Thanks Bob,

File,
Capture Video,
DV or HDV, (I chose HDV)
Device - mpeg2 ???
and then...???
which ones to click as next steps????

Dragged out my HC5, never tried this one before!

1) Make certain ONLY the camera is on the firewire port.
2) Wait for Windoz to do a long of bounking around while it configures your new AVC Unit hardware. Might even help to have the camera powered up before you start Windoz.
3) Start Vegas.
4) File>Capture> SDI or HDV.
5) Wait for Vegas to find the device and configure it.
6) Click the Preferences Icon in the capture window and pretty well disable every option. By now you should see and hear the camera. Turn down your speakers or feedback may happen.
7) Configure where you want to capture to as per usual.
8) Press the red Record Icon.
9) Pray. It did work. The captured file looked just fine. Be aware there will be a monster delay between what the camera sees and what you see in the Preview Window. This is pretty normal as there's a significant delay in the camera and no doubt more as Vegas decodes the stream.

Good Luck. It looks like it will work but it certainly doesn't feel too stable, unlike doing this with DV. Before doing anything important test, test, test. It could well be 100% OK but it's not part of what Vegas is supposed to do.

I did find the last few frames before I stopped capturing were messed up. The top half was correct but the bottom half was from a few seconds before!

This was all with Vegas 8.0b. V7.0d might be more stable. Worth a try if you've got it.

Bob.

Wow, you great! Thanks a lot Bob!

I wouldn't be too nervous about capturing to a laptop. After all, Vegas can't tell whether the feed on the Firewire cable is live or from tape, so the only question is whether the camera is delivering accurate HDV live over the cable, and I can't think why it wouldn't.

While it's a pain to lug another piece of equipment around, it's nice to be able to record beyond the usual tape limitation of 63 or even 83 minutes. Just practice this beforehand so you know about any quirks, such as your camera shutting down after 5 minutes.

You can get Firewire cable in 15' lengths (the official max spec, I think) and you can buy repeaters for runs longer than that.

I just did an entire fashion show a few days ago, capturing HDV directly to the laptop. (And I did a baseball game a few weeks earlier doing the same thing). Heck, this is the simplest thing you can do, because if you capture a tape to Vegas, there is absolutely zero difference between that and capturing live video.

The only thing you don't get with the Vegas HDV capture that you DO get when capturing old-fashioned DV using Scenalyzer is the ability to stop and start the capture from the camera. With that program, it is able to start and stop when you press the record button on the camera. This lets you still use tape (as backup) without having to bend over (in the dark or in the sunshine in the case of my past two experiences, both of which were tough to do) and find the "record" button on the screen in the Vegas capture app.

What you're saying is what I would have thought too but seeing as how I'd never actually done it I tried it and no, there does seem to be a significant difference between live and from tape. There isn't with DV, HDV though is different.
For example I capture HDV with this setup regularly. I had to reconfigure it to get the live capture to work. I had an external HDD on the same firewire port and that caused the feed to disconnect after a few second. Reconfigured I was in with a chance.

Bob.

And... as I've advised before, secure both ends of the firewire cable so that movement of the camera or the laptop does not pop the flimsy 4 pin firewire connector loose.

I had an external HDD on the same firewire port and that caused the feed to disconnect after a few second. Reconfigured I was in with a chance.

Bob, I honestly don't think the computer can tell the difference between when you are sending video from the tape drive, and when the video is coming in from a live shot. I am not aware of any difference in the data stream or anything else.

However, the problem you describe is something I have experienced many times myself. It could very well be cables or connectors, as Ralph just mentioned. I am about to send a camera in for the second time to have a 1394 connector repaired (my Sony cams seem to have very delicate 1394 connectors, and the "fingers" keep fatiguing and breaking off). Before it finally fails, it does exactly what you describe.

Also, I think Windows may have still have some "device discovery" issues when hard drives and cameras are connected simultaneously. I can get it to work when I do a cold boot, connect the drive and then connect the camera (or is it the other way around?), but if one or the other has been connected for awhile and I then later connect the other, either the camera isn't recognized, or I can't get to the hard drive (usually it's the camera that isn't happy). I think this is a Windows or PC or cable/connector problem, and not a problem with Vegas.

I've captured three cameras (PD-150's) to one laptop using Scenalyzer Live. The laptop is an older 1GHz single-core Sony Vaio that only has a single Firewire port. I got a four-port Firewire router and connected the three cameras and an external HDD to the Firewire Router. Not a single dropped frame.

Unlike USB, multiple devices on one Firewire port does not substantially effect the throughput to the HDD.

Steve;
Any recommedations on your four-port Firewire router ?

