Capturing from an HV20 with VS 11.5

jszei · Post by **jszei** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 2:44 am

Describe your problem: Every time I try to capture video from my camera VS freezes.

Properties of your source files (format, file size, where did you get it?): The source is direct from the camera, I shot the video.

What devices are involved and their mode of connection?: Camera (Canon HV20)-> firewire-> PC

Project Properties (important): mpeg-2 (quality 100), Two-pass encode, variable data rate of 25,000 kbps; Audio is Stereo, 48000Hz, 384kbps; Frame rate is 29.97fps, lower field first, 1440x1080, 16:9 aspect.

Output format (file, DVD, VCD, SVCD): file

PAL or NTSC: NTSC

Error Codes (if any): none

My Ulead VS 11Plus version is 11.5.0157.2 Plus
Ulead Dolby Digital PowerPack 1.0

My PC's specs are in my profile. I am running Vista x64.

When I look on the Information section under Capture I see that the Video format of the video is 1440x1090,MPEG,Widescreen,Variable Bit Rate,25000 kbps; the Audio is MPEG Audio - Layer 2, 48000Hz, 384Kbps, Stereo.
What I was trying to do was match the Information coming from the camera. When I press the Capture Video button capturing begins and runs for a few gigs then stops. The amount of time it captures is random. VS always freezes though.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
John

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 4:09 am

Welcome to the forums, John!

As it happens, I have a HV20 myself, a Quad computer (see my System button for details) running Vista Ultimate 32 bit, and I have no problems at all with capture via Firewire in the camera's native high def HDV/mpeg-2 format with properties identical to those you describe. There are several other owners of HV10, 20 and 30 cameras here, and they too report no capture problems.

You say:

What I was trying to do was match the Information coming from the camera.

I was wondering what exactly you meant by that. Did you actually adjust something? In capturing from the HV20, when I connect it via Firewire, open VS11.5+ and select Capture, the program auto-detects the camera, identifies it as a Canon HV20, and sets the capture format as MPEG. The first frame of the video to be captured shows in the preview screen, and the camera screen shows a pause button. Yes the video details are down below the preview screen, but no more is required of you than to press the Capture Video button. The rest is automatic and the settings are fixed at the camera's native resolution.

If you are somehow making adjustments somewhere, then that is probably the source of your problem.

Otherwise, all I can think of is that there could be some physical problem like a defective cable or firewire card or, far worse, something wrong with the HV20's firewire jack...

The other thing you might want to try is to Google for, and install, a small freeware program called HDVSplit. That's what I usually use these days since, unlike VS, it will split your captured HDV by scene during the capture process. In your case, it would be a good test to see if the capture problem is specific to VS or more widely to your system. If you can capture successfully with HDVSplit, then clearly there is some conflict between VS11.5+ and something else on your system. If not, then that tends to suggest an endemic system problem or a physical problem with the firewire connection (card, cable or camera jack).

etech6355 · Post by **etech6355** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 5:04 am

Also sounds like possible data errors on the tape.
Make sure your using good tapes, not cheap ones and capturing to a NTFS drive..
My preference are now Sony tapes. Both the HDV certified and the Premium tapes (blue wrapper).

You can download HDVSplit http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.htm and tell the program NOT to split your captures.
IF HDVSplit has problems or does split the captures when your telling the program NOT to split then it's probably data errors on the tape. HDV requires using good tapes. When a capturing program see's the error it closes the stream & closes the recorded file, then when it sync's back to the stream again it starts a new file.

For some reason Fuji tapes will not work correctly in my HD cam.

VS11+ will also accept the files captured from HDVSplit, they will be in TS (transport stream) format with an extension of .M2T

Your video files should be UFF (Upper Field First) for HDV and LFF (Lower Field First) if your using the internal downconvert feature to capture standard DV (HDV->DV).

jszei · Post by **jszei** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 9:09 am

When I run HDV Split I get this error:
ERROR: HDVSPlit can't find MPEG1 audio decoder. Try to install and configure ffdshow.
Audio is turned off.

I installed and tried to configure ffdshow but the instructions were a little different than the program and it didn't work right. I ended up finding Vista Codec Package 4.7.0 which is a bunch of codecs built into a Vista bundle. Once this was installed HDVSplit no longer gave me an error.

My end goal is to create HDV master files I can store on my hard drive then edit and burn certain ones to standard dvd.

etech6355 · Post by **etech6355** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 3:41 pm

I've never inslalled ffdshow or other codec packs to use HDVSplit.
I preview the tape from the tapes LCD screen or connected to a TV.

If you install HDVSplit on another computer just use it as is and preview the video & audio on the camcorders LCD screen, at least that's what I do.

For files to be compliant with HDVSplit they must be compliant to the mpeg2 transport stream same as recorded on the tape.

In HDVSplit you can also use a file as the source and have HDVSplit split the videos, it's a very handy program.

The files captured by HDVSplit can be inserted into VS11+ or MF6+ timeline without any problems. The 3 programs all together work great..

Hope this helps,

etech

jszei · Post by **jszei** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 6:07 pm

I tried capturing with VS again and not modifying any of the project properties. I ended up getting a message that said: Capturing failed. The file created is corrupted and unusable. It will be automatically deleted.

jszei · Post by **jszei** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 6:32 am

Ken Berry wrote: I was wondering what exactly you meant by that. Did you actually adjust something?

Ken, I went into the Project Properties and modified the settings. If I look at the title bar up top it reads:
Ulead VideoStudio (Untitled, DVD NTSC 720*480 - Stereo)
Down at the bottom under the capture screen is a picture of a camcord and to the right of that says Information: Under where it says "Information:" looks to be the info from the video I took. One thing I don't understand is why what is in the title bar is different from this. I was assuming that what was in the title bar was my project properties, which is why I went into those to change them to the same as the video I took.

Thank you for the advice on HDVSplit. I had read about it in the HV20 forum. I was able to capture video with it using Scenes Split. When I tried to capture it without splitting the scenes it did not capture the entire tape. At some point it just stopped capturing.

I will try capturing some other tapes I have made to see if it is the tape. The drives are formated with NTFS.

Thanks for the help Ken and etech6355 I will keep troubleshooting.

John

etech6355 · Post by **etech6355** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:47 pm

Thank you for the advice on HDVSplit. I had read about it in the HV20 forum. I was able to capture video with it using Scenes Split. When I tried to capture it without splitting the scenes it did not capture the entire tape. At some point it just stopped capturing.

Same problem I was experiencing when I first started shooting in High Def and the problem was I wasn't using compatible tapes with my Sony High Def Camcorder.
It really sounds like even HDVSplit is getting errors from the tape.

I ended up ditching the first tapes I was using, cleaning the heads and then only use the Sony tapes (HDV or Premium).
.
Some can debate that all tapes are the same. At least on my end after cleaning the heads and using the Sony HDV or Sony Premiums I have not had any problems at all, and I have recorded many tapes since switching to the Sony tapes.

The HDV Certified tapes are expensive. I re-use the HDV Certified tapes, edit my projects and then write back to a Sony Premium tape for archiving. So I re-use the HDV ones, they are close to $10.00 a piece. At least on my end this has worked well.

If you are having trouble with tapes I suggest only staying with one brand and clean the heads before switching to one good brand.

I have a Sony cam so I use the Sony tapes.

Also, I'd like to mention that in my Sony cam I have a feature called "Quick Start". The manual states that this can cause problems and the video(s) must be corrected using computer video editing software. So in my Sony cam I always have the "Quick Start" feature disabled.

Hope this helps