Theres a thread or two on the capture problems with the XH-A1 if ya search the forums. You are correct, it has a bug and I was doing exactly what you were doing, using V7 to capture and then editing in V8. I personally didn't notice any problems with footage from the A1 other then that.

- Ray
www.undergroundplanet.com

I can capture footage great in vegas 7 however when I try to edit in V7 it will crash after 30-45 minutes. So I purchased V8 I try loading the V7 project ;it gets to 100 % then crashes. I have not tried to capture footage yet in V8.

Just hung up with a Sony Tech and he said they were working on it. a build would be here in 2-6 months?!?!?!

Hello Pastor. You're way behind in this subject. Check out my complaint way back in October:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=556806

I still have received no reply from Sony since then. You'll find it interesting and worth a look.

Chris

1) Can you use Vegas 8a to capture footage(HDV) from the Canon A1?

((Yes bt u must have SP2 installed.. alos V8 flakes at 25f . V7 doesnt have this issue))


I can not. I need to use Vegas 7 or HDV Split.(Vegas 8a splits captured footage into segments only a sec long or so)

((Use HDV split, its free and it works))

2) How many individually captured clips can you put in a project?

((As many as you want))

I can only get about 30 clips before The PF usage goes up and Vegas crashes.

((This is what i hate about MPG editing))

I have 2 GB of ram. If you have more than 2 GB of ram you may get more clips in the project before it crashes.

((Tue.. this is why i only try to import large clips (as in one entire tape) then worry abotu clips when i get to the timeline. IN essence, i beleive the PF usage stems from IBP profiling))

3) Could you please try this and report your findings? I just captured live footage at 15-10 sec each clip. I then imported the footage into Vegas a few clips at a time while watching the PF Usage. When the PF usage got up to about 1.5 GB I just put in one clip at a time. I can have one long clip that could take up 30 min. to an hour with no problem.

((Yup.. this is the workaround.. frankly it works for me.. i hate working with hundreds of clips))

It seems that the PF usage goes up for each clip. I think it may only happen with the Canon XH-A1.

((It happens with any long gop IBP frame.. all that info is retained in pagefile to allow for refined preview))

If you have an other camera could you compare the findings. Thanks for taking the time. I am just trying to figure out if this is just my Computer (Quad core) or the camera and or Vegas.

((Its not your computer.. its how Vegas manages long GOP

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for your help on Question one. It is good to know this problem is known and Sony is working on a fix. Could you help me with problem 2?

Could you tell me how many clips you have in a project and how much ram your computer has? If your projects have over 30 clips (different captured clips. count the clips in "project media" not the timeline. and only count HDV footage.) and you only have 2 GB of ram then that could mean that I may have a problem with my computer. Pull up your PF usage and see if you can make your system crash. I used to think it was a time thing, (i.e. crashed after 30-45 min.) but I believe it has to do with how many clips are in the project media not on the timeline per say. I could have 25 clips on the timeline and then delete all but five of them and the PF Usage would not change. Then if I imported 5 more new clips making only a total of 10 clips on the timeline but a total of 30 in my "project media" and PF usage would hit 1.7-1.85 and crash. Notice with only 10 clips on the time line. I can even get it to crash with no clips on the time line- just in project media. I do not have this problem with the HV-20. Can someone please test this? Also how many of you are using Quad Cores?

Thank you for your time,

David

I can capture HDV in V7 and edit (crashes every hour) in V7 however when I try to RENDER the project it freezes and locks up. :(


Is this problem related to XHA1?

thanks.

Thanks DJPadre,

That information was very helpful. Yes capturing a whole tape would be a work around, but I like capturing only the good clips and thus saving hard drive space. Is this not an issue anymore? I would like to hear more about your workflow. It sounds like you would capture the whole tape anyway. My last project was 13min. long, but I filtered through 5 hours of material to get to that point. would you still capture all of the tapes in a project like that?

Also for those interested (I have posted most of this before in an other thread except for the last response from Sony.) looks like a fix may be on the way.

Response (Matt K.) 11/27/2007 11:24 AM
David,

Thanks for the update and the information. I have forwarded the responses to our engineering team and their reply follows:

"Matt , thank the customer for that additional information. We’re working on getting a Canon 24p HDV camera here to get this problem fixed, perhaps for Vegas Pro 8.0b... If adding clips is causing page file / memory usage to grow very large and eventually crash, then the MainConcept reader is being used instead of our preferred M2TS reader. Hopefully we’ll also be able to update our reader to take these clips which would fix this problem as well."

So my translation from that message is that this is something that we are actively trying to resolve. We normally don't have specific dates for new releases, but I would guess that this is going to be out sometime around the new year and hopefully this issue is fixed with the update.

