SONY HC3 VS10+ and VISTA ... NO CAPTURE

dblml320 · Post by **dblml320** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:40 am

I installed Windows Vista Home Premium on my laptop. Tonight I tried to capture HD video using VS10+ on this laptop. When I plug the camera in, Vista asks me for a driver disk for the camera. Of course Sony did not supply a driver disk ... seems like MS left out all the OHCI drivers from Vista.... Beware if you are considering switching ...

But my question is this. Am I completely out of luck, or could there be some beta drivers or XP drivers that happen to work on Vista .. allowing VS10+ to see my camcorder as an import device.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 8:59 am

Please view:
Problems with Vista

dblml320 · Post by **dblml320** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 11:35 am

sjj1805 wrote:Please view:
Problems with Vista

The plot gets thicker ....

I was attempting to use my Sony HC3 with my laptop which has Windows Vista Home Premium installed. On this laptop capture will not work with VS 10, Windows Movie Maker, it does not work with any program.

I looked in the Control Panel and my Sony HC3 is listed as an unknown device.

So last night I plugged the camera into my desktop machine that is running Vista Ultimate. The camera installed on the first try, and about 30 seconds later I was capturing HD video in VS10.

So I looked into this further. While the camera is connected, there are two drivers loaded for it as shown in the device manager:

C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\avcstm.sys
C:\Windows\system32\drivers\mstape.sys

Both of these drivers have a version of 6.0.6000.XXXXX version number, which identifies them as Vista versions of drivers.

So I went back to my laptop and searched for these drivers. The mstape.sys driver is in the drivers directory. the avcstm.sys IS NOT. This driver is MISSING IN ACTION.

So I believe someone in Microsoft decided that people who buy Vista Home or Home Premium do not want to capture video in that operating system .... which is flat out crazy ...

So my question now turns into this: Are the available drivers in each version of Vista documented anywhere?

I could copy these drivers to my Home Premium system from my Ultimate system, but I am not sure which files I would need beyond .sys files. I am sure I will need some INF files along the way. Anybody tried this?

htchien · Post by **htchien** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 11:41 am

dblml320 wrote:So I believe someone in Microsoft decided that people who buy Vista Home or Home Premium do not want to capture video in that operating system .... which is flat out crazy ...

So my question now turns into this: Are the available drivers in each version of Vista documented anywhere?

I think you might need to search that on Microsoft website....

I could copy these drivers to my Home Premium system from my Ultimate system, but I am not sure which files I would need beyond .sys files. I am sure I will need some INF files along the way. Anybody tried this?

Maybe you can try DriverMax.

http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/

It could backup the drivers with proper settings and the restore them in another Windows. DriverMax supports WinXP and Vista all versions and, it's free to use.

So maybe you can use DriverMax to backup the driver in Vista Ultimate then restore the driver in Vista Home.

Hope this helps.

H.T.

dblml320 · Post by **dblml320** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 7:10 pm

htchien wrote: So maybe you can use DriverMax to backup the driver in Vista Ultimate then restore the driver in Vista Home.
Hope this helps.
H.T.

This was a great suggestion, and I tried it, but alas it did not work. The tool definitely transferred the drivers, but somehow the camera is recognized differently on the laptop with Vista Home Premium, than on the desktop with Vista Ulimate.

It may have something to do with the fact that the desktop has a TI 1394 controller, and the Dell laptop has a Ricoh 1394 controller. Frankly I think driver support for TI 1394 devices is more mature and works better.

On the laptop it identifies the camera as a Sony HD-VCR, and not a camera. I am sure this has something to do with it, but not sure how to solve it.

etech6355 · Post by **etech6355** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 9:05 pm

I just read the features of Vista Home Premium. It's suppose to support the HDV cams.
They say you can capture from HDV sources using the MovieMaker_HD program, guess it's supplied with Vista Premium.
Maybe you have to install that program although one wouldn't think so.

dblml320 · Post by **dblml320** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 9:32 pm

etech6355 wrote:I just read the features of Vista Home Premium. It's suppose to support the HDV cams.
They say you can capture from HDV sources using the MovieMaker_HD program, guess it's supplied with Vista Premium.
Maybe you have to install that program although one wouldn't think so.

Could you let me know a URL of where you read that Home Premium supports HDV camcorders? Perhaps it does on certain hardware ... but on my Dell Laptop the drivers are missing, they are just physically not on the hard drive.

etech6355 · Post by **etech6355** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 11:41 pm

Hi,
I hate to leave you dead in the water because I don't have Vista yet and was asking the question.
I used the comparision charts on the MS website and also at both the Premium & Ultimate versions.

But, this program is supposed to have Vista Support. If you don't have the dirvers installed (maybe your firewire ports hardware isn't supported under Vista).

I would certainly recommend this program to capture in transport stream. It says Vista support so not sure with your installs, this program probably needs the driver, don't know.
It's known as HDVSplit, this program can capture the complete tape into one file or split by date/scene change and when it does split by date it adds the timecode of the recorded screne appended to the enumerated filenames, very handy utility program for capturing HDV from cams.

http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.htm

The program also states to install ffdshow. That's only to preview the video & audio, not necessary to simply transfer to your harddisk.
In Videostudio you load these transport stream files the usual method via the insert video method, select the m2t file and let VS process/read the file. After VS has read the file you will be prompted to convert the file to an editable format, answer Yes and VS will convert the file from TS(transport stream) to PS(Program Stream).

CPU usage on a HP-Laptop 2.8Ghz 533FSB Non-HT capturing to external USB Harddisk is nil when not using preview mode. I still use the internet when capturing.
LOL

dblml320 · Post by **dblml320** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:32 am

Well I would like to report that I now have somewhat of a solution to this problem. The solution involved the following steps:

1. Installed latest Dell CPU Chipset Driver Package
2. Plug in camera 3 times, manually search for drivers across my C:\ drive and all subdirectories to install:
1394 driver
68835 Driver
AVC Capture Driver

For each driver install I had to specify manual search and use the entire C: drive.

I can now capture in Windows Movie Maker. I still have some work to see why VS10 will not capture in HD, as it does on my desktop PC using Vista Ultimate.

I am now off to try the standalone capture programs specified in previous appends in this thread. Thanks to all in this thread for their help and suggestions!

dblml320 · Post by **dblml320** » Sun Apr 29, 2007 11:07 pm

I reinstalled Windows Vista on my laptop, and while this took some time, it fixed all of my VideoStudio capture problems. I don't really know what botched the Vista install on my Dell laptop (Dell Inspiron E1505) there were no errors during the first install, but from the initial boot, there were problems with new devices, including USB, firewire, and even Media Player codecs.

The reinstall of Vista fixed all this. The first time I plugged in my Sony HC3 camcorder Vista recognized it, and the next step I tried VS10, and VS10 recognized the camera, and was able to capture HD to MPEG no problem.

I am a Happy Camper!