WinDV capturing but not saving to disk?

[dbarndt]

Hi,

After many successful captures via a Canopus ADVC-50 using WinDV on Win2K, suddenly I'm having a problem, and I'm hoping someone has seen this before.

After starting WinDV and clicking "Capture", the video being captured shows up fine in WinDV's preview display. A zero-byte AVI file with the correct name appears in the destination directory during capture. But when the capture is done: the file size never updates from 0 bytes and is deleted from the directory.

Does this mean WinDV can't write to the disk at all? Could this be a Firewire driver problem? I haven't done anything to my system that I'm aware of, but Norton AV is around in the background. (Thing is, it's been around all along, when the captures were working fine.)

I tried reinstalling DirectX 9.0c for grins, but that didn't help. Device Manager says the Firewire driver (VIA, OHCI compliant) is working fine, but I'm wondering. If it's a Firewire problem, I've never tried to reinstall a Firewire driver, and while I do software for a living, it seems perilous enough that I'd appreciate any help/words of wisdom.

Any thoughts and advice very appreciated...

Thanks,
Dave

[dbarndt]

I should add I can't capture to either of the two disks on my system, so I don't think it's a disk problem...

Thanks,
Dave

[dbarndt]

FWIW, config settings:

Automation(?) checkbox checked on main dialog page

Config... => Type 2 AVI; Discontinuity Threshold: 0; Max AVI Size: 1000000; Every Nth Frame: 1

[dbarndt]

Sorry, one more data point: DVIO doesn't seem to fare any better. When I run a capture, the title never changes from "DVIO Cap: 0 Drop: 0 Size 0.00 GB". When I stop the capture there is a 128 KB file created, but any player I point at it complains it's invalid. GSpot says it's a valid dvsd DV/AVI file file but can't render it.

Any suggestions? I'm about to try yanking the FW card, deinstalling the drivers, and reinstalling the card.

Dave

[dbarndt]

As I keep replying to my own topic...

If I can see video in the preview window of WinDV, it means the video data IS coming through the ADVC-50 and the FireWire card just fine... otherwise WinDV couldn't see it, right? So that must mean FireWire is fine, and so the problem has something to do with writing to the disk(s). But no other (unrelated) application I've tried seems to have a problem writing to the disk(s).

I must be doing something very stupid, or WinDV is doing something very unusual?

Dave

[Cole]

I don't know if this will help, but I had a similar issue once - then I realised I had renamed my drive letters, so the drive letter that WinDV was pointing to didn't exist and it had nowhere to save the file to. However, you have already mentioned that you have tried both of your drives, so this can't be the issue.

The only other thing that I can think of is the ADVC-50's black screen bug but you don't usually get to see the source when this rears its head, so it doesn't appear to be this either.

However, seeing as DVIO is behaving in the same way, in your situation I would have to assume that somewhere in the OS, a vital file/program has corrupted or conflicted with another program and go down the repair or fresh installation route. Have you installed any new programs recently or downloaded any Microsoft updates?

Hope you get this sorted out.

[dbarndt]

Hi Cole,

Thanks for the reply/encouragement. I haven't had a chance to get back to try anything else yet. Before, when I said I reinstalled DirectX, I didn't deinstall it first. I'll try that.

Windows did download updates, but didn't install anything. I assume until it does, nothing should be affected.

Weird. Maybe I'll try contacting the WinDV author...

Dave

[dbarndt]

Ready for this?

I tried various combinations of stopping/starting WinDV and my VCR. When I turned on the VCR, then started WinDV, then started a capture, then started the VCR playing, the file was saved. As long as I follow these steps, things seem to work.

Hope this helps someone else!

Dave

[edDV]

It seems like something is odd about the Direct X install or a Win2k issue. Direct Show is doing everthing for WinDV except the transfer buffer and preview display. At least that is my understanding.

[edytibi]

Hello! Same problem here, I can preview the stream in WinDV and DVIO reports a 0.1GB capture but the resulting file is 130KB.The only culprit in my case is SolveigMM AVI Trimmer + MKV 2.1; before installing it all worked just fine.After uninstalling it I experience the same problem as Dbarndt. Still looking for a solution.

[usually_quiet]

Hello! Same problem here, I can preview the stream in WinDV and DVIO reports a 0.1GB capture but the resulting file is 130KB.The only culprit in my case is SolveigMM AVI Trimmer + MKV 2.1; before installing it all worked just fine.After uninstalling it I experience the same problem as Dbarndt. Still looking for a solution.