Please let me know if any other details arise that you think are relevant or helpful.

MK.

Sincerely,
_____________________________
Matt K.
Customer Service & Technical Support
Sony Creative Software Inc
1617 Sherman Ave.
Madison, WI USA 53704
www.sonycreativesoftware.com
www.acidplanet.com

Please let Sony Creative Software know how I'm doing. This survey will allow you to do so:
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Customer (David Wendt) 11/25/2007 08:24 PM
I have done some more testing. I was able to capture 24F from the A1 with HDV Split(I can also do it with Vegas 7e, Just not Vegas 8a). When I put these clips on the time line the PF usage went up as usual and Vegas crashed after 29-32 clips were put on the timeline (15-20 sec. clips -length does not matter). I believe the number of clips that a can be put on the time line will depend on how much ram a computer has installed. I have 2 GB. I then captured 30 clips with the HV20 using Vegas 8a and Vegas did not crash. I captured 30 more clips and the PF usage stayed around 1.12 GB and did not move up when I added the last 10-20 clips. If you have the Canon A1 try putting 30+ clips (it may take more clips if you have more ram) and see if your system will crash. I think it is a memory problem with the Canon A1. I am not saying that is the only problem, but at least one that I am having.
Hope this info helps,

David

Customer (David Wendt) 11/23/2007 03:27 PM
Update:

I have done some more test and discovered that Vegas 8a can capture live from the Canon HV20 (slow motion in Preview window, but it works), but not from the Canon A1. The Canon HV 20's 24pf is imbedded in a 60i stream while the A1 24F is 24 frames with no need for pull down. Vegas 8a still splits Canon A1 footage into several tiny clips when captured straight from the A1 or the HV 20. Vegas 7e can capture the Canon A1 footage, but It seems that either Vegas 8a can not properly use Vegas 7e files or Vegas 8a has a Canon 24f problem as well as a memory problem. I have also noticed that If I start a new HDV project (using the same Canon A1 footage that I captured with Vegas 7e)I can crash the program just by going to project media and using the import folder. Once there I select several(20-30) files from my video capture file and hit ok. The PF usage in windows task manager starts climbing and then it freezes and crashes at 1.7 to 1.85 GB. This is with nothing on the timeline. In fact, If I had all the media (less than 7-1.85GB) on the time line I could delete what was on the time line but the Pf Usage stays the same because the files are still in the Project media. Once I delete the files from project media then the Pf usage goes down. I hope this helps.

David Wendt

Customer (David Wendt) 11/21/2007 12:41 PM
Any news yet on a fix? I am getting ready to start another project.

Response (Matt K.) 11/12/2007 03:51 PM
David,

Thanks for the reply.

I have communicated with our development staff regarding this issue, and their response is that it seems as though Vegas is generally having some issues with 24F HDV from XHA1 cameras. This is something that I believe will be addressed in a future release and is an issue that we are actively looking at right now.

I will forward the information you have provided to me here and I am sure that this will be very helpful in assessing this issue.

In the mean time, it has been recommended to use a third party free utility to capture video from these sources and that Vegas should be able to accept the video after it has been captured.

HDV Split Utilty: http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.htm

I will also set this incident to development status for awhile and let you know if any details come up regarding this in the near future.

Sincerely,
_____________________________
Matt K.
Customer Service & Technical Support
Sony Creative Software Inc
1617 Sherman Ave.
Madison, WI USA 53704
www.sonycreativesoftware.com
www.acidplanet.com

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Customer (David Wendt) 11/09/2007 02:53 PM
OK I have done some more test now that my deadline is past. Here is what I have discovered:

My computer is a Quad Core, with two GB of ram, built on an Intel MB running XP. I have four HD all WD. One for programs is a 10,000rpm raptor 74GB. The other three are 500GB. One for Video captures, one for Digital Juice and Music and one to render to. I have an M-Audio sound card, Delta 66 with the Omni Studio breakout Box. The video card is a Radeon X1650 running two monitors One Dell 24" and One Dell 19" CRT. The computer does not have any virus protection loaded as it is never on the Internet.

I have two cameras a Canon XH-A1 that I shoot with and a Canon HV-20 that I use to capture with. My last project was 24p HDV.

I started out using Vegas 7e. Then when my project was about 70% done (12 min using about 50-60 different clips) it crashed. I heard that Vegas 8a took care of all the problems so I upgraded, but it crashed too. Here are the Problems I am having:

Vegas 8a on my computer (and according to the boards a lot of other people) cannot capture HDV. It moves in slow motion and splits one capture into several individual files. I have done test and discovered that it does the same thing in DV as well as HDV.

