This is going to sound stupid but I've been using Vegas for about a year now and I've never used it to capture my video. I've always used the software that came with my camera (Sony).

Rumor has it that you edit your videos using Vegas too (joke). :)

And one word of caution. If VidCap reports no dropped frames you're good. It may report dropped frames and nothing was actually wrong with the capture. Dropped frames can be reported due to tape glitches, dirty heads etc.

Bob.

"I've always used the software that came with my camera (Sony)."

Oy! Do yourself a favor and try VidCap. Around these parts, VidCap doesn't have a very good reputation, but i'll bet it's about 93,216 times better than the camera's software. Unless SONY CES has improved their stuff about a million times over, their Pixela software ranks as some of the, well ... most rank software ever written.

You'll also note dropped frames, I believe, if your timecode is not continuous. In other words, if you've recorded, rewound to have a look to see how that last shot looked, and then advanced the tape beyond the last frame of video, you'll have a gap. I believe this looks like a dropped frame too. You always want to use the Sony Vidcap tool (or better) so you can recapture the media from tape, as long as you keep your video capture file (.sfvidcap). A non-continuous timecode makes recapture more difficult I've read.

There is a way to add a dropped frames column to the vidcap clip listing. This can help you at least figure out which clips had dropped frames. I think it's called "field chooser" - or maybe that's in Outlook...anyway, it's there under some name or other.

It gets a bit harder if you don't use scene detection because then you just have to recapture bigger clips, maybe the whole tape if that's the way you're working.

Rob Mack

For DV at least, you can use Scenalyzer and set the option to stop capture if a frame is dropped. Then you know exactly where the glitch occurred. You can then rewind a bit, and try again. Also has several options for scene splitting--it's really a great capture and tape export program IMHO.

wwaag

I don't want to stop the capture. Most of my captures run unattended for hours. I like to do them when i'm sleeping or out for dinner. If the capture stopped i'd have to be there to see that happen and start it again.

Ideally, i'd like to do the whole capture in one unattended shot, then quickly go back and recapture the few seconds i need to cover the couple of dropped frames here and there. True, this is what i do now, but i hvae to review the whole capture to find those spots, if they even exist. If Vidcap would tell me *where* the dropped frames were then finding the parts to recapture would be very very quick and easy.

Vidcap can also stop on dropped frames but I'm in the same camp as you, Kelly, and want to go have lunch during a capture.

Yes, it would be a cool thing to be able to go back and just get the area that had the dropped frame. Short of that, you go back and recapture the whole clip, which is practical if you had fairly short clips but pointless if you captured the whole tape as one clip.

Vidcap could be improved. It could create indexes, it could export and import logs, it could allow you to combine adjacent clips, it could capture a tape as one clip and make automatic subclips, it could keep track of the actual frames that get dropped.

I'd like it if my Veg file could tell what vidcap file was used to capture my footage. I hate that it just opens the last vidcap file that was used.

Rob Mack

OK, well I used Vegas to capture my video and I'm disappointed in the quality. Using the Sony software that came with my camera (Picture Package) I get much better quality. You can adjust the resolution that you capture with in Picture Package (at the risk of dropping frames) and I always use the highest resolution. Looks great but I just noticed recently that it looked a bit choppy but I couldn't confirm if I was dropping frames (thus the question about dropping frames). So I just used Vegas to capture my video (no dropped frames) but the quality is poor. How do I get both quality and no dropped frames? I shouldn't have to sacrifice one for the other in my humble opinion.

Admittedly I am not using the best connection to capture (USB) since I don't have a iLink port on my computer. Does this have anything to do with quality?

Hey guy, VA_Buckeye is using VMS Platinum (whatever version was out last year). Is the video capture program different for VMS than Vegas? I don't understand why the quality would be low with no dropped frames. The USB connection is potentially a different animal, but if there was interference then I would think that the capture program would should that as dropped frames. Curious.

Hey bro, confirm you didn't get your camera into a progressive scan mode that only supports 15 frames per second, or something? I don't know why your video would be choppy without dropped frames. Low light video (like indoors at night, even with "normal" lighting) is often grainy, but shouldn't be choppy. Hmmm...

Brian

Avoid USB like the plague! It simply cannot transfer DV using common hardware. Get a $15 firewire cable and you'll be doing much better. Using firewire, VidCap will capture an exact bit-for-bit file copy of what's on the tape. Quality degradation isn't even a possibility with this method.

Actually, i'm surprised you were able to capture through USB with VidCap at all. I would have figured VidCap wouldn't even see the connection.