I'm able to see a preview when capturing HDV from an HDR-HC1, but the sound is horribly stuttered. I wish there was a way to turn it off, I have to mute my speakers when capturing.

And I'm able to capture on both laptop and desktop with preview and no stuttering...with A1U, FX1, HD 100, XLH1, and Z1U. I don't have the HC1, so can't comment on that one.
Latency (expected) is the only issue I experience with capture.

And I'm able to capture on both laptop and desktop with preview and no stuttering

Well, I can't.

I have a 2.8 GHz computer. Is there a horsepower issue here? I wouldn't think so, since the data stream is the same rate, but perhaps the CPU speed required to decompress the video in real time is too great.

I just connected the FX1, made sure HDV out was enabled, opened the Vegas internal capture, selected "Use internal video capture application (HDV/SDI)" and then pressed Play in the Vegas capture. The sound comes across perfectly, but no video. I then clicked on preferences and checked "show video when device is stopped." That made no difference (I didn't get video during playback OR during stop). In the "Capture Preferences," my Device Type: is shown as IEEE 1394/MPEG2-TS Device, Device: Sony HDR-FX1. Below that it says "No device properties."

When I first connected the camera, Windows wouldn't install all the software. I consulted this forum and found that many people had exactly the same problem (with the AV/C Tape Subunit Device), and I followed Spot's advice on how to manually install a driver. Perhaps that driver is the problem. It is certainly the only non-standard thing that I did.

I just checked the device driver section of the control panel, and there are no yellow question marks or other indications of a problem.

I must say, while other editing programs may handle HDV wtih even less aplomb, I am completely underwhelmed by the Vegas implementation of HDV. It is a kludge, and is needlessly cumbursome. After nine months, these kinks should have been worked out.

This evening, I edited three short DV SD videos. What a joy! I quickly forgot how smooth Vegas can be when it is hitting on all cylinders.

However, I started editing these SD projects in Vegas 6, which I haven't used much these past nine months because of all its problems (don't tell me there aren't many, because there are, and there are a LOT more than in Vegas 5, even now that we're at 6.0c). However, for HDV, I needed to use 6.0c.

Unfortunately, I had to immediately go back to Vegas 5, because I forgot that most of my scripts will not run in Vegas 6 because of the changes Sony decided to make in the AdjustStartLength code, which I used in most of my editing scripts. Do you know how much time I put into perfecting that stuff, only to have some engineer callously change it, and some product manager not care enough to force him to change it back? Can you imagine where we'd be if software companies that produce language compilers were to issue new releases of their software that would not correctly compile older programs? I know that this has happened, but it's no way to run a railroad.

>I have a 2.8 GHz computer. Is there a horsepower issue here?

It's not CPU John - I can capture HDV fine with my 1.6 Ghz laptop onto an external F/W drive.

I think many of us had driver problems initially, but once I followed DSE's instructions all has been well for the past year.

Hang in there ...

I must say, while other editing programs may handle HDV wtih even less aplomb, I am completely underwhelmed by the Vegas implementation of HDV. It is a kludge, and is needlessly cumbursome. After nine months, these kinks should have been worked out.
I respectfully submit the problem is with your system. My 3.06 laptop works great, and it's got virtually no storage left on it, so it's not space nor CPU-related. Desktop can capture streams cleanly while rendering and editing. Vegas is well-known in the industry by everyone, both Apple and PC, as being a great handler of HDV. Here at CES, I've spent time with trainers for AVID, FCP, and AE, and all of them (two of them very anti-Vegas) have expressed appreciation for the way Vegas manages HDV, particularly with CineForm and/or proxy files. Go to anyone else' fora and you'll see lots of complaints about HDV management/editing.

I realize the above comments don't solve your problem, so let's look at that as well.
It's not a driver issue, unless you didn't select the DVHS driver. There's only one, found in one of two Sony selection options.
Be sure your drives are DMA-enabled, be sure that you've got nothing memory-piggy open.
Check your video card acceleration. If it's set to full, you might try it set to 3/4. Additionally, be sure your firewire bus isn't sharing any resources, particularly your vid or sound card. I've also seen cooling fans set off problems with 1394 cards.

Spot,

I've edited on this system for over three years. Not a single problem until HDV. I definitely selected the DVHS driver, and I have verified that this is what is installed by going to the Device Driver dialog. I definitely have DMA enabled (you can't capture ANYTHING if PIO is selected). I have not checked video card acceleration, but I'll try that tomorrow (getting late here). The Firewire bus has worked with lots of devices, but I haven't checked lately whether it is sharing IRQ or something else. However, I would expect to have intermittent or slow performance, not no performance at all, if this was the case. I regularly capture while burning DVDs, plus surfing the Internet and doing many other things, and I haven't dropped a single frame in a LONG time.

I suspect it is something related to a driver that is specific to either my camera or to HDV. The fact that the AV/C subunit did not install automatically was disconcerting. My suspicions lie in that area, but I didn't see any other alternatives, other than what you suggested in several posts over the past few months, of what else could be installed.

