You might want to contact Sony tech support via email. Click on the support button at the top of this screen.

1) Are you capturing DV?

2) What capture card (brand/model) are you using?

Hi,

Well actually the problem is occuring before I can capture anything, but yes normally I would be capturing DV into a Lacie firewire card. I'm using a Canopus ADVC-100 capture device. Thanks for any help.

Kilroy

So are you saying you have 2 devices on your system that will present themselves as an imaging device (that is, when you go to device manager and expand the imaging devices selection you see 2 items)?

Vegas capture can't handle multiple imaging devices correctly (it will only select the first device that the system see's), so this might be part of your problem.

Another thing to check is to download the latest drivers for the ADVC-100 from the Canopus web site.

And lastly, download the trial version of Scenalyzer, see if it can work with the capture card. If it can, at $39 it may be a cheaper option than spending a lot of time trying to figure out what's broken.

--Scott

Hi,

No actually, as far as Windows is concerned there is only the firewire card capturing DV, the ADVC-100 is basically an external conversion box, it doesn't have any drivers.

What I find annoying about this problem is that it HAS worked in the past with exactly the same setup...plus I have a second system that is set up exactly the same (in absolutely every way). It just stopped working for (seemingly) no reason....personally I think it might be a software thing, but I'm stumped as to what exactly. I've tried a complete uninstall and reinstall and it did absolutely nothing. Thanks for any help.

Kilroy

Sorry, I must have gotten confused. My -100 was a PCI card; my 300 is an external box.

I'd still go ahead and give Scenalyzer trial version a try - it's a far superior capture prgram than Vegas capture, and like I said, there's a good chance you're gonna spend more than $39 of your time trying to figure out what's broke with Vegas Capture.

--Scott

You could also try resetting all Vegas Capture settings to their default value. To do this, open Vegas capture. Then, press and hold the left shift key and while doing this, select Options -> Preferences. You can then let go of the shift key. You should now see a "hidden" tab called "Internal." The very first setting is labeled "Reset all settings on startup." Double-click on the word "FALSE" in the "Value" column and type "TRUE" (without the quotes). Click on OK, and quit Vegas Capture. When you restart ALL preferences will be reset to default. Try capturing and see what happens.

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestions. I'd love to try resetting all the video capture preferences, but I have just one problem that keeps me from trying that "To do this, open Vegas capture" I can't open Vegas Video Capture, it's when I try to open it that I get the error. Thanks again guys...I really do appreciate your efforts.

Kilroy

P.S. Just out of curiosity....in what ways is Scenalyzer better then Vegas Video Capture?

I've tried it and yes it's got some nice features like logging a tape in about 5 mins. But what I wanted it for didn't work right!
In terms of the actual capture process which is only copying data from tape to the HD I don't see much between any of them but then I rarely do anything other than Capture Tape.

Bob.

How is Scenalyzer better? Well, the main advantage I have with it is that I can have multiple image devices connected and I can correctly select which device to capture from.

Just out of curiosity....in what ways is Scenalyzer better then Vegas Video Capture?

Scenalyzer is better in MANY ways. Click on this link for a complete list:

Scenalyzer Features

Hey all,

I guess I'll have to give Scenalyzer a try. Although it would be nice to know what's causing this other problem. That's just the way I am....I like to know how to fix everything...but maybe this time I'll just have to let it slide. Anyway thanks for all the help.

Kilroy

Did you contact Sony tech support? Sony doesn't promise to read or respond to messages in this forum -- although sometimes they do. However, they are very good about responding to tech support questions (although sometimes they take awhile to respond when they get backed up). Click on the support button at the top of this page.

Even though the Vegas capture application is very weak, and hasn't been upgraded in a long time, it should work for basic captures, and if it doesn't, then perhaps something else is lurking that will cause other problems. You should try to get it working so that something else doesn't go wrong.

One last idea:

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to:

C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas 5.0
Click once on the "vidcap50.exe" file. Then, press and hold the left shift key. While holding this key, press the "Enter" key. This should reset all the Vegas Capture settings to factory default. Perhaps this will get you up and running. If it doesn't, then perhaps you should uninstall, then re-install Vegas.

Thanks for the tip, I'll try that ASAP.

Kilroy

Actually, I think you may need to hold both the Ctrl and the Shift key at the same time. If it doesn't work by holding just the Shift key, then try it with both of them pressed when you start the program.

This could be completely off, but I think I had this problem when I first installed Vegas 4, over a year ago. In my case, I couldn't run capture from Vegas, but it worked fine if I started Capture directly by clicking on it in the Vegas folder.

In my case, the solution was to uninstall and reinstall Vegas. Some kind of registration sequencing problem (initial activation of the program) I think.

There were a few posts back then about capture not starting. Sony (then SOFO) told me what to try, and though painful, it worked. You might want to see if you can start Capture stand-alone as a test.

Thank you to everyone who offered suggestions. I attempted to try out the demo version of Scenalyzer, but for some reason the install file was corrupt, so I'll have to try that in another week or so. Currently I am waiting on a reply from Sony tech support, which seems to me to be taking much too long. It's been over two weeks now since I contacted them about the problem and so far haven't received any reply whatsoever.

I tried all of the your suggestions, and I still can't get video capture to launch under any circumstances whatsoever. I am certainly VERY glad that I have two editing systems, otherwise this would be far more annoying (and costly). Anyway, thank you all once agian. Hopefully Sony will put a rush on that tech support reply.

Kilroy

I'm sure you checked this, but you didn't accidently switch the drive it records to, to a drive or partition that's full? Also, it never hurts to give a thorough scan to the disc to check for errors. Be sure to check the box that says 'repair errors'. While I didn't have the exact same problem, I had some weird stuff happen once and a disc scan fixed the problem.