I have SCLive and I've used it once to capture a tape from a PDX10, yes I wanted both channels of the audio.
Apart from that I've never had an issue with VidCap as far as capturing goes and we've capture over 1000 hrs of video (that's the head hours on one deck, probably far more than that)

Yes I've had VidCap report 300 dropped frames in one 3 hour tape. But there was nothing wrong with the capture, previous tapes and later tapes on the same rig, no dropped frames.

Here's the thing, all those "dropped frames" were when the camera went into record. They weren't dropped frames, they were frames mangled by the camera that VidCap couldn't recover. Yes the client admitted that tape was shot with a dodgy camera.

So if you start getting slabs of dropped frames reported by VidCap for no apparent reason, suggest you have your camera checked.

Yes it'd be better if VidCap had a more sensible report, a tally of Dropped Frames where it couldn't write the data to the disk AND a tally of the frames the deck sent that were garbled.

And yes VidCap could be better, the Capture Tape option is a failure, I always end up with the audio resampled to 12/32K. Sony's suggestion was to roll the tape and when you get vision THEN hit record in VidCap. Would really like them to fix this.

Bob.

I know what you mean Jay. I recently purchased it as well. My problem was audio dropouts. With Scenalyzer I have had ZERO.
I should have listened to John Meyer a long time ago.

John

I have had absolutely had no problems at all with vidcap from day 1. No dropped frames, no sync problems, no blank frames.

JJK

Well I think the point some of us are making here JJ is that after seven reincarnations of VidCap no one should be having any problems.

John

lol agreed wholeheartedly

its like they just threw it in...
for me it works.. i jsut record tape after tape.. the only time i get droped frames is with a fragged drive or a drive almost full

as for scenelyser.. im yet to be able to run it stable on 3 different machines..

It's definitely like it was just thrown in.

Personally, Vidcap works well enough. There are definitely times when it is pretty stupid. For instance, recapturing a clip whose timecode starts at zero is pretty hopeless. Happily, that's usually bars and tone, but it can cause trouble if you captured the whole tape as one clip.

I think Vidcap screws up captures where things have been reviewed in camera. I often get 3 generic clips all starting at a set timecode, and then a fourth clip with the logged clip name that is a bad capture. When this happens it's always one of the generic (clip 27, clip 28, clip 29 etc) ones that was good-not the one with the logged name. It's a pain to untangle this stuff.

I almost never get dropped frames with my current computers, but I did get 11 or so reported during a recent capture that spanned a camera stop and start. Funny thing is that vidcap told me about the dropped frames during capture but didn't log them. The clip info says no dropped frames and I can't see anything in the media. Ah, well.

It'd be nice if vidcap would try harder to find timecode. I sometimes have tapes parked past the timecode and Vidcap doesn't try to rewind to find it.

It'd be nice if Vegas knew which vidcap file to open up, rather than dumping all offline clip entries into the last vidcap file that was used.

I'd be great if you could import a log into Vidcap. Export too.

It'd be great if Vidcap was scriptable. Not for me, but others have mentioned this. This would allow third parties to work on the import/export requirement.

Rob Mack

I think you had other issues besides Vegas' vidcap. Like most of us on here, we capture many, many hours without a *single* dropped frame. Are we just flukes? I doubt it.

I agree, those with dropped frames have some issues that really should be solved. I've captured hours on end using VidCap with zero dropped frames on an 800MHz P3 while simultanously running a dozen other programs. Sometimes the oddest little things interfere though. 3D rendering in various programs doesn't affect VidCap, but scrolling a text box inside a netscape window will cause 90% of the frames to be dropped. The "falling cards" display in solitaire is fine, but the fireworks in spider solitaire drops VidCap dead. Weird.

Kelly,

I don't understand it either. I have never had a dropped video frame with VidCap under any circumstances, but I have had audio dropouts (flatlines). Switched to Scenalyzer - GONE. Even if I accepted the argument that it must be something else in my system and not VidCap who cares. With Scenalyzer for only $40 the problem is solved and I have a bunch of great features as well.

John

I've never had any issues with Vidcap, however I use Scenalyzer for its extra features. Easily worth $39 AND it writes the NTSC frame rate header correctly. Most programs write the frame rate in the AVI header as 2997/100, which is 29.97 fps, but Vegas and Scenalyzer both write it correctly as 30000/1001, which is 29.97002997 fps. If you feed Vegas a 29.97 fps clip from Premiere, After Effects or most other programs, it will repeat the frame at 2 seconds 28 frames from the beginning of the clip. Most of the time it isn't noticable, but it does happen every time.

If anyone is unaware of this issue, here is a link to a previous thread:

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=355499

John

Scenalyzer is a great file browser too. I open it up it all the time for finding or choosing clips in my archive while I'm using Vegas.

how about having color correction & audio controls at the capture window? that'd be cool.

Anyone know what's happened to John?

Anyone know what's happened to John?

n19093? What do you mean?

Without a fairly significant change in the application, color correction or any other modification to the signal would require either a very fast system, or hardware assistance.
Remember that when you're transferring data from the camcorder to the hard drive, it's merely transferring from a linear data device to a non-linear data storage device. It's not really "capture" or "Digitizing" as we once knew it; today it's just a means of moving bits from one digital device to another with no change in the data.

If any of you got to see HDXchange at NAB, its capture tool has a really neat "framechasing" feature. As you're capturing, you can actually scrub through your footage in case you missed something. If you ever need to log and capture, this stops the ridiculousness of having to mark in and out points, stop the tape deck, rewind, etc. etc. It could be a big time saver if Vegas had something like this. Or even if you could just capture an entire tape and be able to log it on the fly, setting markers and such.

*For some reason, HDXchange couldn't quite do what I describe (and I forget why). But the underlying idea is there. HDXchange is in the ballpark of tens of thousands of dollars, so it's not really practical for single-user Vegas.

I bought a PDX-10 about three years ago, along with Vegas 4. I was more than a little upset to find that vidcap only got me one channel of audio! Fortunately a Sony/SF tech steered me to Scenalyzer. I have wondered ever since why this problem hasn't been solved. Thanks for the file browser idea!

I have Scenelyzer.

What's Vidcap? :)

How does Scenealyzer relate to HDV?

And while we're bitching about VidCap - why do I have to DIG down two or three layers to assign the Hard Drive where I want to save the files to?

Does everyone else here digitize directly to C: drive, or am I missing some little shortcut?

v

Victor, to the best of my knowledge, Scenalyzer is for DV only. There's no mention on the site of HDV, that I've seen.

I always capture to my "work" drive D: or E:, I never capture to the C: drive. Which app are you using to capture your video?

[edit]

In Vegas: Click on the Capture video icon (little camcorder) > Options > Preferences > Click on Disk Management Tab > Add Folder and make the assignment.

In Scenalyzer: Click on File > Options > Folder Settings > Tape-Index Folder and make assignment.

OR

Click on Capture > Change Capture Folder and make assignment.

What I like about Scenalyzer (that's not already mentioned): Captures without putting a proprietary "wrapper" in the video, making it compatible across many NLEs.

What I wish Vidcap had: Ability to capture, ahem, straight to MPEG-2 like my cheap little Ulead DVD program (for archival purposes).

"In Vegas: Click on the Capture video icon (little camcorder) > Options > Preferences > Click on Disk Management Tab > Add Folder and make the assignment."

Jay - that's what I call Digging Down.
Since you basically should NEVER capture to your C: drive, why not put a little button right at the top level?

v