Black & white dots/lines

[Pete Waterman]

Hi all
Has anyone had this? ive just got hold of a Canon MVX450 done a bit of tapeing to test it, on the TV all is ok, record it to pc & i have a row of black & white dots (short lines) at the top of the screen going about half way from left to right, i then connected my old jvc vhsc recorded a bit (same settings) & no dots(lines) is it not a good idea to capture mini dv in this way(through a aver dvd capture card)as i said on the tv there are no dots (lines) visable,
Or am i better off to wait till i get a ieee card?
Regards
Pete

[Ken Berry]

You really have no real alternative, if you want to capture from that particular camera in its native DV format, but to install the awaited IEEE1394 Firewire card. DV is possibly the best, and certainly one of the easiest and least problem-prone of the video formats -- as your current difficulties in using alternative methods and probably formats, is just going to show!
The Avermedia card will at best only give you mpeg-2, and while this may be of decent quality, you are still better off with DV.

That being said, I would not be overly concerned by the lines/dots along the top edge of screen. These sorts of artifacts are particularly common when using analogue-to-digital cards or devices, as you are doing. But remember that, if you are using a CRT TV, you will lose in effect between 5 - 10% of the video image which is cut-off from display by the nature of the screen. More of a problem, though, if you have a plasma or LCD TV.

The bottom line, though, is: get the firewire card as soon as possible. They are dirt cheap these days and easy as pie to insert into a spare slot in your motherboard. Most even come with a cable. Make sure the cable you get has the right plugs -- a 6 pin large one for the computer end, and a smaller 4 pin one for the camera.

[Pete Waterman]

Thanks for that Ken
Yes i have a crt TV thats why it does not show up then! cos the tops gone missin, firewire card has been orderd (belkin)as soon as it arrives i will give it a go & hopfully solve the problem? hope it does not take me as long to get use to using firewire as it did to capture analogue, what settings will i need to use or will UVS11.5plus sort that out as its being captured through firewire??

[Ken Berry]

Once the firewire card is in and the cable connected, when you turn the camera on, VS will automatically recognise it as a DV camera (and will probably also tell you it is a Canon!) It will automatically set the capture format to DV/AVI, and after that, essentially you just capture, then edit.

The only thing in the past is that earlier versions of VS seemed to prefer DV Type 1 on certain computers. So you could click on the Options icon on the Capture page and ensure it is set to Type 1. That being said, I regularly use Type 2 with no problem.

[Pete Waterman]

IEEE card installed all is fine & dandy, if i had known how much easier it would be to capture from a mini dv i would have got one years ago, talk about plug & play
thanks for the advice once again Ken,