Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge - Issues

dparrott wrote on 5/11/2002, 8:01 AM
HELP!!! please?

Is there *anyone* out there who has managed to get a Windows 2000-based machine to slurp down _ANALOG_ video using VF2.0c and a Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge?

I have a Sony TRV615 (vintage '98, Hi8 format) plugged into the DV bridge which is attached to a brand spanking new Windows 2000 box -- 750Mhz Duron box, 256MB of memory, 5GB system drive and a 120GB Western Dig 7200 RPM drive flying solo on the primary IDE chain (and it *appears* that DMA is on per the "system" applet in Control Panel).

The DV bridge is Firewire'd into a CompUSA generic 1394 card. According to the Win2K driver update applet, it appears to be up to date driver-wise.

When I go into video capture, I do the menu equivalent of ctrl+R and all that I get is a black screen in the preview area. (under the Video menu there is a black dot by "MS DV Camera and VCR" which means that it is the device the capture app is trying to read right?)

I moved to a new box (custom built!) because I figured out that my Win98SE-based laptop would only let me capture about 4 minutes of video before killing off the process for lack of disc space (I was using a Dazzle DVC 80 at the time) and too many frames were getting "dropped". So I bought the fancier solution based on the experience of a friend and I find that it just doesn't work very well (when it works at all...)

Anybody got any ideas of how to diagnose the problem and make it work *reliably* (I realize now from other stuff I've read that it won't provide the best video, but I might just take that if it would just work all the time however well....)

Maybe I should just call the credit card company and dispute the charges and go pop for the Canopus... sigh...

Help? Please? I'm drowning here in technical details that are really new to me and my video project is dying on the vine...

dennis

Comments

Grazie wrote on 5/11/2002, 9:41 AM
Whooooa there... calm down calm down...

I know it is sometimes like swimming through treacle.

Okay, I don't have Win 2000, I have WinME. I don't have your Sony, but I do have a vintage analogue Panasonic. Right then, I capture exceptional - analogue to DV converted video - via the Hollywood Bridge - no problem. This goes into a dedicated Dell Movie Solution firewire 4 pin (that's the small fw port) and capture using VF2.0c Build 125. It works superbly. It does what it says on the box and faultlessly "breaks through" the 4gig WinME barrier.

I hope this gives you some solace. I have proved it works on WinME - From what I've been reading on these Vid Forums WIn 2000 is more stable than WinME, so you have even more reason to be more successful than I.

Take a deep breath and what for some others to suggest a solution. You have, catergorically the Dazzle Hollywood Bridge? You are in no doubt? Mine is a cute little stand up box that has a psoblem in not falling over... is that the one?

I think you are potentially onto a winner.

Keep the faith,

Grazie.
dparrott wrote on 5/11/2002, 10:56 AM
>> Whooooa there... calm down calm down...
>>
>> I know it is sometimes like swimming through treacle.

yup. doin' the durn backstroke right now thru about $1000 in new hardware I spent on the FAITH that I wasn't being lied to by the dang PC industry... I jus' gotta get on that 12 step "gear lust" recovery program...

re: the question on "is it a DV bridge"? ABSOLUTELY! it is a newer model, too. I saw somewhere on the web (maybe here) that there were issues with older ones but mine is a HW1X2 which (supposedly) fixed the problems.

anyway, I've gone so far as to call my credit card company to see if I have any rights to dispute the charges for it since it hasn't worked like at all since I bought the thing last week...

as far as Win2k goes, I know that it *should* be a better solution, but right about now it is *so different* in a lot of subtle ways from Win98se that I am wondering if I haven't made a mistake.

the worst part about this is that I can't get the junkware that came with the thing to do captures from it either. and the copy of Ulead 5.0 that came with the firewire card won't load because they failed to give me a serial number...

gack...ptoooey...

oh well, at least there aren't people dying over this faux pas...

dennis

jrstueve wrote on 5/11/2002, 5:14 PM
Have you gotten all the Windows Updates for Win 2K...

Do you have the latest DirectX install... (8.1)?

I'm using win2k with an old ATI TV Wonder capture (not DV) so I'm not sure if I can help out more than those two suggestions...
Hill_William wrote on 5/12/2002, 2:26 AM
To capture useing the Hollywood Bridge try setting your video to Video Composite when capturing analog video. It worked for me.
Jim
dparrott wrote on 5/12/2002, 9:01 AM
not sure about "all the Windows updates", there may be a service pack out there I don't have (and I have not loaded any, so...)

as far as DirectX, yes I am at 8.1 as of earlier today (...or was that last night? I'm losing track of time on this project...)

oddly enough, I just now came across a possible solution for my problem - well almost. I just managed to get my best conversion yet BY CLOSING THE LCD ON THE CAMERA! I lost the book to my TRV615 camera and scoured the web for a really lousy PDF file of the manual (for a big company like Sony, you'd think that they would have done a better job of putting their camera manuals on the web - it is barely readable!) anyway buried on page 58 was a warning that distortion might occur IF the LCD door was not closed.

I managed to get 5:32 of video into the computer. It has some audio distortion (kind of whooshy/echo-ey) but the kids don't sound like mutant aliens on hallucinogens!

The problem with the audio just might be because the video stream ended up on the old, slow system disk rather than the fast, new 7200 RPM Western Digital drive where I want my video to go.

<off he heads to perform a test>

well, I've been fiddling around with the devices and I can get VF2.0 to recognize the DV Bridge, get input from it and save the input. it takes doing a little dance (bring up vid capture, unplug the dv bridge and plug it back in to get vid capture to recognize that it is available as a device). the clips are OK... (I also figured out that an S-Video cable is just that - video... no audio!!! 'magine that?!?!)

the remaining problems are: how do I keep this stupid Creative Digital VCR from interfering -- the reason I have to do the little "dance" is to get VF's video catpure app to un-recognize the Digital VCR board... hmmm...

and... why is it that the video capture app will ONLY save the video data to my old and slow C: drive? even though I created the project and told it to save on my new and fast E: drive, the video ends up on a space-constrained, slow drive which is slowly driving me nutzo...

anyway, we have progress, I no longer want to punt the DV bridge into the ocean and maybe I'll be able to make it to my goal of making the kids into video stars...

thanks for the help so far folks. I appreciate it!

dennis
dparrott wrote on 5/12/2002, 9:04 AM
well, I got it sorta working... if you read my other post it talks about the goofy stuff I had/have to do...

I didn't have to set to video composite though... telling VF's vid cap tool that I was using NTSC helped...

dennis
jrstueve wrote on 5/13/2002, 8:54 AM
yeah.. it should 'look' like a DV input if you use a bridge...

RE: Windows Update. (assuming you have a broadband conneciton :))
Open Internet Explorer, and choose tools, Windows Update. It will take you to a site, where it can examine your system and see which patches you might need. You can then selectively download and install. It might take a few interations, but the end result is a smooth W2K system (at least in my experience.. ymmv :))

Using my old ATI TV Wonder capture.. the audio stuff is weird... I need to change sources, to get the capture widget to grab the right audio channel... If it comes up in composite, I have to change it to S-Video, and then back to composite for the audio track to capture. I haven't been able to capture any tuner audio (live TV broadcasts...)

it is odd...