Video Capture

[bill in pa]

I have Video Studio Pro 6, My problem started when I tried to capture a video from my Canon ZR950. It would not capture any video, although it did recognize the camera, it sent me a dialog box saying “Cannot switch capture mode. Please check, if your video capture driver functions correctly 15023:4:2

I know you folks have seen this before but in my case there is a new twist to it. I already know that there is also a SP1 for Pro 6. I can not load it. Trying and failing now the dialog box tells me: “The install version of the application could not be determined. The setup will now terminate. The system has not been modified”. I have never seen any of this before and any help is welcomed.
The computer is a Imac running Windows 7 Pro, I have 8 gigs of ram and a 500 gigabyte hard drive that is not even 25% full.
bill in pa

[BrianCee]

Actually Bill your problems started when you switched to Windows 7 - in their wisdom Microsoft introduced a new firewire driver - which doesn't work - but fortunately they did provide a solution.

Via your Control panel/device manager you need to change the firewire driver to the "legacy" driver


The message you are receiving when trying to install SP1 is Corels very strange way of telling you that the patch is already installed - don't know why they can't say that but that what it means

[skier-hughes]

In defence of Microsoft, they changed it back in the times of XP, when SP2 came out.
They made changes so that they followed more closely the actual IEEE1394a specifications.
This meant cameras that don't follow the specs as closely wouldn't work. Sony were the biggest problem make, followed by Canon and then Panasonic.

[bill in pa]

Hello Brian
Its good to hear from you it’s been a long time. I know you have helped many people and also helped me back in my old VS10 Plus days. Ah! Life was simpler then, running Windows XP.

Brian I have no fire-wire connections on this machine at all. The unit that is feeding the computer or its files is from Hauppauge and it is called WinTV-PVR USB2. My camcorder is plugged into it by the old fashioned 3-wire system. Yellow for Video, White for left audio, Red for right audio. Then the PVR is plugged into the computer by USB.

Is there anything else you can re commend or know of a free program that will run Windows 7Pro 64-bit?

bill in pa

[BrianCee]

I have never been successful in 'capturing' a video into VideoStudio via a USB connection - and I know a lot of other people have had problems as well.

Did the Hauppage unit come with any software - nearly all of them do - if so use that to capture the video and then import it into VideoStudio for editing.

I have a programme which came with my USB device and it works great so it is possible to do what you are trying to do - but not with VideoStudio.

A Google search may find you a free programme to capture from USB but I do not have any particular recommendations as I have the one I paid for.

[Ken Berry]

The basic problem is that your camcorder is a miniDV one i.e. one that records on mini DV tape. And the ONLY way of capturing good quality video from such a camcorder -- unless you want simply poor quality, streaming-type video captured via USB -- is to capture via Firewire.

Using Yellow/Red/White RGB cables will give equally poor (or indeed, worse) results -- they were originally designed essentially for analogue video, not digital. You are trying to capture from a camcorder which, for standard def video, is capable of producing the highest quality video, but using cables which are never going to give you even vaguely equivalent quality. Your Win-TV card, if capturing direct from the inbuilt TV tuner, or else having a camcorder which sends *high quality* mpeg-2 via USB, can indeed capture good and DVD-quality video. But a miniDV camcorder is another beast entirely. DV format is a compressed but essentially lossless version of AVI format. And there are other capture devices which can convert the incoming DV on the fly to DDV-quality mpeg-2. But they too depend on your computer having a Firewire port. Believe me, I have had several of them, and at best the USB connection they offer is either good for transferring the still photos they can take, or poor web-cam quality streaming video.

So I am afraid that if your computer does not have Firewire, or you have someone else, or another computer, with a Firewire connection, you are never going to be able to capture your video in its highest, or even near-highest quality. We can recommend a number of capture programs that will capture DV/AVI format, but they too all depend on having a proper Firewire connection...

The only other thing I can suggest is either to explore the possibility of adding a Firewire card to your motherboard -- simple and cheap if you can still find such a card on the general market. Or else, explore the possibility of a Firewire Express-type card if that is all your motherboard will support.

[lata]

Hi Bill

As recommended you should install a firewire card, they are relatively cheap and easy to install.
However your camera should have / may have a USB terminal, generally this is used to transfer images but may work for the video, I know I was able to do that with a Panasonic GS400 although I used Firewire.

The cameras USB terminal is not the A/V terminal connected to composite but a mini USB to computer USB. Viewing the manual the terminal is between the DV and AV terminals.
http://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/2/030000076 ... nim-en.pdf

Again you need Firewire to get the full quality of your video recordings.