Really, you have the exact same problem as described in the original post in this thread from 2005? It is truly amazing that you are still using Windows 2000 and a Canopus ADVC-50. The Canopus ADVC-50 was released about 13 years ago, so perhaps it simply failed from old age.

[edytibi]

Sorry for the lack of detail.I use a Sony DCR-HC45 + Win 7 x64; the camcorder is only 5 years old.Unfortunately I tested it on another PC with firewire and the problem persists, similar to that reported by the thread starter (same problem with different hardware and operating system).I can preview the stream in Movie Maker (ported from Win XP) and in WinDV, but either the saved stream is zero bytes, either no file;on rare attempts I got 2MB file for 1 minute of recordings with damaged streams inside. Solveig MM is excluded as the cause.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
PS.Would be less amazing if I still use Win XP on 2 of my laptops?

[usually_quiet]

Sorry for the lack of detail.I use a Sony DCR-HC45 + Win 7 x64; the camcorder is only 5 years old.Unfortunately I tested it on another PC with firewire and the problem persists, similar to that reported by the thread starter (same problem with different hardware and operating system).I can preview the stream in Movie Maker (ported from Win XP) and in WinDV, but either the saved stream is zero bytes, either no file;on rare attempts I got 2MB file for 1 minute of recordings with damaged streams inside. Solveig MM is excluded as the cause.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You could try installing Windows 7's Legacy FireWire drivers. (...or re-installing them if you installed them in the past.) Sometimes that helps with FireWire problems on a Windows 7 system. To give credit where credit is due, I copied the instructions below from a post at https://social.technet.microsoft.com

1- Click the Start Button, type devmgmt.msc in the “Start Search” box and press Enter.
2- Expand the "IEEE 1394 Bus Host Controllers" node in the device tree on the right hand pane
3- Right click the host controller node select "Update driver software ..."
4- Select "Browse my computer for driver software"
5- Select "let me pick from a list of device driver on my computer ..." and Check the box before “Show compatible hardware”.
6. Choose the second option---1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy), and click next to update the driver.

PS.Would be less amazing if I still use Win XP on 2 of my laptops?

No. Lots of people here are still using XP for various reasons, although I am not one of them.

VideoHelp members are encouraged to look for answers in existing threads before posting a question, but posting in old threads is not encouraged. It tends to create confusion. Next time it might be better to create a new post if you need to ask for help.

[edytibi]

Already done that thing about the legacy drivers. Without them the camcorder is not detected at all. The rig worked without a problem until today. I managed to capture the video stream using "Capture Flux 6.0" but it's only working when I disable the audio stream. With the audio stream enabled is the same problem as before - zero bytes/130KB avi file.I see that it's using Direct Show for the capture process. The audio is 32KHz PCM as usual and I didn't make any changes to my audio filters. I can reproduce the phenomenon on a x86 Win XP system, on which it also worked until today.I tried with another capture card (Texas Instruments firewire card and a crappy VIA) and different cable.No change. Maybe the camcorder is the culprit?
Offtopic - I'd love to throw away this camcorder but another camera with intraframe compression (AVC intra) is way too expensive.

[usually_quiet]

Already done that thing about the legacy drivers. Without them the camcorder is not detected at all. The rig worked without a problem until today. I managed to capture the video stream using "Capture Flux 6.0" but it's only working when I disable the audio stream. With the audio stream enabled is the same problem as before - zero bytes/130KB avi file.I see that it's using Direct Show for the capture process. The audio is 32KHz PCM as usual and I didn't make any changes to my audio filters. I can reproduce the phenomenon on a x86 Win XP system, on which it also worked until today.I tried with another capture card (Texas Instruments firewire card and a crappy VIA) and different cable.No change. Maybe the camcorder is the culprit?
Offtopic - I'd love to throw away this camcorder but another camera with intraframe compression (AVC intra) is way too expensive.

The camcorder is the only constant, so I would suspect it as well. You need a DV camera expert to tell you if that is likely, and what (if anything) you can do about it. I don't qualify. While I have done FireWire capture, I never transferred a DV recording from a DV camera.

[pippas]

Offtopic - I'd love to throw away this camcorder but another camera with intraframe compression (AVC intra) is way too expensive.

