Capturing "live" video...

dannyrod · Post by **dannyrod** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:44 am

Is UVS 7 SE Basic capable of capturing live video (meaning I am bypassing the miniDV tape)? I connected my camcorder to the pc without a tape in it and then set the program to capture but the video's framerate was slow junk and the video was choppy.

P.S. The program works fine when capturing from a miniDV tape playing back on the camcorder.

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 5:10 am

UVS has no idea whether there is a tape in the camcorder or not -- it just sees the DV data stream coming from the camcorder. Capture performance will be identical with and without a tape.

The problem has to be something else, like a background process, low memory, or a difference is your capture settings (such as attempting to capture to MPEG format).

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 5:53 am

Or the length of the cable? How do you connect?

dannyrod · Post by **dannyrod** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 6:11 pm

I used a 25ft firewire cable. Is that the problem? It may be my laptop has low specs (1.6Ghz / 512mb DDR ram / 64mb Radeon Mobility) but I thought that would be ok to capture video. I captured at DV format and it worked fine the last time. The only difference was that this time I was capturing to an external 80GB usb drive instead of the hard drive.

GeorgeW · Post by **GeorgeW** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 6:17 pm

what's the throughput of the external USB Drive

Is it USB 1.1, or USB 2.0

Download a free utility called Raptest.exe (web search), and run it to see what type of throughput you are getting with that external drive...

dannyrod · Post by **dannyrod** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 6:27 pm

It's capable of 2.0 but unfortunately my laptop only has usb 1.1 ports.

GeorgeW · Post by **GeorgeW** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 6:31 pm

dannyrod wrote:It's capable of 2.0 but unfortunately my laptop only has usb 1.1 ports.

I believe that's the problem...

dannyrod · Post by **dannyrod** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 6:38 pm

I guess it must be since there isn't a problem with UVS and that was the only difference. Thanks for the help. I will probably test it out again to make sure. I may need to upgrade the hard drive on my laptop...

GeorgeW · Post by **GeorgeW** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 6:41 pm

you could try a pcmcia USB 2.0 card to get better throughput -- of course get one that will work with your operating system...

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 7:27 pm

dannyrod wrote:I used a 25ft firewire cable. Is that the problem?

Q: What is the maximum length a FireWire (A) cable can be?
A: The maximum cable length for connecting device to device with a 400Mbps cable is 4.5-meters (14.85ft). The Firewire specification calls for 10 meter (32ft) cables that may be used in conjunction with a repeater when it is necessary to extend FireWire cables over long distances. FirewireDirect does not offer these cables at this time because tests have shown them to be unreliable in some situations. We suggest using 4.5 meter cables and hubs when needing to extend to greater distances and don't recommend 10 meter cables (if you can find them) to our customers.