCR it printed to tape with no problems except I had to manually stop the Camcorder (it started it properly).

Another strange thing I have been seeing is that when I am at the print to tape tab of video capture and use File>Open to load a AVI file, sometimes it takes about 30 seconds from the time I select a file til it appears in the list windows. Other times it only takes a second or two.

And a related problem I am seeing is in Sound Foundry 5.0, when I do a Save As, the save as window is taking 15+ seonds to open.

The only change I have made in my system in the last week or two is to install a removable hard drive tray on my secondary/slave IDE port. I have 4 trays loaded with drives that I swap in and out. I had to disable the BIOS boot virus scan to eliminate errors during boot. If I didn't it would either hang during the boot and/or give me colorful screens warning about a virus. I have downloaded and run the latest McAfee virus signature with each of the drives installed to verify that my system is clean. I am half thinking some of the sluggishness may be do to these hardware changes until I read this thread.

I am running W2k and have upgraded to VV3.0a. SoundForge 5.0f.




deef wrote on 3/25/2002, 10:23 AM
When capturing DV, use the "Microsoft DV Camera and VCR" device. Since you're seeing sluggish behavior in a couple apps, I'd be suspect of the hardware. Are you running Virus scan software continually? This could be the culprit.
jquad250 wrote on 3/25/2002, 1:06 PM
Deef you may be on to something. Looking closely, I found other capture programs are sluggish too. Alot of us are probably running virus software continually. I'll disable that and others and see. j.p.
Ron Lucas wrote on 3/25/2002, 3:36 PM
I do not run anti-virus software continuously (shame on me). As a matter of fact, my system is very clean. No other programs are running in the background aside from the default operating system applications.

I know this thread is related to the ADVC-100, which I'm not using, but I wanted to comment on the fact that my system becomes sluggish when the VV30a capture utility is running. Again, the Scenalyzer capture utility is not sluggish.

Ron
deef wrote on 3/25/2002, 4:17 PM
This entirely depends on the DV device your using, Sonys will not cause this behavior. Here's a snippet from the DV-L email list on Canons:

Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 12:03:04 -0600
From: "Mike Hope" <mikehope@insync.net>
To: <DV-L@dvcentral.org>
Subject: Canon firmware bug with Firewire drives?
Message-ID: <000c01c1986e$b9e176b0$776e71d1@hopejohm50>

Has anyone heard of a Canon firmware bug that prevents clean capture to a
Firewire drive? After a couple of months of trying every update and fix I
could find, I still couldn't get my Canon Elura to capture cleanly to my
Firewire drive. I then got an e-mail from a tech support guy at Ratoc which
said:

"This issue is belong to hardware of your camcorder. Earlier models of
Canon DV Camcorder include Elura ware using Fujitsu FireWire PHY chip and
this chip does not absolve control command from computer when data transfer
is doing with FireWire Hard Drive at a same time. The result of time out
will be occurred and encountered jerky movie. Fujitsu was improved this
issue on next generation of chip and newer models of Canon DV camcorder work
fine. I think another DV camcorder works fine on your system. Fore more
detail, please ask to Canon. Unfortunately Canon is not fix or repair
previous DV Camcorders."

I tried talking to Canon, but they just refer me to my local dealer, who
doesn't know anything.

I borrowed a second Firewire card from a friend and capture works fine with
the camera on one card and the Firewire drive on the other.

My system is:

Dell Latitude CPx J750GT notebook with 512Mb RAM, 20Gb internal drive,
Windows 2000 SP2, Adobe Premier 6.01
ADS Pyro DV Firewire PC card.
Other World Computing Mercury Elite 60Gb Firewire drive (this consists of an
IBM Deskstar 60GXP UDMA/100 drive and an Oxford 911 chipset IDE to Firewire
bridge).
Canon Elura DV Camcorder.

thanks,
Mike Hope

Wayne wrote on 3/25/2002, 5:40 PM
I have built my editting system with the main intent of video/audio editting. I have set up two users on the system, when I and using VV3, it is under user Video which is set up with no background programs. Expansion boards are PCI sound board (MOTU 324), firewire and SCSI plus of course APG graphics board. I have an external modem which I share with another computer. I only use the modem to download software and updates.
I just tried bringing a AVI into the print to tape window as well as a SAVE AS in SoundForge with Windows Task Manager showing CPU usage. During most of the time, it sits at 97%+ idle, until just before the action commanded occurs, then it will drop by 25%+ for only a second. It's looks like a hardware problem, not another program using all the CPU time.
the only thing I have done hardware wise is add the removable hard drives. In W98, you can set a hard drive as removable in Device Manager. I see nothing like this in W2K. I am wondering if some how I am confusing the OS by swapping out hard drives.
HeeHee wrote on 3/26/2002, 10:26 AM
Jquad250,

To get back to your original problem which I think got off the track into Cannon DV camcorders and problems with sluggishness.

I understand you are using the ADVC-100 with an analog Cannon camcorder and a SIIG 1394 firewire card. By any chance does your SIIG 1394 have a Texas Instrument chipset? If so, this is the problem.

Here's an excerpt directly from the Canopus web site. "The ADVC currently has compatibility issues with Texas Instruments firewire cards. We are now working on a fix for this and will release it as soon as possible."

You can check out the link here.
deef wrote on 3/26/2002, 12:21 PM
Interesting...thanks!
jquad250 wrote on 3/27/2002, 1:04 PM
HeeHee, - I'll have to look at the card and will respond soon. Recently loaded Scenalyzer and it wooks flawlessly. For now I'm using this to capture with. No problems using VV in this manner. I guess that's the fix for now. - jquad250
jquad250 wrote on 3/28/2002, 9:31 AM
Checked SIIG 1394 card. It has a SIIG chip set. - j.p.
deef wrote on 3/28/2002, 10:12 AM
Jquad250, sorry to hear you're still having troubles. I will further investigate what this issue may be with our Canopus converter. It very well may still have to do with reading timecode from this device.