I have a Sony DCR-DVD300. Everyone keeps talking about capture cards, I have none of this, just my Toshiba Satellite laptop, 2.8 processor, 512 mg ram, but this should work shouldnt it?

Thanks for your help.... I really need to solve this.. Thanks again for your time.

There's a discussion here that might be useful. You can find other discussions in this and the Vegas forums by searching for DVD300.

To summarise though, most modern camcorders record in MDV (Mini DV) format. This takes up a lot of space and it has to be processed before you can put something in your DVD player. Sony had the bright idea of making the DCR-DVD300, a camera that records direct to a disc in MPEG2 format, with the audio in AC3 - just what your DVD player's designed to handle. The problem is that MPEG's a lousy format for editing (quality goes down the toilet) and a lot of (most?) editors can't handle AC3.

I hope you'll find some more upbeat information elesewhere in these forums, but I believe the concensus is that the DCR-DVD300 and video editing just don't go together!

Ian G.

I am grateful for your advice... you seem to know what you are talking about.. and I'm sure what you say is true... HOWEVER, I am stuck with my Sony Camcorder.... SO..... is it possible that I need to install the camcorder drivers to my laptop, so that Movie Studio can recognize it? I just need to be able to either capture OR import movies into Movie Studio (both video and audio) so I can pass on a bit of enjoyment.... even if the quality isnt perfect.... Thanks in advance for your continued help.... The screenblast people are of no help.... I am sure I am not the only one with that problem...... Screenblast should pay YOU for supporting THEIR product.

This is kind of ugly, but if your Sony has analog video and audio out you could purchase a video capture card/device for your PC. MS3 should be able to capture from that. It works with my video capture card (ATI AIW 9000) just fine.
The other alternative is probably reading the VOB files off the DVD and encoding/demuxing - not hard but kind of complicated if you've never done it.

Rick

Thanks Walleye... I will try to do this, but I also have new information.....

According to Movie Studio support staff. Movie studio does NOT work with the "mpg" file format, which is "AC3" as I understood him.... so our only option is to convert the AC3 audio to a "wav" file... He did not have a clue on how to accomplish this..... Does anyone have an idea about that? Thanks for your help.

If I really have to buy a capture card, which one would you suggest? I have a Toshiba laptop... 2.8 processor, 512 Ram, and a large hard drive.. Thanks again............ :)

Slight clarification ... MPEG files can have several different types of audio streams and AC3 is only one of those types. However, AC3 audio is what is produced by that camera and this is one of the few types that Movie Studio can't open. It can open most other MPEG files that contain other types of audio though.

There are several usable inexpensive analog capture cards out there. I've used the Hauppauge Win-TV Go card before and it was acceptable, if not perfect. It had a composite video input which could be connected to the analog video output of the camera, and the sound from the camera would be connected to the line in on the computer's sound card. VidCap can use this card to capture both audio & video from the analog A/V outs of the camera this way. ATI's AllInWonder & VIVO cards can also be used this way. You'll end up with a honking big AVI file (about 1.7GB/minute depending on the capture parameters), but this file can be opened and edited in Movie Studio.

Oops, Jeff, i see you have a laptop. That limits your choices a bit. You'll probably be stuck with USB capture if you want to stay cheap. USB 1.0 is just about useless for video capture so make sure you look only for USB 2.0 devices. I think there is a USB 2.0 WinTV of some sort. This may accomplish the job, but you may not be delighted with it.

The next step up is to use firewire and an external A/V -> DV converter. Currently the Canopus ADVC-100 is one of the best consumer devices available, but it's about $250. Stay away from anything named Dazzle; they're very cheap for a very good reason.

It looks like there may be a software solution to this! Take a look at dvd2avi. I'm still trying to get to grips with it, but it looks like it will take the vob files produced by your camera and produce avis for the video and wavs for the audio. I haven't found much help for it, and it's very, very slow, but it's free! It also allows batch processing, so it's a case of stoke it up and leave it!

Unfortunately I haven't got any suitable clips to test it with, but it looks good in theory!

Ian G.

MPEG and AC-3 are two entirely seperate formats.

MPEG is a standard that can be used to encode either video or audio (in a standard video-and-sound file, the audio and video streams are encoded seperately and interleaved. AC-3 audio can also be interleaved into MPEG, but is a different format, see below). Movie Studio supports both MPEG-1 (the standard used for VideoCD's and most MPEG video you find on the net) and MPEG-2 (the format used for digital cable/satellite video and DVD's) video and audio.

AC-3 is the Dolby Digital Surround Sound audio standard used to create surround tracks for DVD's and in movie theaters. Due to the high cost of licensing this technology (it would likely more than double the shelf cost of Movie Studio), support for this format is not included. Our Vegas 4.0 professional audio/video editing tool does have purchasable support for writing to this format (but not reading, sorry), if you are interested in authoring surround sound movies.

I hope this helps to clear things up.

As for converting AC-3 to WAV, try searching at google.com for information, or possibly at vcdhelp.com. They have a number of guides on converting common media formats. You should be able to find a way that works for you.