As to how well other software handles proxies and the numerous other issues surrounding HDV, I can't speak to that, having not used them. However, as an engineer, I am offended at having to deal with intermediaries and proxies. It's like having to manually control the spark advance, like you used to do on a Model-T Ford: The control is absolutely necessary, but the driver of the car has absolutely no need to deal with this control -- there was no benefit to "exposing" it to the driver. The same is true of intermediaries and proxies. They are absolutely necessary to achieve performance, but there is no reason in the world I should have to explicitly deal with them. What's more, a smart system would build them in the background (if they were not created during capture) and my editing would simply get faster as I progressed through my editing.

I have been exploring many different workflow concepts in the past few days and I have already come up with several that are far faster than what I've seen published -- although I need to install the Cineform HD Connect and see how that compares. However, asking a user to fork over $200 in order to get a $500 program to work seems excessive to me. It reminds me exactly of where the industry was fifteen years ago with JPEG. If you remember, Optibase, Xing, and a number of other companies offered JPEG compression software (and hardware, in the case of Optibase) that you could purchase for many hundreds of dollars. If you wanted JPEG, you had to buy it a la carte. Competition coupled with wanting to do the "right" thing for customers killed that in a hurry. I can tell you similar stories about fonts (I negotiated a contract with Bitstream in 1984 for one single font, at four sizes, and two weights, on an OEM basis, for $450 a copy!).

HDV intermediates can and will be part of editing programs, and we should not have to spend 35% of the original price of the program just to get this one feature. This WILL happen, and its just a question of which company is going to be the smart one that makes it happen first. Sony is NOT number one, but HDV is a "disruptive technology" that gives them a chance to capture market share, but only if they do the right things.

When I tested the JVC HD101, I had a capture preview picture - on my laptop; and no preview picture on my desktop. No idea why that takes place.

For 720 25p material from the HD101, I was not satiesfied with Vegas. And also the JVC PD1 does not work well with Vegas.

Both, HC1 and FX1, seems to work better with Vegas. As far as I seen in our German forums, a lot of people capture with other tools like capDVHS.

So, a stable preview picture during capturing would be nice; and a automatic scene detection and automatic conversion to the intermediate during capturing would be nice too. Edius can do all that - without a special tool.

johnmeyer, I agree with your gripes over handling of HDV/intermediate files.
The workflow to edit HDV is a real pain - tons of room for improvement, and your ideas sound like good ones. Intermediate files should be handled "transparently". Hopefully Sony will get the message.

So if I understand correctly I should use the HDV 1080-60i (1440x1080, 29.970 fps) template. Capture using the internal capture program since I don't have ConnectHD. Then once I have the m2t files on the timeline should I render as "avi>HDV 1080-60i intermediate" or something else to get the intermediate files. Then when I'm rendering out the final project to be on DVD what should I use for the template? Thanks

Nick

When Sony "gets the message" so will virtually every other NLE manufacturer
The camera exports .m2t files. The extension literally means "Mpeg 2 transport stream. Not designed to be edited. Always was meant to be converted. Whether you convert on the fly (no one other than Canopus currently does in PC land and Apple only converts on a megalithically fast system) using one of the intermediary plugin tools, or use the free tools that come in Vegas, Ulead, or Premiere, you're still doing the same thing. That's why CineForm exists. Yes, it would be nice if Sony could just buy up CineForm or develop something similar.
It took DV nearly 3 years to settle out, and we've only had HDV for just barely a year, unless you count the joke HDV cameras JVC initially offered that weren't really HDV. Vegas was the first app released to support HDV natively on the PC platform, and manages it much better than other apps. Start playing with other apps, get familiar with them.
HDV is still very much in its early stages. Imagine how some of us felt buying VX 1000 cameras with digital video output, but not a single digital video input card existed for nearly two years. And then when they came out, they were expensive.

Yes, managing intermediate files could indeed be better, and it likely will be soon for all applications. If it was so "easy" as folks suggest, why isn't everybody making it so?
That said...a speedy computer has no issues anyway. Guys that have the X2 AMD systems or Opteron systems are cranking out HDV efficiently.

I have captured with the standalone Connect HD and also the Vegas HD and in both cases there was no preview window in the capture software but everything else worked fine. The Vegas capture software had a preview window but no preview but it captured OK. I did cheat by watching the LCD monitor on the Z1 camera.

JJK

I have captured with the standalone Connect HD and also the Vegas HD and in both cases there was no preview window in the capture software but everything else worked fine. The Vegas capture software had a preview window but no preview but it captured OK. I did cheat by watching the LCD monitor on the Z1 camera.

OK, it sounds like there are several other people out there that can't get preview. I can certainly live without it -- I just didn't want to proceed trying to do big projects if this lack of preview was indicative of some underlying problem with my setup. Sounds like it's not my problem, so I'll just ignore the lack of preview and get on with doing my work.