Do you plug all devices/cameras into the hub and then one firewire cable to the computer?

thanks,
Eileen

When I do a multi-cam capture to the same laptop, I use a PCMCIA (aka PC Card) adapter for the second FIrewire. Never done more than two. You'd need Steve's idea for that. Advantage of the PC Card is that no external hardware is needed, so one less thing to configure and set up. Actually, come to think of it, the PC Card has two ports, giving me a total of three, so perhaps I could do three.

John,
Re your previous post.
I think you're correct. Part of my initial problems could have been induced by starting Vegas before Windows had done it's whole device discovery and configuration thing. From what you're saying it looks like it will work 100% although I'd still advise anyone to really test this extensively before using it in a shoot with their setup. Reason I'm so adamant about this is I'm finding more and more crud that can get itself installed on the PC that's almost impossible to truly kill off. You think it's dead, you reboot and it's back again even though you've gone into Services and told Windoz not to load it. If it ain't really dead you can get things popping up in the middle of a capture.

Aside from that, glad someone mentioned the humble firewire cable. We've spent a lot of money having kit repaired because of dead firewire ports and connectors. This is always caused by faulty or too heavy cables. There is only one manufacturer of firewire cables worth putting any trust in for 4 pin connections and that is Sony. Their firewire cables cost a lot more. However they are more flexible and way less heavy than any of the other ones. If you think Sony's cables are expensive wait to you get the bill for repairing a J30 VCR with a cooked fire port or a camera with a damaged socket.

Bob.

Steve, that sounds really useful, capturing three cameras at once. I've not used Scenalyzer before - how is it done? Is Scenalyzer able to identify and address each camera separately and capture a stream from each? Or do you need to boot up three instances of the program? And yes, I'd love to know too, which firewire hub do you use?

Many thanks,

Andy

Yeah, my connector damage was due to a cheap cable which now rests at the bottom of some landfill.

The Firewire Router was in the Apple section of CompUSA, $59 if I recall correctly. I am still unpacking from our move to Massachusetts and haven't found it yet or I would give you the make and model #s.

Steve, Andy also asked: "Steve, that sounds really useful, capturing three cameras at once. I've not used Scenalyzer before - how is it done? Is Scenalyzer able to identify and address each camera separately and capture a stream from each? Or do you need to boot up three instances of the program?"

I'm also very interested in the answer. The manual for Scenalizer didn't provide the answer.

Scenalyzer able to identify and address each camera separately and capture a stream from each? Or do you need to boot up three instances of the program?Just download the trial and try it! Fire up Scenalyzer and connect to your first cam. Fire up Scenalyzer again (second instance) and connect to your second.

Since Firewire has very little CPU overhead, and since the capture process is pretty much a file copy (although I think some bits ARE changed, e.g., making it a type 1 or type 2 AVI file), the only limiting factor is the performance of your hard drive. I don't know exactly what specs would be best, but I suspect that the bigger the drive buffer the better. Also, on a really fast system, you might get away with having DMA turned off when capturing one stream, but there is no way it will work for two simultaneous captures. This sometimes gets turned off by Windows (long story, but it does happen). So, if you get dropped frames with two cams, check that.

"Just download the trial and try it! Fire up Scenalyzer and connect to your first cam. Fire up Scenalyzer again (second instance) and connect to your second."

Well that would be certainly be the acid test, but I would like to know that it's doable before I go scrambling for a router or a multi-port FW adapter.

From your answer John, I take it that it will work by firing up multiple instances of Scenalyzer. Thanks, that's what I was looking for. And thanks for the DMA pointer.

Yes, I would start Scenalyzer three times, go into each one at a time and tell it which camera was the source for that instance.

Make sure the cameras are all on first.....

There is only one manufacturer of firewire cables worth putting any trust in for 4 pin connections and that is Sony. Their firewire cables cost a lot more. However they are more flexible and way less heavy than any of the other ones. If you think Sony's cables are expensive wait to you get the bill for repairing a J30 VCR with a cooked fire port or a camera with a damaged socket.

There is one other way. I use a Kremer PT-1FW firewire protector that cost about $70 if I remember correctly, but it protects against any kind of firewire-caused destruction.

(I use it between my $2K MacBook Pro and my $2K AJA IO, glad to have both of them safe...)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817111968

I just ordered a 6 port IEEE1394 Repeater hub from Newegg for $28 which has 5x 6pin ports and 1 x 4pin port and is powered.

Not too expensive to try out, and if nothing else another way to connect a series of external hard drives to my CPU without having to crawl under the desk in the dark to find ports I can hardly see...

Eileen

And if you're working off a laptop then an item such as http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=103&cp_id=10302&cs_id=1030202&p_id=80&seq=1&format=3#specification should make it even easier by eliminating the need for an AC adaptor and reducing the cable count.