Can I capture whilst filming without tapes?

howardnwhite wrote on 5/21/2015, 8:24 AM
Just a thought. Fed up with tape dropouts and having to clean heads. What is there to stop me capturing whilst I film through firewire and laptop? Does anyone do this? I stick to DVD because I want to edit in full quality. I asked before why hard drive cameras do not do this (they all compress) and the answer I got was that cameras do not have a processor fast enough to write full DV whilst filming. But I can set my Sony HVR1AP camera to record rather than playback whilst connected with firewire and record DV that way on the computer. Okay, computers are not infallible so I would have a tape in there as a backup. But in theory why not? I would not be limited to the length of a tape, and would save the transfer time. Also, begs the question again as to why there are no full DV cameras out there, if a laptop is capable of doing this. Any thoughts welcome. Thanks

Comments

Former user wrote on 5/21/2015, 8:39 AM
Depending upon your camera, yes, you can capture live from the camera. I had a Sony Digital 8 which is DV format, and captured live several times.
TreeTops wrote on 5/21/2015, 8:39 AM
Not sure what your question has to do with Movie Studio. You are talking about ancient stuff. Most of us have moved on to HD with cameras that record to SD cards that can handle the high bitrate of HD. But Movie Studio can still edit DV and create DVD's.

There is hardware that allows you to capture DV through firewire to your computer. Google it.
Chienworks wrote on 5/21/2015, 12:14 PM
Whenever i dig out my old DV camcorder for an additional camera, this is exactly what i do. I haven't put a tape in that thing in probably close to 10 years. I connect the firewire cable to my ancient laptop, start up VidCap, and record away.
jaxx005 wrote on 5/22/2015, 7:12 PM
I am trying to achieve something similar I believe: capture 'live' video feed, rather than from the tape. Currently using VMS v11

Source: VHS video!
Via: Canon 650i (Play mode + AV thru = gives live conversion to Firewire 'stream').

VMS's Video Capture is configured for "Microsoft DV camera and VCR".

Initially VMS11 only gave a very short glimpse of the video before going back to "Device Disconnected", but with the audio still playing! Reconnecting to the device repeated this.

Although I'd already tried capture settings of 25fps PAL, a restart & retry fixed the problem.

I also disabled "Enable DV device control" in Options\Preferences. This prevents the tape being played by the software, and just does a direct capture of the video stream, as required. If you manually press Play on the camera, it captures that instead as normal.

So now I can convert VHS analogue/composite to PC/digital via Firewire. Switching the camera to Record mode gives a 'live feed' which can also be captured in a similar fashion.

Now I have this working, I think I'd better upgrade VMS!