Capture ca-flooy again

Caruso wrote on 10/28/2001, 1:11 AM
I was delighted with my initial experiences when I updated/upgraded to vidcap2.5 - I thought that, at last, my VV capture/print to tape problems had been solved. Captures were efficient and uneventful, print to tape worked just fine.

Nothing (and I mean nothing) on my machine has been changed by me since this upgrade. No new programs, no downloads, no new hardware, nothing.

This morning, I needed to make a "trax" CD to back up some live singing for an outdoor church service. I generally arrange an accompaniment using Finale 2000, record the analog output to my DV Cam, capture via firewire into VegasVideo, delete the video track, render the entire audio track to a wav, then print to a CD.

Like a dummy, I ruined two CD's thinking that some glitch in my burning software must be truncating the wav file before I thought to go back and check the performance of vidcap2.5.

It turns out that vidcap2.5 is ending the capture prematurely. Additionally, frames are being dropped during capture. What's even worse, I tried to reprint audio/video productions that I had previously captured/edited/printed to DV just last week, and, now, they have glitches in both audio and video.

What's going on here?

To complete my little audio project, I had to use Studio7 to capture the footage, then, I used VV to delete the video track and convert to wav. Worked fine. Also, the audio/video productions mentioned above printed to tape just fine when I output them using the S7 print-to-tape facility.

What would cause this sudden change in performance? Anyone else experiencing similar problems?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Caruso

Comments

Dreamawake wrote on 10/31/2001, 12:24 PM
Not much to say on the reason why your Vid Cap isn't working, but I have a suggestion. It's been awhile since I've worked with Finale so forgive me if I don't remember the specifics here. But both Finale and Cakewalk produce MIDI files. In Cakewalk (I don't remember if you can do this within Finale) you can turn the MIDI file(s) into audio (.wav or .aiff) and then you can use that in your projects. You will avoid the having to go out of the card back into your computer and you won't be making a copy of off a tape since it will be the original file you just put together. It saves time and it saves ALOT on worrying about volumes, signal degradation, cabling, etc.

Just a thought...
SHTUNOT wrote on 10/31/2001, 4:18 PM
How long has it been since you have reformated your system and reinstalled everything from scratch? Any OS gets messed up alittle more for as much time as you use it. You can't help that,it's the nature of the beast.I had a problem at one point that all of my software was running funny untill I did that and its back to business as usual. Check out nortons ghost, it makes a copy of your harddrive and on some cd's and when and if your system has a problem you can just reinstall back at a certain point where everything was working fine.later.
Caruso wrote on 11/1/2001, 4:49 AM
Thanks for the replies. I dread the thought of yet another strip down, rebuild of my system. For me, it means, running the mfr restore disk which puts me back at Win98FE, then, upgrading to WinME/Win2k dual boot, struggling with both OS's to restore network connections (always one of the most frustrating tasks for me . . . never goes smoothly, and, almost never works the way the manual or online help files say it should), then, finally getting around to reloading my software (and working around all the nasty little protection schemes that seem to insist that I've stolen all those titles I paid good money for . . . for instance, my MS Access software won't install unless I sit there and click ok 250 times or more to numerous warning messages that it's already been installed on a number of computers . . . right, all mine, never more than one at a time, although the machines have been changed and upgraded over the years . . . blah!!).

Sometimes the rebuild makes things better, sometimes, it makes them worse. My machine has a software based modem that requires a special driver from Compaq. If I lose that driver, Win2k won't recognize my modem. Took me six weeks to find it the last time I rebuilt (about six months ago).

Sorry to whine on so, but, thanks for the suggestion.

I'll have to double check finale to see if I can save mid (or Finale's file type ".mus") to wav. While that would solve my problems for this specific task, it doesn't cure my capture problems which affect anything I try to capture for use in VegasVideo.

As far as sound quality and degradation go, there is so little in a once out analog and back via firewire as to be negligible.

Again, however, I do appreciate the response.

Caruso
FadeToBlack wrote on 11/1/2001, 2:01 PM
Cheesehole wrote on 11/3/2001, 1:23 AM
it deserves repeating... with a system as insane as yours you really need to keep a ghosted image of your system partition on hand. you can re-install everything one more time, and then as soon as you have all your weird drivers installed etc... and everything works, GHOST IT! you'll never ever have to do it again. if something starts to go wrong, then just restore your system to the 'good' version.

btw - I keep a folder on my system drive called 'DEVICES' and whenever I download a driver for a hardware component I store it in the DEVICES folder like so:
Devices/Epson/StylusPhoto/Win2k/InstallDriver.exe
I've been doing this for 4 years and it will save you a lot of headaches. just dump the whole thing onto a CD every once in a while.

when i read your post i almost couldn't hold back the tears... to think of someone torturing them self like that.. ;)

i don't think anyone is going to be able to give you a specific reason why your system worked correctly before and doesn't anymore, but please take our advice to heart and be your own best friend by taking these organizational steps.

btw - i like your recording method.. very resourceful :D but you should be able to route your audio signal back into your soundcard's input for recording and bypass the camera alltogether. you'll have to mute the 'line in' volume slider on your sound card's PLAYBACK mixer to prevent feedback loop and make sure the 'line in' on the RECORDING mixer is selected and turned up.

- ben
Caruso wrote on 11/3/2001, 3:36 AM
Cheeze:
I'm puzzled as to why you describe my system as insane . . . the only program I seem to have trouble with is Vidcap . . . everything else, including VV, is working just fine. If my problem is so rare that no one else has experienced it, and, if I can achieve the same end result by simply capturing and printing via Pinnacle's Studio 7 facility, I may forgo the headache of rebuilding my system, and just take the path of least resistance.

My interest was piqued by your comment about bypassing my vidcam to make recordings of my Finale arrangements. Do you mean that I could play from Finale, not over my speakers or analog outs, but back into the speaker in a way that would create a wav file, thus eliminating one step in the process?

If you would be so kind, please share a little more detail.

And, thanks for your response and suggestions. I do take them to heart, and, have, myself, taken some organizational steps to lessen the heartache of rebuilding a system that goes haywire (like keeping all my data files isolated on a non-system physical drive so that all I lose in a rebuild are applications which are recoverable from the mfr disks). Even so, I rarely rebuild without running into some goofy, unexpected problem that crops up as the result of some driver or update that is unavailable or can't be found. I like your idea of isolating device drivers, and will implement it on my system. As you point out, however, implementation will take more than a day to be reliable.

Thanks again.

Caruso
SonyEPM wrote on 11/5/2001, 9:33 AM
To avoid dropped frames on capture, don't do anything else on your machine while capturing, and capture to a defragged 7200 rpm or better drive (with DMA on if IDE)