Vegas HDV Capture & Canon XL H1 24F Mode

BibbityBoo wrote on 8/14/2008, 7:42 AM
I'm hoping I'm just doing something very silly or overlooking some step, but I've noted in some other forums some similar problems to what I'm seeing. I've only just recently begun capturing in HDV... My previous computer was bad enough about SD captures, and lack of BluRay players among those likely to want my event videos made downconversion to SD my usual, most reliable workflow.

Have had no problems (in Vegas Pro 8.0b) capturing 60i mode HDV from the Canon XL H1 using Vegas's onboard HDV/SDI capture module. But when I tried to capture material shot in 24F recently, the module seems to drop frames on the fly and deliver 100s of disconnected, smallish (roughly 1MB) m2t files per minute, each containing a handful of frames at most (thus my suspicion that dropframes are somehow involved). I've tried a variety of configuration settings in Vegas and in the playback setup menus of the camera but have yet to manage a clean capture.

I can capture it by downcoverting as in the past to an SD AVI file, but obviously this is not ideal or desirable, except as an emergency workaround. Any tips on what I might be doing wrong? Or is this an issue in Vegas itself? Is there an alternative HDV capture program that works better than the one built into Vegas that I should be looking for?

Thanks.

Comments

Cheno wrote on 8/14/2008, 7:57 AM
This has been an ongoing problem with Vegas 8 for sometime. Sony admin released an updated HDV reader .dll file that has (I believe) alleviated some of these issues for others. I still am having capture issues though and resort to Vegas 7 for all of my HDV capture. Others have moved on to HDV Split with success too.

Hopefully this continues to improve.

cheno
BibbityBoo wrote on 8/14/2008, 8:15 AM
Thanks for the word. Looking under support files all I see is something called Video Capture Repair utility which seems misfiled under "Video Capture Repair Utility for Sony Computers" -- is this in fact a generic fix? (There appears to be no text files or other details given besides the link.) Guess I'll be taking a look at HDV Split in the meanwhile.

Reading BarryGreen's rundown on HDV formats at:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=521297

It almost sounds like I'm better off avoiding 24F altogether and generating 24p in post from 60i originals? (Since it seemed to me that 24F implied a sort of destructive editing at the source level, I've actually shot very little in the past in 24F anyway, so this conversion issue is only important to me IF I conclude after comparing output, that there is some creative reason to prefer shooting 24F over 60i.

Still going to check out the other software but this is starting to sound like more trouble than it's worth, especially if there's any basis to the rumor of Sony dumping Vegas. I have a visceral dislike for Apple, but in the end I do need to work with tools that I have some expectation will continue to be kept in line with changes in formats and so on....

(Any rumours out there of when there will be an open-source NLE to resolve the conflict between corporate priorities and those of editors and users?)
Cheno wrote on 8/14/2008, 9:08 AM
First of all, 24f IS Progressive - different name for it but Vegas and other NLE's see it as progressive. Barry Green is not an HDV fan so everything along those lines will be biased and point back to the benefits of all things Panasonic. Nothing against that, but it's a biased opinion to begin with as opposed to pros and cons of each format.

In looking for the HDV Reader, the link has been removed from the initial post. It was closed to some beta testers and then opened to the public but now it's gone. Maybe there were still some issues and it's being reworked.

HDV Split works very nicely and the files play fine in Vegas. If for some reason you have issues, email me offline and I'll forward you the reader (assuming it's okay to do so since it was public).

cheno

edit" - over on DVInfo in the "Hands on the HG20" thread under the AVCHD forum, there was a comparison made between the EX1 24p and the XH-A1 24f - both came out the same if that helps with whether Canon 24f is true progressive.

cheno
BibbityBoo wrote on 8/14/2008, 11:15 AM
thanks again, by the way, HDVSplit seems to be working fine at least for the little bits I need to convert for testing.

As for the confusion surrounding 24F (and I don't presume to have an answer here) -- yes, the clips captured via HDVSplit so far do have it showing up as 24p (under individual clip properties) -- I might take you up on that offer of the Sony capture utility, but for now, as long as HDVSplit does the job I may as well wait and see if Sony issues a working patch eventually. I did have HDVSplit stop working on the first try, but that could have been for many reasons, most likely capturing too much in one go, or perhaps the fact that I was capturing to a slower drive than is probably ideal.

Thanks again for the help as well as for the balancing perspective on the usually inconclusive debates over formats and so on. ;)