Capture question. . .

AFSDMS wrote on 10/28/2003, 2:39 PM

Had a real 'DUH' last night. For a documentary I'm working on I need a snippet of a television program during part of the voice over. Of course I'm down to the wire on getting this last bit in. Many times I've used my Sony Mini-DV to take analog in to the tape, then captured with V4 to AVI.

The tape I have has copy protection (Macrovision) and the Sony pops up COPY INHIBIT. Just found this out last night. Never thought to check it out, it was gonna be a no-brainer, right? I guess no-brainer is the operative word here. So, now I'm looking for a way to capture this 7-10 seconds or do a fast re-write around it.

I have a Dazzle Digital Video Creator II (PCI card to breakout box) that I could pop into another machine (no room left in the main video edit box) but that one only saves to MPEG-2. I pulled it from use after discovering how difficult it was to integrate MPEG-2 video clips in a Vegas project, especially with sync sound. (But the quality from the DVC-II really is top notch.)

QUESTION 1: If I can get this solution to work, would it be a good idea to load the MPEG-2 into Vegas 4 and to render as an AVI and add that AVI clip to my project?

QUESTION 2: What would be an inexpensive board, with or without a breakout box, for analog capture to AVI. The slots are PCI, the hardware is only 1 GHZ but real Pentium III and the OS is Windows 2000 Pro. I mentioned 'board' cause this box only has USB 1.0. I do have a multi-port FireWire board however, so I guess that might be an option.

QUESTION 3: Any other ideas?

Thanks much.

Wayne

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 10/28/2003, 2:54 PM

#1: Yes, converting the clip to DV AVI would work well.

#2: Ignore your USB port. USB 2 is questionable for video, USB just doesn't even come close to functional. Some sort of external A/V -> DV converter connected to firewire would probably do ok. I've got a SONY DVMC-DA2 converter that i've used in much the same situation you describe. A red LED lights up warning of the copy protection but it passes the signal anyway.

Sid_Phillips wrote on 10/28/2003, 3:21 PM

Also check out Canopus, they have AV/DV boxes that connect via FireWire and I beileve a PCI card with AV/DV connectors. Not sure how it handles copy protected material though.

AFSDMS wrote on 10/28/2003, 4:00 PM

It looks like the Sony unit is no longer in production, but the Canopus ADVC 100 looks like a useful device. It would save having to jury-rig the Sony MiniDV.

In the meantime I may try to fire up that Dazzle DVC-II. Trying to find if it is going to work on an XP Pro machine. It seems Pinnacle has deep-sixed it.

I do wonder about the Copy Protection issue however. Anybody run into that?

Thanks all.

kentwolf wrote on 10/28/2003, 4:06 PM

The Canpus ADVC-100 will NOT allow Macovision copying. It acts just like a VCR and shows the same "inhibited" picture.

Won't work.

AFSDMS wrote on 10/28/2003, 8:33 PM

Thanks very much for letting me know. Not something I need to do very often, but getting a non-CP version of this show would be too time consuming.

Amazingly, I did re-install the Dazzle DVC-II on a newer Windows XP Pro machine and got it working immediately. Somebody is watching over me :-) Even directly captured to a USB 2.0 connected HD. It is having no trouble capturing clean video at the highest 8 mbit rate. Too bad it is MPEG.