Capture stops at 8 seconds for transcoding

RWL · Post by **RWL** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 6:13 am

I just got a Sony GV-D200 Video Walkman to deal with some old Video8 tapes that wouldn't play well on my camcorder any more.

The Sony player has a firewire output and is sending a digital video stream from this analog tape.* I have VS11.5 set to capture DV and made sure the project settings and video settings matched. I press capture, and at about 8 seconds it stops and I see a brief screen with a progress bar saying "Data Transcoding Please Wait" If I press capture again, the video plays from that point; it goes another 8 seconds and the same thing happens. I have tried capturing as MPEG and DVD with the same results.

Win XP Home, Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz, 1.5G RAM, 3 HD's with the one receiving the video capture at 300 Gb and mostly empty.

Capturing in DV with Windows Movie Maker, WinDV, and NeroVision record without stopping. No problems with the hardware. This is a VS issue.

OK, what setting did this newbie miss this time?

*Hallelujah! No more AV synch problems capturing an analog stream via a capture card and my sound card. I had already solved that problem with the freeware program VDub_Sync, but it's convenient being able to use the smaller mpeg1 avi capture file from my new 8mm player.

RWL

Post by **Ken Berry** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 6:37 am

It sounds as though you have the same problem I have with my Sony Digital 8 camcorder DCR-TRV480E, which I bought with the specific intention of converting my old analogue 8mm tape collection to digital. The camera connects via Firewire to my computer, just like your Walkman. Capture works just fine in VS10 and preceding versions.

However, Corel, for whatever reason, changed the capture plug-in in VS11, and a whole range of people trying to capture analogue video via firewire -- whether using a mini DV digital camcorder as pass-through, a Digital 8 camcorder (or Walkman) or a dedicated capture device with an inbuilt chip to convert analogue to DV and transmit via firewire -- found they could not do it with VS11/11+. The symptoms were exactly as you describe.

Corel worked for several months on a patch for this and other problems, and released it on 6 November. While it seemed to fix the problem for those using mini DV cameras as pass-through devices, it did not fix people in our situation. (We don't seem to have heard back from people using dedicated DV/firewire capture devices.)

You say you are using VS11.5. How did you get this version? I mean, did you start with VS11 and add the Power Pack which makes it 11.5, or did you buy it outright as VS11.5? If the latter, then I would think it already had the 6 November update patch included. But if you started out with VS11 and added the Power Pack but not the update patch, I guess there is still the chance that people in your situation might be covered by the fix (though I suspect not) if you apply the patch as well.

If not, and you don't have a previous version of VS, then I suggest you download a small freeware program called WinDV from windv.mourek.cz Quite a few of us here use it for DV capture anyway rather than even the earlier versions of VS which worked. Then you simply open the captured DV files in VS for editing.

As for your footnote, you said:

convenient being able to use the smaller mpeg1 avi capture file from my new 8mm player

I am afraid I don't understand. What is an 'mpeg1 avi'? While avi is just a container format which can wrap up a variety of other formats, I haven't heard of this in relation to mpeg-1 (or 2 for that matter). Mpeg-1 is a rather low quality format which was a predecessor to mpeg-2 and used mainly in the lower quality VCDs that preceded DVDs. These days I thought it had only limited usage in relation to the internet.

If you are indeed capturing in a format other than DV from your Walkman, then it should at the very least be DVD-compatible mpeg-2.

Post by **Ron P.** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 7:40 pm

They really didn't fix anything close to this A-D capture. From Ulead's Update patch webpage under the Fixed items:

Sometimes a ¡§Capture failed¡¨ message will appear 10 sec after video capture starts.

From Ulead VS11+ System Requirements:

Input/Output Device Support

* 1394 FireWire cards for use with DV/D8/HDV camcorders
* Support for OHCI Compliant IEEE-1394
* Analog capture cards for analog camcorders (VFW & WDM support for XP and Broadcast Driver Architecture support for Vista)
* Analog and Digital TV capture device (Broadcast Driver Architecture support)
* USB capture devices, PC cameras, and DVD/hard drive/AVCHD camcorders
* Windows® compatible HD DVD, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-RAM or CD-R/RW drive
* Apple iPod with video , Sony PSP , Pocket PC, Smartphone, Nokia Mobile phone, Microsoft Zune

I've just managed to try once again to capture an analog 8mm tape from within my Digital8 camcorder, on my WinXP PC, after applying the patches, and it still stops at 8 secs. The only change was no more prompt telling you the capture failed, and the file will be deleted. Now you have to manually delete the 8 sec clip.

Amazing isn't it..

RWL · Post by **RWL** » Thu Nov 29, 2007 3:22 am

Ken Berry wrote:It sounds as though you have the same problem I have with my Sony Digital 8 camcorder DCR-TRV480E, which I bought with the specific intention of converting my old analogue

Capture works just fine in VS10 and preceding versions.

