Capture Direct?

doctorbassjr wrote on 11/21/2003, 11:11 PM
Does anyone know if it is possible to use VV capture utility like a videonics firestore? What I am hoping to do is run a dv camera direct through firewire (bypassing tape). This would eliminate recapture times and the 60 or 80 minute limitation of dv tape. Also, for sound capture would I be able to select audio cards in my system (as opposed to using the camera's mic for audio capture)? I would rather use a pro quality mic running into good quality converters than the on camera mic.
I am hoping to purchase a Sony DCR-TRV950 camera for this purpose. Does anyone know if this camera is compatible with direct capture?
Thanks

Comments

farss wrote on 11/21/2003, 11:30 PM
Any camera with firewire output should be compatible.

I don't think you can arm an audio track to record at the same time as capturing video, might be too much strain on its brain. Also you may have to contend with all sorts of sync issues. Nice idea though. You'd be better off feeding the external mic through the camera, that way you can guarantee sync.

If you intend doing this though why buy a camcorder? Why not buy just a camera, although I don't know if you can get a firewire camera with audio inputs.
rmack350 wrote on 11/22/2003, 12:47 AM
Seems like combining the audio mix with the DV stream before committing to disk would be in order. I'm imagining that's possible for a price. There are switchers and mixers for this (aren't there?)

I'd love to see a capture app that would just take the stream from a camera and write to disk. Perfect for long days at a seminar where you've got so much material that the capture from tape will take you another day for each camera/day of shooting. Add to that an 8 second buffer so you'd get the 8 seconds before you pulled the trigger and you'd be set.

Oh yeah. Add disk spanning and scene detection (start/stop based on camera start/stop). Ahhhhh. My turn around time just got cut in half (or my $ margin just doubled)

Rob Mack
[r]Evolution wrote on 11/23/2003, 11:25 AM
We do this all the time. All you need is a camera that has FireWire. Hook the camera and your computer together and start VEGAS capture. Your computer monitor will display whatever you are capturing. When you hit RECORD in VEGAS capture you will be recording straight to disk/ straight to your computer. No need to hit record on the camera for this... remember... the camera is not recording. It's merely projecting what's to be recorded. VEGAS is doing the recording. This is excellent for locked down shots but you will need a loooong cable if you intend on making moving shots.

Don't worry about capturing seperate audio. Firewire captures both audio and video. You can do whatever you would like to your audio or video once it's in VEGAS. If you would like you can use a mic pre-amp during capture to 'warm' the audio. This may save you some audio processing time in post.

But if your question is more so geared towards one of those external, carry along HardDrives... I may have just waisted my breath, because I have never used one.

Lamont
Liam_Vegas wrote on 11/23/2003, 12:14 PM
I have thought about doing direct-to-disk capture of events using a PC with VV... but usually I have multiple cameras so that has always been a little impractical.

The only thing that gives me a littl "panic attack" about doing a direct to PC hard drive recording of an event is what happens if the system crashes after 6 hours of video capture? Does the VV capture utility throw away the video that was captured or what? I guess that might be worth a try.

-Liam
Chienworks wrote on 11/23/2003, 12:21 PM
From my experience so far, it seems that if anything prevents VidCap from properly closing a file, that file is lost. So if you suffered a crash after recording 6 hours then most likely that 6 hours would be gone.

If you're nervous about that then i would suggest setting a maximum file size for captures. If you choose 4.3GB as a nice healthy round number, VidCap will close the current capture file and begin a new one seamlessly. This would be just about every 20 minutes. The files can be butted up against each other on the timeline with no gap or skip. They would also fit nicely on data DVDs for backup. If you did suffer a crash then only a maximum of 20 minutes would be jeopardized.

To be really safe, get a firewire splitter and capture to two separate computers simultaneously. If you use the 4.3GB/20 minute method then i would stagger the captures by 10 minutes so that each capture covers half of two other captures on the other computer.

Personally i think creating a single 78GB file with 6 hours of original video is just asking for disaster.
Liam_Vegas wrote on 11/24/2003, 11:22 AM
Just to be clear.... I was not actually recommending that you do a live capture using VidCap for the exact reasons you just confirmed. I don't know about you... but the potential for losing even 20 minutes worth of video... is not worth the "convenience" of saving the capture time.

But... nevertheless it was a cool thought experiment about the technique!
HPV wrote on 11/25/2003, 5:12 PM
Great idea. I just did a "live" firewire capture while recording three audio tracks. Only used 60% of the CPU on my 1.3g P4. I even had capture preview turned on along with audio. Zero dropped frames. Sweet
(BTW, A/V from camera to one HD, audio going to OS HD)
I would always roll tape in the camera as a backup for both audio and video. For long performances, less wear on your video heads, quicker editing.................... oh man this is cool.
To take it to the next step, what would be needed to capture two discreet stereo tracks or four mono tracks? Four input sound card? Two stereo soundcards? It doesn't look like it would work in one instance of Vegas because you can't pick the inputs at the track level. Or can you? Plus it saves the recording (all tracks) as one wav file. You could solo each track and save each as a seperate wav file though. So I guess it would require a(fill in the blank) sound card and two or more instances of Vegas running.

Craig H.
Spot|DSE wrote on 11/25/2003, 5:47 PM
Same here, we do this regularly. We use the NNovia box, it's flawless. They build the Laird CapDV as well.
Vegas can capture both audio and video via Firewire, OR you can have 2 instances of Vegas open and capture a DV stream and audio stream at once. Surprised the hell outta me that I could do this. Granted, I've only done it with a high end audio box (Echo Mona) and I'd imagine you might have issues if your audio box was a USB2 or Firewire box. But...We've recorded 4 inputs to one instance of Vegas while capturing to another instance via Firewire simultaneously....on a laptop.