Sony Video Capture 6 (Vegas MS) hard drive max size limit?

[distendo]

I've just added a 1TB HDD :P specifically so I can capture my backlog of miniDV tapes into one location (and use the excellent dvdate http://paul.glagla.free.fr/dvdate_en.htm to rename all the scenes according to date/time stamp). All's well with the caps (no dropped frames), but Sony Capture 6 (from Vegas Movie Studio) is showing me an available time of around 4 hours remaining, with 660GB free...
At 13Gb per tape, I should be able to get another 50 tapes or so onto that drive, not just another 4. So I was wondering (before I hit the apparent limit) whether Cap 6 doesn't recognise HDDs above a certain size, or something.
I could cap to a different drive & copy the files over, but @ 13GB per that's a bit of a time waster.
Any bright ideas?

[Baldrick]

Please post dv capturing in our DV forum. I'm moving you.

[distendo]

Thanks, I appreciate it - wherever is most appropriate is fine by me.
I did look at the capture forum. It appeared to be analogue-based, but thought I saw some DV posts there, so...

[aedipuss]

first make sure you are capturing in DVavi and not an uncompressed avi. if you are, it's just that time and size estimates of all video software are notoriously inaccurate. try some and see if it changes.

[distendo]

Thanks for the response.
The properties for the video clips shows the format as DV.
I'm asking Sony via their web support form too.

[edDV]

Alternate free DV capture program WinDV can cap entire tapes or by TC scene.

[distendo]

I'd heard about WinDVD and have an installation CD, but I've also heard that the Sony DV codec is hard to beat. It beats the hell out of Pinnacle (the weeks I wasted trying to get that piece of garbage to perform).

Ok, anyway, I just went over the 'limit' and now Sony Capture is showing almost 24 hours available.
So no problem.
At least this post may help someone else who's twitchy about being able to clog up a big HDD.
Thanks for the interest tho', guys!

[guns1inger]

Not WinDVD, WinDV. WinDV is a small, dedicated application for transfering DV footage to your HDD. Similar to Vegas Capure but with lower overheads and a single task to manage.

[edDV]

A codec isn't used to capture-transfer DV except for monitoring. The data from tape is streamed as an exact bit for bit copy to the hard disk DV-AVI file. WinDV does this with less fuss than the Vegas capture program. The results are identical.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/WinDV

[distendo]

Oops! I was (obviously) confusing WinDV with WinDVD, because the more recent versions of that seem to come with some capyure/editing stuff that I've never bothered to try.
I'll look into WinDV, thank you!

And (again, obviously) I really didn't know that the DV format onto disk didn't use a DV codec. I'm sure I've read somewhere that Vegas does better than Pinnacle at capturing, and I believe I did some brief comparisons (before I ditched Pinnacle) that seemed to support that.

Thanks for the pointers!

[guns1inger]

The DV copied from the camera should be identical, whether it is captured by Pinnacle, Vegas or WinDV. It is what happens next that is important. WinDV only captures. Pinnacle is renowned for being unstable and problematic. Vegas is robust and stable, and the Sony DV codec used by Vegas is one of the best in the business. However if your editing is only simple cuts, and you don't apply transitions or filters, Vegas will simply write the video without change (except, of course, for your edits), so no encoding will be done anyway.

[distendo]

Ohhh-kayyy....
Makes perfect sense now you point it out... don't know what I've been thinking... mumble mumble...
Thank you.