Picture break-up when capturing HDV

geraghtyg · Post by **geraghtyg** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 1:16 am

Hi
I am currently transferring 8 tapes of HDV footage from my Canon XH-A1 to my PC. Specs of PC are fine for HD and I've had no issues before. However, during the capture stage, I am having severe problems with the picture/audio breaking up and pixelating very badly. The actual playback from the tape is fine when viewing on a monitor so it's not the actual footage that's corrupted. I have tried capturing using a 3rd party program and its the same. I tried this in case Ulead was having a problem. I have also cleared the hard drive up as much as possible and have also defragmented the drive. Still no joy. I'm thinking it may be the Firewire cable. I think it's a fairly generic and relatively cheap cable, and I have it about 5 years or so. I know the cables are cheap but just want to see if others think that this is most likely the cause of the problem?
Thanks
Graham

Post by **Ron P.** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 2:08 am

Since you get the same problem using another program, my vote would go to the cable, and hopefully not the firewire port itself. Since they are not expensive, and yours is 5 years old, it certainly wouldn't hurt to buy another.

Of course if that does not cure it, then the next would be the firewire port on your PC. If it is bad, and you have a free PC card slot, just buy a firewire card, they too are not expensive.

geraghtyg · Post by **geraghtyg** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:56 am

Sounds good to me. I'll get a firewire cable today so and see if that works ok. And if worse comes to worse, I have a spare firewire card with 4 ports in my old PC that I can move over to my new PC.
I'll let you know how I get on.

tyamada · Post by **tyamada** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 6:22 pm

Have you played back any of the captured images?
I had that problem with an older computer and found out the captured video would play back fine one it was rendered to a file.

geraghtyg · Post by **geraghtyg** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 6:57 pm

Hi all. Got a new Firewire cable and all appears to be fine now. Looks like the cable had become faulty. tyamada, I normally have full frame playback when capturing HDV so assumed it was recording. I had checked the recording to be sure though. THanks