Just rendered my video in that format, 720 x 480?, NTSC DV, and I am still getting the bad file format message when I try to print to tape. I must be doing something wrong here. Any other pointers? Thanks for the help.

Sounds like you might have fiddled with the DV template too, although i thought it wasn't possible to save changes to the included templates.

This is a slightly drastic measure, but you can quit VideoFactory, then hold down the Shift & Ctrl keys while you start it up again. This will RESET EVERYTHING to the original default state. All the templates will go back to what they're supposed to be. Unfortnately, it will also reset anything that you wanted changed as well.

Sorry to ask this, but are you sure you are sending this "new" - "720 x 480?, NTSC DV" - back to your cammy? - It was the "?" in the middle of your message that threw me.

Grazie

Thanks again for the fast replies. I just rerendered the video to NTSC DV which I think is 720 x480, with no question mark and once again I selected Make Movie and then Print to Tape. A new window opens which I think is the vidcap window but it is in output mode. The buttons are cue device, something else, and print to tape or something very similar to that. When I click on print to tape or write to device (can't remember exactly what it is) then that is when the window comes up that says "Can't write to device bad file format" or something close to that. I am rebooting my system right now and will try resetting all to defaults again but I checked and the NTSC DV format looks right. It is lower field first, etc.

Hiyah - back from your reboot - yes? Keep us posted on your progress.

RB - I tend to write things down on a piece of paper - it's the age my friend. I don't trust my memory.

Good luck

Grazie

Just restarted VF holding down ctrl and shift to reset all to default. I am now rerendering the video after selecting the NTSC DV template. I will then try once more to write to my camcorder. Oh, I am using a 1394 firewire cable for capture and for print to tape. My camcorder is a Sony TVR18 DV.

When I am rendering the video I had selected stretch to fill output frame. Could that be causing the problem?

Ok. Tried again by rerendering after setting all to default by using ctrl and shift as I restarted VF. Still get the bad file format messaage. Noticed I had the stretch to fill output frame checked so I unchecked it and am now rerendering and will try printing that one to tape when it finishes.

Rerendered without the stretch option but I still get the bad format. I know I am connecting to my camcorder because I was able to capture from it and was able to control it with VF. Don't know what else to try. As I said, this is my first time using my new DV Camcorder with VF. The rendered DV avi looks great. It is 462 megabytes. Appears to be in the DV format because I can play it with my Windows Media Player and it indicates it is using the DV codec to play it.

RB - It's now 8:45am in the UK. Couldn't get back to you as my ADSL went down ARRRgggh - However you've exhausted my knowledge on what it could be. Maybe others will jump in - yeah? I'm sure someone will help.

Best regards

Grazie

Thx Grazie. Anyone else have any ideas?

Just checking. You said you created a “short video clip” and the file size was 462MB. That would make the clip around 2 minutes long at DV quality. Is that close to the length of this clip? The file size seems very small.

If you right mouse click on the clip in the Windows Explorer and go to Properties and then the Details tab, what does it say under Audio format: and Video format:? It should say something like:

Audio format: PCM,48,000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo

Video format: 720 x 480, 24 Bits, 3184 Frames, 29.970 Frames/Sec, 3712 KB/Sec, DVCodec

It should also tell you the Media length which should be somewhere around 2 minutes for the file size you have. The results shown above were for a DV AVI file that was 394MB in size.

Just curious, Are you using the Make Movie->Print your movie to DV tape option? That will make the file on your hard drive and then print it to tape. It sounds like you’re trying to do this as a manual two step process and the second step doesn’t like the DV file the first step made.

~jr

Thanks everyone for all of your suggestions. I have been successful in writing back to my camcorder. I think the problem, (blush), is that I had two devices configured on my system. A webcam, Intel, and the DV device. If I am correct I had not selected the DV device for output and it was defaulting to my webcam. The bottom line is that I was successful in writing back to the camcorder after selecting the DV device. It worked absolutely perfectly. I am one happy camper now. I am sorry to have put you all through helping me with a solution when it was my own doing. Thank you very much everyone for your help. I did learn a lot in reading your suggestions.

Oh, ...and I used TmpgEnc to create an mpg2 file, (I like it because I can control the parameters), and then I burned an SVCD with Nero and the quality is astonishingly good compared to my old analogue captured ones in the past.