Help With VS11+ Video Capture Problem

[maximus01can]

Howdy,

Been running VS11+ for a while now on this same box, but went to capture some vid tonight and it was bitching at me about "Unable to switch to Capture Mode" "Check if your video capture driver is working properly" Checked via control panel in the system/hardware/Device manager and didn't see anything out of the ordinary 1394 seemed good and no question marks anywhere so not sure..... Never seen that one before, but any help would be appreciated. Screen Cap below.

Cheers,
Max

[Ken Berry]

A couple of thoughts. If it has been working before and suddenly stopped working with that message, that tends to suggest to me that something on your computer has changed. You haven't told us what operating system you are using, or for that matter anything about your computer... But one thing you might think about is updating DirectX. There is a sticky at the top of this forum with the link to the latest version. It applies to Win 7 (DirectX 11), Vista (10) and XP (9) and is not part of the ordinary Windows Updates. In fact, sometimes the latter updates screw something up in other programs like Video Studio.

I note also that you are fairly obviously capturing HDV. I too have a HDV camcorder, and though I don't any problem using VS to capture from it, I tend to prefer a small freeware program called HDVSplit since, as the name suggests, it splits by scene during capture, which I like -- and also lets you choose your own name for the files rather than use VS's somewhat arcane naming system. I am sorry I don't have a link for it but a simply Google search will find it. Then you just open the captured files in VS for editing.

If HDVSplit also returns an error message, then I would be thinking there might be something else going on. It could be something simple like the Firewire cable no longer working properly. Or if you are using Windows 7 these days (though I don't think VS 11+ works with it), then you might have to install a legacy Firewire driver. The worst possibility would be something wrong with your camera's firewire port.

[maximus01can]

Thanks for the help Ken, I'm running XP Pro so it should be pretty stable. I will give your suggestions a go and let you know what happened. It may be something as simple as the cable, but the HDV Split capture angle may be a real good alternative as VS11 did seem a little clunky from time to time during the capture sequence.

Thanks Again,

Cheers,
Max

[maximus01can]

Just an update, tried HDVSplit and it captured fine, so that kinda rules out the cable, camcorder and firewire card. Seems nice and easy to use and not quite as clunky as capture app in VS11+. Will probably just continue to use that as my capture app. since I'm not sure what I'd have to do to get the capture working again in VS11, probably reinstall or something.

Cheers,
Max