Help please-Firewire 1394, MiniDV Capture, Vegas12

Scottish wrote on 9/15/2014, 2:16 PM

Greetings,
I'm a bit behind the bleeding edge of Vegas installations and am asking someone wiser than me for their help in the brain teaser happening currently in my studio between a Firewire 1394 Video Capture in Vegas 12 pro, 64-bit and my relic MiniDV cameras. Been using the Vegas software since version 3 and have considered it a viable product and solid solution to post production. Trying to join the future and recently installed the Windows 7, 64-bit vers. of Vegas 12 (build 770) and video capture 6.0e (build 1000), which run fine, as well as one of my old Adaptec 4300 3 external 6-pin OHCI IEEE1394, PCI firewire interface adapters in an attempt to keep a few legacy miniDV camcorders with iLink in the production loop. Yeah, I know, way behind the curve but still here. The Adaptec 4300 1394 firewire adapter is installed and, after working through due diligence in this forum, I've also changed the the card's driver to the Win 7 OHCI 1394 host driver (legacy).
Here's the weird thing happening: Sony Vid capture identifies my miniDV camera and perfectly controls its transport with play, rewind, etc. functions. It allows me to begin the tape capture and, due to my preference of 'auto preview select', turns off the preview and appears to be doing what I asked it to do-- transferring the tape in. When I press 'Stop' in the capture program, the clip window pops up and informs me "Capture Complete". 'No Video Was Captured'.
After reading many posts here discussing outside video codecs, I am waiting to here from the community as to what is going on with my setup before trying ffdshow, AVI Codec, etc.
I'm also trying my Canopus ADVC110 today, once I find a firewire 4-pin to 4-in cable, and see if it works. Another thing I thought I'd try is to install an HP Quadro NVS 290 digital video card. Could I have Vegas 12's video preferences miss-set?
Any and all ideas are appreciated and I'll try to repay your efforts down the road. Hoping to join the HD world soon. -

Comments

OldSmoke wrote on 9/15/2014, 2:40 PM

Try and use a software called HDVSplit; it's free. It has much better controls and also does frame accurate scene capture, something that vegas has never done since VP7.

Scottish wrote on 9/15/2014, 2:52 PM

Thank you, Old Smoke. That was speedy!
I'm going for the download. Also, thanks to others on this forum mentioning the ScenalyzerLIve software which I just installed and was able to capture my old antique miniDV tapes.
By the way, anyone know how to purchase a key to ScenalyzerLive in order to upgrade from the trial version still online? Thanks again.

OldSmoke wrote on 9/15/2014, 2:59 PM

You wont need it once HDVSplit works. HDVSplit is what most user have switched to since Vegas doesn't do frame accurate capture of HDV footage.

johnmeyer wrote on 9/15/2014, 3:07 PM

1. I don't know why Vegas isn't capturing the video. If you still have your license keys for older version of Vegas, you should be able to install those, and see if they will work on your system. I still mostly use Windows XP when capturing DV tapes, and use Vegas 7 and Vegas 8. I have not tried Vegas 13 under Windows 7, so I don't know what issues may lurk there. Perhaps I should try that, just to see what happens.

2. HDVSplit is the wrong program for DV video, but if you need to capture HDV video from tape, then it is a viable alternative to the HD capture utility built into Vegas.

3. SCLive, the commercial version of the very old Scenalyzer program, is by far the best way to capture DV video from DV tapes. Andi (the developer), closed down the site earlier this year, but it appears that he did leave a link to the software, along with a generic license key, on this site:

SCLive

So you can now get it for free.

This is a really great piece of software, with dozens of additional features, many of which I described in my long post (do I ever make them short?) midway down in this thread:

Can those who use "Scenalyzer" please explain it's advantages over Video Capture 3.0 or 4.0?

Scottish wrote on 9/15/2014, 3:14 PM

Thanks, you guys-- especially Old Smoke and John M. Valuable advice and very much appreciated. And I just paused long enough to read through Andi's .zip package with Scenalyer and did find his free registration key in a text file. It works great.
Any idea how I might be able to compensate Andi for his valuable DV software contribution?
-an old software developer

johnmeyer wrote on 9/15/2014, 3:33 PM

I just looked through my old emails, going back to 2004, to see if I have Andi's email address. Ten years ago, he was nice enough to produce a custom version for my movie transfer work, and I did just find his email address. Send me a PM (click on my user name), and I'll send you that email. It may no longer work, but it is worth a try.

As a long-time software developer, I too always pay for my shareware and contribute whenever I can even when the effort is dubbed freeware.

Scottish wrote on 9/15/2014, 4:02 PM

Wow, that was fast. Back up and running smooth, thanks to your help today!

ScenalyserLive works great. It enabled me to finish diagnosing the miniDV=> Adaptec Firewire 1394=> Win 7 64-bit=> Vegas software capture setup. Using the Win7 Pro OHCI 1394 Legacy driver (instead of the initially installed Win driver) and finding a mechanical change in the way all of the capture programs (including Vegas & Scenalyzer) deal with the hardware transport in this new iteration, lit up mission control. Old guy operator error problem contributing to the brain teaser today.
I now have both of the capture programs working and plan to demo HDVSplit for future HD vid captures. Your help has been invaluable. Thank you. - Scottish