Or... get a camcorder that records as 'consumer' AVCHD and convert the footage into an intraframe format - like Cineform or Grass Valley HQ .
Converter and codecs for both of those formats are now freeware....and conversion time with a fairly recent computer should be better than real time (so faster than DV capture)

[edytibi]

After a lot of permissions and ownership over folders changing on my main workstation (some application or virus changed ownership over an entire partition I used for dumping DV streams from the camcorder) I dropped by mistake the docking station on the floor.This particular camcorder model has no firewire connector, it uses a single big connector for the docking station to transmit the firewire signal, composite, USB and to receive power.
After the impact the DV streams dump just fine with sound included on the main workstation and also on the secondary system with firewire port which sustained no modification of ownership/permissions over the folders, using my favorite "Windows Movie Maker".
Culprit - the docking station.
Thank you for the suggestions.
@Pippas - I also own a Canon HF11 that records H264 video 1920x1080p@25fps and that footage is a pain to edit. When re-encoding it the loss of quality is evident using the same bitrate as the original material (24Mbps) and it takes ages on my system (Intel Core 2 Quad 9550, 8GB RAM DDR2, NVidia GTX 260, 1TB SATA3 HDD). I got used to only cut it using GOP accurate tools (Elecard AVCHD Editor), no encoding and very careful planning of the shots, to require a minimal editing.
The DV stream is very easy to edit and I can afford to be less careful when filming, in extreme jerky footage I can use Deshaker for Virtual Dub (impractical to use on 1080p material due to long processing time). I use this DV camcorder for Sports filming, where I throw away more than half of the footage, frame accurate.

[pippas]

@Pippas - I also own a Canon HF11 that records H264 video 1920x1080p@25fps and that footage is a pain to edit. When re-encoding it the loss of quality is evident using the same bitrate as the original material (24Mbps) and it takes ages on my system (Intel Core 2 Quad 9550, 8GB RAM DDR2, NVidia GTX 260, 1TB SATA3 HDD). I got used to only cut it using GOP accurate tools (Elecard AVCHD Editor), no encoding and very careful planning of the shots, to require a minimal editing.
The DV stream is very easy to edit and I can afford to be less careful when filming, in extreme jerky footage I can use Deshaker for Virtual Dub (impractical to use on 1080p material due to long processing time). I use this DV camcorder for Sports filming, where I throw away more than half of the footage, frame accurate.

Converting your HF11 24mbps footage into Grass Valley HQX will make it as easy as DV to edit!... As I say, that codec is now free, and when used with the Grass Valley AVCHD2HQ converter utility (also free) you have lots of options to create intraframe intermediate files to suit your needs. Excellent quality, and as I say, being intraframe is as easy as DV to edit!
With your machine, it should convert almost in real time, I would think...

And the HQX files work well in Virtualdub....

You can register for a (free) account with Grass Valley to download the files, or you can find slightly earlier versions (virtually the same) direct from their Taiwan site without registering.

See HERE for the codecs and HERE for the converter utility.
(IIRC, it's better to install the converter utility first, then the codec pack)

This version of the utility gives a lot more conversion options the the earlier versions... it's more like a free HD version of their old Canopus 'Procoder' program in many ways!

[edytibi]

Last note: despite the DV capture working now, from 15minutes on tape I've got only 14minutes 10 seconds on HDD; almost 20 seconds are lost in the last 3 minutes of the tape, with obvious frame dropping, but Movie Maker reported nothing during capture and I saw no abnormal behavior. As long as the resulting footage is still usable I consider the matter closed.
@Pippas Thank you for the information (and the links), I've got the picture about Grass Valley HQX, its specifications are amazing. But it is still lossy, and even if GV HQX's loss of quality is not noticeable the final encoding to H264 alters the quality even at 24Mbps compared to the original footage. I can't keep the footage compressed as GV HQX, my TV/media player can't play movies encoded with exotic codecs (it can decode only H264, DivX, VP6/8, MJPEG, MPEG1/2/3/4, MVC, Windows Media Video 7/8/9 ). I'll try the workflow you propose and see the results (just grabbed the codecs and the app).

[pippas]

But it is still lossy, and even if GV HQX's loss of quality is not noticeable the final encoding to H264 alters the quality even at 24Mbps compared to the original footage.

There will of course be some loss by converting to HQX, but it's difficult to see any noticeable difference in my experience... and you have quite range of selectable HQX qualities to choose from. Obviously, file size can vary quite a lot between them.
I have also read reports of tests that say there is very little generational loss with HQX - even with several generations of editing - so once it's HQX you can do pretty much what you like to it, without any further noticeable degradation.

Because HQX works well in the Virtualdub vfw environment, you can use the vfw x.264 codec to convert your edited footage to H.264 ... and the settings for that are very selectable from within Vdub.
By selecting higher quality settings, I reckon you'd be hard pushed to spot any real difference from your original 24mbps files....

But as it's all freeware you can check that for yourself without incurring any cost (apart from a bit of time of course! )