Another New User, more dropped frames (going to black)

Kalona wrote on 2/19/2005, 7:50 PM
Hi, I'm new to Vegas Video and NLE. I've gotten as far as DVD #2 in the Vegas 4.0 Editing Workshop and am trying to use my newfound knowledge to put 5 video clips together into one 30 minute video presentation (2nd grade performance on Penguins in the Antartica).

I'm not sure if it's the same as dropped frames, but I'm having lots of frames go black in the preview window, intermittently blinking between the video and black. This bit of video was taken with a Sony Camcorder TRV350 (Digital 8) and captured using Pixela -- for some reason I couldn't capture it using Vegas Video capture, resulting in an MPEG file. The other 4 pieces of video are in miniDV format and I was able to capture them using Firewire with no problem.

I've varied the size of the preview window, but still get the same results.
The machine is a Dell 8250, 2.4 Ghz, over 1 Gig memory. I'm writing to an external drive, 240 GB.
I do have Norton Antivirus running.

No matter what I do, when it gets to this part of the video, the pictures drops out, although I can still hear the audio. When I look at it outside of Vegas, it's fine. File size is 590MB.

I'd appreciate any help, thanks.

Sharon

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 2/19/2005, 7:58 PM
The black is likely due to the Pixela and how it encodes MPEGs. Keep in mind that MPEG is made of Groups of Pictures, and only a limited number of frames have full information in them. I don't know what set of GOP Pixela uses, but I'd highly recommend recapturing them. Can you plug your Hi8 cam into your Firewire cam and use the Firewire device as a passthrough so it's seeing analog to the Firewire device, and digital thereafter?
Kalona wrote on 2/19/2005, 9:17 PM
I can sure try, but I'm not quite sure how to do that. When I connect the Hi8 cam via Firewire, I'm not sure how to indicate it's passthrough, then analog. I'll take a look at the default settings, which I setup as instructed in DVD #1. Where is this setting?

Sharon
Kalona wrote on 2/19/2005, 9:46 PM
I just re-read your note and see that you said connect the Hi8 camera to the Firewire cam. I guess I'll need another Firewire cable to do this, right? I'll have to get another one to try that.

Another capture problem is when the capture ends after only 27-28 seconds, automatically.. This is using the MiniDV and firewire within Vegas. The longest capture is about 2 minutes. I had this happen during the penguin presentation, but each clip was about 7-8 minutes and I thought it was doing that because the file was getting too big. That's how I ended up with 4 clips. But in this case, it only goes a few seconds, then stops.

Rough start for a newbie, but I'm detetermined...

sharon

scifly2 wrote on 2/19/2005, 9:49 PM
To use a pass thru setup your dv cam will have to have analog input capability. If it does, use svideo and audio outs of the digital 8 to the inputs of your dv cam.( This may take some female rca couplers). Or if no svideo, use A/V out to the A/V in. You will need to go into the menu of your dv cam to set for analog in, or svideo in etc.. On my JVC this is done with the dv cam in play mode. In vid cap, go to options> preference> general tab, uncheck "use device control". You will have to control the playback of digital 8 manually. You should now be able to capture dv thru firewire from the dv cam .
scifly2 wrote on 2/19/2005, 9:55 PM
Look further into the options.> preference area. On the capture tab are settings for automatic scene detection, and minimum and maximum capture length.

addition--- there is a check box for "maximum size for dv clip"
Did you mean that the capture stops, or just creates a next clip?

Bill
Kalona wrote on 2/20/2005, 10:21 AM
The capture totally stopped. I looked in the Capture options and preferences and unchecked the box "Enable DV scene detection" and was able to capture a 7 minute scene. So maybe that was it. I'll have to find out what I'm missing by not having this checked but for now, it's working. Thanks.

Sharon
Kalona wrote on 2/20/2005, 10:23 AM
I was able to get around this by using Roxio Videowave to do the capture, it created an AVI file and the black frames went away. Thx...

sharon