Because I could not capture using Vegas 8a I used Vegas 7e to capture my footage. My project also crashed in Vegas 8a. Finally I split my project into six smaller projects and individually rendered them out using the supplied Cineform codec. (24P 1440x1080) I was able to stitch these files together in a new Vegas project with no crashing.

I pulled up the task manager and watched the PF usage. As I import clips from the explorer to the time line the PF usage jumps about 40MB for each clip I put on the time line from its start of about 420 MB. It does not seem to care if the clip is longer or shorter it is still about 40MB. Even if I delete a clip from off the time line it does not delete its memory usage because it is still in the project media. So it does not take long to build up to 1.5-1.8GB of PF usage and the program crashes every time, very repeatable. My final time line with the 6 different rendered clips still added the 40MB per clip its just that there were now less clips so I did not reach the high memory use point of 1.5-1.8GB. In short I think it is a memory problem. Some people are not having problems because they may have only one or two clips on the time line. Let me know if you need more information.

Blessings,

David Wendt

"That information was very helpful. Yes capturing a whole tape would be a work around, but I like capturing only the good clips and thus saving hard drive space. Is this not an issue anymore? I would like to hear more about your workflow. It sounds like you would capture the whole tape anyway. My last project was 13min. long, but I filtered through 5 hours of material to get to that point. would you still capture all of the tapes in a project like that?"

To be honest, its easier (for me) to scrub through footage on a timeline than it is through logging tape time code... not that HDV timecode has been stable.. it hasnt been.. hence the additional need to trim the fat from the TL itself..

For me, due to the copious amounts of footage I acquire, scrubbing the transport over the footage in a matter of seconds allows me to visually see the clips i will be using without having to put any wear and tear on my playback decks. I dont have to view al my footage to know what it is, so i can go through minutes of footage in a matter of seconds.
In addition, I have the entire archive on hand, so if i decide to go back and use a differnt shot or what have you, its already there.

Storage is an issue, however i have 2TB on this machine, 1TB set for my laptop and another TB for my secondary system. The price of HDD's isnt an issue anymore like ti as 4yrs ago

When using the TL to scrub, i have found that it is a much more efficient means of review and logging.
Thats just me.. some people might be different.
Thing with the way i do it though, is that if i ever have a HDD fail on me, its much easier to capture one tape in its entirety than it is to recapture a tape in segments using timecode (and like i mentioned, timecode on HDV is flaky as it is... Vegas issues with Canon A1/G1 confounds the issue moreso

Hey David-

Thanks for posting all of your emails with Sony. I emailed them yesterday of my problem as well.

I just hope they can figure out the issue very fast! It is frustrating.

Curiously - have any of the XH-A1 owners/Vegas 8 users who are experiencing capture problems (which appears to be all of you) tried capturing with Cineform HD Link?

I'm a Vegas 8 user, but also have Cineform; I'm considering buying an A1, but obviously will hold off unless I know I'm going to be able to capture it via HDLink at least.

Thanks for any input,
Ian.

Capturing using any of the CineForm NEO products from the A1 works fine.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm

You can capture with Vegas 7 and the "free" HDV Split as well. The problem comes with the PF usage of about 40MB a clip. I split up my project into smaller sections and rendered using the supplied CineForm codec. I then put these rendered clips together in a new veg file. It helped in the fact that I now had fewer clips, but each Cineform clip still showed up as 40MB in PF usage and if my project was long enough Vegas may still crash. David, is your NEO product different enough from the one supplied in Vegas to solve this problem? I have a hunch that this is just a Vegas memory problem, but could you give your thoughts on what you think is going on or what you have experienced using Vegas?

Thanks,
David

I am at a complete loss here. I JUST bought an XH-A1, it came in just a couple of days ago. SD was great, but I had not tried out the HD until I read this thread. 24P, not good at all on capture, 30P and 60I captured okay, but rendering was pretty weird. An AVI came out with bright "dots" all over the screen, and rendering as m2t just didn't work. I have ALL versions of Vegas, when I opened V7, I could not capture at all, it didn't recognize the video. So, how do you use V7 to capture? REALLY hope Sony fixes this soon. I have done NO HD in the past, so I'm probably doing something stupid anyway. Thank goodness for this forum!

Help anyone?

I used Vegas 7e to capture to my video capture folder. Then I opened vegas 8a and imported the footage from thaYou folder to my project media bin. Check out HDV Split if that does not work. you can find the website located in a reply that sony gave me above. its free and works great. It is a small file and does not take to long to set up. you may need to download one or two additional things to get it to work-just follow the directions. Also realize that there may be other issues besides the capture and memory problem. Try HDV Split first. If it still will not work try a new tape and do not mix frame rates, HD/sd.

David