Weird DV capture problem....
 

Ok mates, I've got a weird problem on my hand and I hope someone can help.

first scenario: i setup a laptop and an external drive and capture a mini DV tape... it looks fine while capturing.... but when i look at the finished video...its all crazy and fuzzy and jumbled.

second scenario: different laptop, same tape, same cap device (gl2), same cable, different external hard-drive---and the video captures just fine and looks just fine when done.

This is weird...
I have never seen this before....

I am sure someone here has...

GFY has everyone...

ANYONE SEE THIS BEFORE... ?

Is the laptop fast enough to capture? Are you getting drop outs? This can be an issue, especially if you are capturing to an external drive... that is very bus intensive.

I've had this happen, wrong capture drivers i think

What's the RPM of the harddrive which is having the problem? It needs to be at least 7200.

Have you tried capturing to the internal drive? An external drive adds extra lag.

I had a vaguely similar problem with capturing to my laptop, occasionally there would be a burst of audible static and a portion of the pic would be covered in coloured squares for a fraction of a second. I figured it was a tape dropout, but when I viewed the video via the camcorder LCD it didn't happen. Capturing to another machine was 100% clean. I never did find out what the issue was.

1, never capture to an external.
2, if capturing to an internal drive make sure it has at least 40% free space.
3, make sure heads on capturing device are clean.
4, make sure you are running absolutley no other applications while capturing.
5, make sure you have the proper codecs
6, if its not too hard, I would get a western digital raptor, 10k rpm drive.
7, I would buy a capturing device such as the sony dsr 11 instead of using your camera to capture.

Hope this helps,
Duke

samp!!!!!!!!!

I've captured hundreds and hundreds of hours of raw dv avi to many different external drives with 0 problems. Been doing it for years. FireWIre or USB2.

B&H even sells video editing laptops with external drives as kits. So saying never capture to an external drive is ludicrous.

I'm guessing the problem here is the second laptop that doesent capture correctly probably has the capture drivers for another camera installed on it other than what he is using.

Also the drive does not have to be 7200 rpms. I've captured plenty of rawdv directly to my laptops 5400 rpm drives with no problems.

I had the same problem occur occasionally until I figured out it was another application running that screwed around with the video card.
Try shutting any applications that may be running before viewing the video.

hope this helps

After reading all of the above comments...

1) You can for sure capture on external drives... no problem... I have been doing it for years.
2) The laptop is definitely fast enough to capture.
3) You don't need 7200 or sometimes even 5400, I have Successfully captured DV to internal laptop drives running 4200rpm many times before with no dropouts.

This isn't drop-out --- its hard to explain what it is...

I am going to try these two things from the suggestion above...

capture to the internal hard drive of the laptop
and
close every single program down besides the cap. software

If the problem persists...it may be something with the 1394/cap drivers...
And I will post a clip of what the video looks like.
I am sure...someone has seen it before.

Thanks again!

I also will confirm that capturing to external hd's is fine. I have multiple external drives connected through a firewire hub and never have a problem.

You might want to try to transfer the clips to another pc and see how the play in their installation of WMP or any other app. The clips may appear weird on your pc only. Could be a issue with video codecs installed or missing on your omputer. You might want to download a codec package and reboot, see if the avi clips play properly then.

I still stand behing my position about capturing to external drives. There is just too much for the video to go through to get to the drive. Maybe its just that im a stickler, but one dropped frame for me is enough to recapture the entire vid.
Duke

Well if you know so fucking much (much of which is completely and utterly wrong), why do you figure it out yourself.

If you choose to use a FireWire hard drive, make sure it meets these requirements:

* The drive is the only device on the FireWire bus.
* The drive's speed is at least 7200 RPM.
* The drive can sustain minimum data rates appropriate for your video format (3.7 MB/s for DV).
* The drive uses a modern, high-performance bridge chip such as the Oxford 911 or 922.
* The drive uses its own power supply, and is not powered from the FireWire bus.


Important: Meeting these requirements does not guarantee the effectiveness or reliability of the drive. If a FireWire hard drive causes dropped frames during playback or recording, try moving the media to an Ultra ATA or SCSI drive.


http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58636

Hey guys... just so everyone knows...its fine to capture externally...
I've done it with not 1 dropped frame... for years.


Ok, I solved the problems mates....It appears...that at some point in time my 1394card (internal) was got corrupted. In Device Manager I removed it and let Windows reinstall it upon reboot. Then I captured with no problems.

The problem was drop out... its the whole video was scrambled and crazy looking.

Thanks again for all the help!

glad you got her going - bravo