DV cam not visible on Ulead

[ch0ke]

Hi,

I have been using Ulead DVD Workshop 2.0 for the last 5 months to capture footage from a JVC Mini DV cam corder via Firewire.

I used to capture it under the "DVD" format but have recently started capturing footage using the "WMV" format at 256 Kbps due to my needs changing.
This all worked fine until recently. Now when I open up Ulead it will pick up that mu camera is there, and I can control the camera using Ulead. I just can't see the video of the camera on Ulead in the capture window. Also if I start capturing it ends after 4 seconds stating that the file is corrupt and it cannot continue.

I have Combined Community Codec Pack which I have uninstalled and reinstalled to see no change in Ulead.
I have Xvid codec installed, and VLC Player installed.
None of these players, codecs caused any conflicts before.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks.

[DVDDoug]

I used to capture it under the "DVD" format but have recently started capturing footage using the "WMV" format at 256 Kbps due to my needs changing.

I didn't realize DVD Workshop could do that... But, since Workshop is designed for making "regular" video-DVDs, which are MPEG-2, you should avoid WMV. But, with such a low bitrate, you probably aren't making "regular" DVDs.

With a MiniDV camera, you should capture to AVI/DV (13GB per hour). This simply re-packages the DV data into an AVI file. Then, Workshop can convert it to MPEG-2 later.

If you're not making regular video-DVDs, Workshop is probably the wrong tool.

[ch0ke]

At first I used DVD Workshop to capture footage under "DVD" format from a Mini DV Camera. Then I would use DVD Workshop to create a menu and burn the file onto a DVD.
I go through about 200 tapes in variying length during a 2 month period (Around 800 per year).

Now there is no need for me to burn the DVD's as I am streaming the captured footage instead (hence the low bitrate).
So I am now capturing using DVD Workshop, under the "WMV" format, and not burning them after.

Adobe Premiere does not have on the fly encoding as you capture (to my clients desired format). They want WMV's, and although Premiere has a encoding utility, it takes more time (espicially on this low spec system).

If you believe this is the wrong tool, do you know of any other software which captures straight from a DV Camera and encodes on the fly to WMV?
I have never tried Vegas so I don't know what that is capable of.

Btw I fixed my original problem, there was a problem with the DV Camera itself, it must have got damaged in its case, which sucks

[DVDDoug]

Sorry, I've never tried encoding on-the-fly to any format, except when I capture to MPEG-2 with my analog capture card, which has a built-in hardware MPEG-2 encoder. I generally don't like the idea of encoding on-the-fly (with software) because it's very demanding (on a PC), and there is lots of potential for things "going wrong". And, the highly-compressed formats can be "difficult" to edit, so encoding should be the last step.

However, with your volume of work, I understand why it's important to save the "extra step". I'm not trying to tell you what to do... Everybody has to figure-out whatever works best for themselves.

You might try Video Studio. (You can download the trial version and give it a try.) It can encode to MPEG-2 on-the-fly, and it might be able to encode to WMV on-the-fly. Video Studio is more of a general-purpose video editor, and unlike Workshop, it can save your video in a wide variety of formats (including WMV). I don't know much about Vegas, but I think there is a trial version.


P.S.
Since you are making 800 tapes a year, you should probably check some other websites and forums... You should be the expert! There isn't that much activity on this forum... Workshop is almost a "dead" product.

For starters, a couple of video websites you can check-out are:

VideoHelp.com
DigitalFAQ.com ...Hmmm... The DigitalFAQ site is down right now.... I don't know if that's a temporary problem, or if it's permanently gone.

[ch0ke]

Yeah I would prefer to capture the footage as DV/AVI, then do a 2 pass encode using Adobe Encoder afterwards. But I don't have time for that as these machines are quite low spec. So I'm stuck doing on the fly encoding

Thanks for the recomendation on software and websites to get further advice I will be checking them out.

Also I did not know that DVD Workshop was a dead/dying product, it was the software they were already using when I started working here. I guess it was perfect for what they did before, but now requirements have changed and I need to find something else I guess.

I have also downloaded the trial for Vegas, but it requires some Windows components to be installed so I have to check with the administrators before I can install anything ><

Anyway thanks a lot for your replies!