Capture Problems

tocsese wrote on 10/30/2006, 4:18 PM

Bought a Sony HDR HC3 recently, and have had constant problems with capture. Trying to capture DV standard definition, the camera outputs in HD or standard depending on what is recorded on the tape. I have been capturing for three years with V V 4.0 and have never so much as lost a frame when capturing with my old Sony digital camcorder. Tried Movie Studio Platinium 7.0 and the capture problem is the same. If I start the tape from the begining and capture to the end, the entire capture is pixelated and scrambled, audio is awhile as well. The bit rate and dimension numbers are PAL, but this is a NTSC camcorder.

The work around is start capture and count 5 seconds, stop the capture, restart the capture and then all is well. I end up with two clips, the first is 5 seconds of junk and the second is excellent, with correct bit rate and dimension for NTSC. Been on the phone with Sony Camcorder tech support who believe it is the software not syncing with the camcorder. Any help would be greatly appreciated! :)

Comments

rs170a wrote on 10/30/2006, 5:20 PM

Key words here are the fact that your computer thinks it's a PAL stream. This is a known problem when you start a capture on less than stable video.
Solution? Roll the tape until you get a clean signal for at least 5 sec. and only then press Capture.
In the days of tape to tape editing, a clean signal for at least 10 sec. was mandatory as some VTRs did a pre-roll for that long.
To this day, I still roll tape for at least 5 sec. before I began any shot.
Old habits die hard :-)

Mike