Output to tape - I can't be alone in this problem - ??

Caruso wrote on 4/22/2001, 1:40 PM

Taped my daughter singing at Juilliard earlier this week.
Nothing more, just 20 minutes of her in the crook of the
piano, doing her thing.

Needed to dub an archive version, nothing fancy, an opening
black screen and an ending black screen, an opening title
screen, and her in the middle, singing.

The entire "production" is shy of 21 minutes.

Captured the DV source tape via VegasCapture 2e on a clean
system (no other video editing/capturing programs
installed . . . nothing to pollute the system).

Captured video showed DV as the compression method, just
like it's supposed to in VegasVideo.

Added my blank screens and my title, rendered to NTSC-DV
avi, opened the resultant avi in VegasCapture and attempted
to output to tape.

While the avi plays fine on my PC (onscreen preview), there
is absolutely no way I can get a workable version through
the firewire to my camcorder.

Even preview to external monitor produces a start/stop
herky-jerky video.

I finally gave up and installed Pinnacle's StudioDV. That
program is not without it's problems, but, at least they
are predictable on my system, so I imported my 21 mintes
and ouput to tape from there.

Now, I simply find it hard to believe that my system is so
atypical that only I am experiencing this lack of success
with output to tape.

I'm working from Win2000, version d of VegasVideo, version
e of VidCap, storing on a dedicated Maxtor 80-gig external
using NTSC, working with 128 meg RAM on a 900 GHz system.

Nothing outstanding, but, nothing wimpy about that setup,
so, what am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance for your help. Would love to get away
from SDV if at all possible.

Caruso

Comments

SonyEPM wrote on 4/23/2001, 8:52 AM

It is possible the Pinnacle codec has replaced the DirectX8
codec- that would cause the behavior you are seeing.

More info about diagnosing the DV components here:

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/Support/Productinfo/OHCI.asp

Caruso wrote on 4/24/2001, 4:29 AM

Well, I suppose it's possible, but I don't believe so. I
have found that whenever a Pinnacle codec asserts itself,
the results of my capture are clearly "infected" with the
evidence. Properties will show some "Miro" sort of
compression type.

In any event, I started with a clean system (disks totally
wiped), and, only when VideoCapture acted up on me did I
resort to "polluting" my system with the Pinnacle product.
It was the only resort I could think of to at least get my
project out to tape (which I did).

There must be thousands of users out there from whom I
haven't heard who are outputting with no problems
whatsoever (or otherwise your board would be swamped with
complaints), so, what is it that seems strange about my
setup that could be causing this problem.

I think my setup to be simple and straighforward: Win2000
(dual boot) on a 900mhz compaq running two 7200 rpm ide
internal drives, two 5400 rpm maxtor firewire drives,
capturing through either the Pinnacle firewire pci board or
the compaq native 1394 ports (either seems to give similar
results), 128 mb 100mhz RAM, 16mb 100mhz video ram.

What am I missing?

Thanks again for your help. I'm sure we can track this
thing down and eradicate it.

Caruso

RichardG wrote on 4/24/2001, 5:44 PM

Hi Caruso,
I also HAD problems with vidcap. Initially I couldn't view
on an external monitor (camcorder's lcd). vidcap generated
an error message. I then tried to print to tape and got the
same error. However vidcap did capture with no problems.
Very strange. I contacted Sonic and they didn't seem as
though they could help. Incidentally, the previous version
of vidcap worked perfectly. So, as it seemed as though I
was the only one who was having problems. (I now know this
isn't true :-)) I decided to do some serious re-installing
of the firewire board and dv drivers. I uninstalled
everything to do with these drivers, deleted the inf files
and started from scratch, making sure that the only drivers
installed were microsoft drivers. And Hey presto! vidcap is
working again. So Caruso, I hope this may be of some help
to you.
Regards
RichardG