Capture Question

[Kentraco]

Although I've used VS8 for my own projects, this is the first time I've been asked to capture analog video from someone else's Hi-8 tape.

Using a Sony digital Handycam that plays the old tapes and a Firewire connection, I'm 20 hours into the capture process and have created a file that's already 248GB and isn't yet finished.

What's wrong with this picture? I've captured from my own analog tapes in the past, and it sure didn't take nearly that long.

[Black Lab]

You've been capturing for 20 hours, continuously?!

[Kentraco]

Yes.

The first time, the process stopped because my hard drive couldn't handle the file size.

Now, I'm going to an external 500GB drive and the file is growing continuously. So I know the capture is still underway.

We're on Scene 8, with 204,000MB to go.

[Black Lab]

And this is one tape, or 20 tapes?

[Kentraco]

It's one tape.

I put it in the camera and started the capture process, expecting things to go rather quickly.

Instead, it's becoming a second career.

[Black Lab]

WOW!! Obviously something is wrong. At this point you might as well wait until it's finished so you can see the clip properties. When it is finished report back with the clip properties and your capture properties and we'll go from there.

[skier-hughes]

You can't be twenty hours into capturing one tape, as the tape has to play at real time speed, and video 8 tapes come as 90 minute, so even at long play you may have 120mins.

[Kentraco]

You can't be twenty hours into capturing one tape, as the tape has to play at real time speed, and video 8 tapes come as 90 minute, so even at long play you may have 120mins.

One would think so.

[Ken Berry]

Did you select DV/AVI as the capture format (as you need to) or simply .AVI? If the latter, that could be the cause of your huge file, though even so, it seems overly large even for a 2 hour analogue 8 mm tape. Uncompressed .avi produces files which are about 65 GB per hour of video; whereas DV/AVI is about 13 GB per hour.

[sjj1805]

If its still playing 20 hours later I would suspect that the tape has broken and your recording 'nothing' - is there anything on the preview screen?

[etech6355]

If you captured for 20hrs then approx ( 20hr X 12gig ) = 240 gigs (close enough).

Your in DV passthrough mode. Rewind the tape, if you can!, and perform a timed recording the length of the tape.

[skier-hughes]

You can't be twenty hours into capturing one tape, as the tape has to play at real time speed, and video 8 tapes come as 90 minute, so even at long play you may have 120mins.

One would think so.

No, one knows so, there is not a programme in the world available to consumers which has the ability to capture tape at any speed other than real time.

What is happening now? Still recording?

[Kentraco]

POSTSCRIPT:

The "capture" process aborted this morning due to insufficient disk space. With an accumulated file size of 456GB, I'm not surprised.

The analog tape had not advanced in the camera.

When I have time, I'll get back to this project and implement the possible solutions so kindly posted above.

Thanks to you all.

[Kentraco]

Did you select DV/AVI as the capture format (as you need to) or simply .AVI?

No matter what I select, it defaults back to "DV".

[skier-hughes]

Have you tried manually starting the tape on the cam?