However, Corel, for whatever reason, changed the capture plug-in in VS11, and a whole range of people trying to capture analogue video via firewire -- found they could not do it with VS11/11+. The symptoms were exactly as you describe.

Awww. Nuts.

Ken Berry wrote:You say you are using VS11.5. How did you get this version? I mean, did you start with VS11 and add the Power Pack which makes it 11.5, or did you buy it outright as VS11.5?

I bought V11 Plus and added the two update packages released in early November (Nov 6th?) They obviously have not fixed the problem.

Ken Berry wrote:I am afraid I don't understand. What is an 'mpeg1 avi'?

Poor terminology on my part. I had tried WinDV and mpeg 1 and 2 were the choices. I thought that's what I was recording to with Mindows movie maker and NeroVision as well, but I could be wrong.

Ken Berry wrote:If you are indeed capturing in a format other than DV from your Walkman, then it should at the very least be DVD-compatible mpeg-2.

Well. I *think* it's an mpeg file, but I could be wrong. The full 2 hours was captured with Windows Movie maker as an .avi file and it's 26 Gb long. The uncompressed .avi files I was capturing via my Radeon 9000 card and VirtualDub_Sync were about 153 Gb long and the ones compressed with Huffyuv were about 50 Gb long IIRC.

RWL

Post by **Ken Berry** » Thu Nov 29, 2007 3:35 am

Ah! You were wrong, I am afraid. WinDV, as its name suggests, only captures in DV format. But DV comes in two types -- Type 1 and Type 2. And that is where you probably got confused with mpeg-1 and mpeg-2. DV Type 1 captures everything in a single stream. Type 2 (preferred by certain programs and professionals) captures video and audio in separate streams within a single file. VS seems to prefer Type 1, though I use Type 2 with it all the time with no problems. The size you give for the files also confirms it is DV you have been capturing. That runs to about 13 GB per hour. And Windows Movie Maker can only capture in either DV or Windows Media Format (.wmv).

But don't get me wrong -- DV is an excellent format to capture in, probably the best for standard definition video. It's just, as I say, VS11 cannot capture it from your described set-up.

eebert · Post by **eebert** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 5:48 am

I have a Sony Digital 8 video camera. I tried to capture video to VS11 using the firewire output - it simply stops capturing after 8.25 seconds. If I click capture again it will go 8.25 more seconds and stop again. It seems like it's the same problem mentioned in this thread; I have not found any where a mention of an available fix. Has this problem been fixed?

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 8:15 am

The answer is implicit in my first post above. You need to download and install the first VS11 update patch, dated 6 November 2007. It's available on the ulead.com website under the Download button.

Please note that this patch only corrects one aspect of the problem with the digital 8 series. It will allow you to use the digital 8 camera itself as a passthrough device i.e. connecting an analogue camera or VCR to it and sending an analogue signal to your computer that way. Note further, though, that not all digital 8s can be used as a passthrough device -- you will need to check the camera manual for that.

But unfortunately, the patch does not allow you to play an analogue 8mm or Hi8 tape back in the digital 8 camera itself for transmission via firewire to your computer. You still have to use another capture program for that -- either an earlier version of Video Studio, or a freeware program like WinDV or even Windows Movie Maker...

eebert · Post by **eebert** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:12 am

ah - my problem is the pre-digital tapes; my older tapes are Hi8. grr.

I tried WinDV; it captured fine, although it chopped the 2 hours video into 10 2.745 GB files. sigh. there's always something. At least I have it on the harddrive.

Thanks.

etech6355 · Post by **etech6355** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:36 am

I have VS11.5 set to capture DV and made sure the project settings and video settings matched. I press capture, and at about 8 seconds it stops and I see a brief screen with a progress bar saying "Data Transcoding Please Wait"

Maybe I stand corrected but if your seeing "Data Transcoding Please Wait" your capturing in the Mpeg2 format, not the dv format.
Even though the device box may say DV cam look at the Format box, if it says MPEG change it to "DV".

It sounds like your capturing in the "On The Fly" mode, which is DV -> Mpeg2 realtime transfer. Your specs say a P4-2.4ghz, that's a little slow I think for realtime conversion.

I thought the above incompatibility was after a short capture you get the "Unable to make preview" or similar wording and that capture has failed, then "Do you want to delete the file?", correct.
Not, transcoding.
If the capture format box says "MPEG" change that to "DV", then "Options" and change to DV-Type1

Post by **Ken Berry** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:24 am

As for your capture with WinDV, rest assured that you can *only* capture in DV format.

However, as for its chopping your video into segments, you can change that in WinDV. You will see a little window in centre right of the WinDV screen which says something like 'Capture duration' (sorry, using a computer which doesn't have that program installed). By default, from memory, that is set to capture about 20 minutes of video calculated on a frame basis.

So if you want to capture your whole 2 hours in one take, you have to do some mathematical calculations: 2 hours = 120 minutes = (120 x 60) seconds = (xxxxxxxx) seconds x 29.97 [NTSC or 25 PAL] frames. Then add a few hundred for good measure.