DV-out problem

[wild4trv30]

About a month ago I had to reformat my HD due to a bug with MS Word. I successfully reformatted and reinstalled all the previous software, and until I recently tried to DV-out to my Mini-DV tape on my TRV30 I have not had any problems. Prior to reformatting, I successfully captured from the TRV30 through my IEEE 1394 card, edited with MGI Videowave III, and outputted the AVI back to the Mini-DV tape on the camcorder through the 1394. Now I can only capture. When I try to do a DV-out (either through MGI Videowave or Scenalyzer) I see in playing on my PC but the output to the tape is all garbled.

I called Dell support, and they could not correct the problem. I am thinking it's a driver problem, but after unintalling MGI and removing the 1394 from the Device Manager as reinstalling the drivers, I still cannot get a successful DV-out.

Does anyone have any idea how to correct this problem? Since I don't have a dvd burner, I can only output to VCD or SVCD, and I would like to save the AVI to Mini-DV for archiving.

Thanks in advance.

Wild4trv30.

[Luddite]

i take it u enabled the dv port on the camera?
u have to swap between in or out

[spectroelectro]

There exists a program called AVI-IO which is as simple and basic an AVI program as you can get. It should work with your Digicam. I've used it with my Sony digicam and a firewire (IEEE1394) port.
If you still don't get non-garbled output with something as simple and basic as AVI_IO, then there must be something garbled in your system registry or some other very low-level problem. This has happened to me a couple of times, and the solution was ugly but definitve: pull all non-recoverable data from the OS disk (there shouldn't be much, you always ought to capture to a non-OS hard drive), wipe the OS drive, then re-install whatever version of Windows you have.
The crucial point is that you had your system working. Something you did munged something in the WINNT/SYSTEM32 directory. If you do a virgin install, then re-install your video capture software, you _should_ be able to get DV I/O working properly again.
DV is about as bulletproof as any form of video capture can be, because you are not really doing cpaturing -- you are just transferring data, and IEEE1394 is plenty fast enough to do that at the 3.5 megabyte/sec throughput required. I know because I worked for years with a P3 450 doing editing with a Sony digicam and a firewire port, and it always worked like a charm. Later, I moved on to a P4 2.4 with the same setup, and it has almost never failed me (except when I installed a video capture card and hte entire system came apart at the seams. I clobbered something in my registry and had to re-install Win 2K and Ulead Media Studio Pro from scratch.)
I know this isn't what you want to hear, but in my experience, that's what it took to solve my (similar) problem...

[jlebron]

Verify if the AVI file you are trying to send to the camera is not corrupted or in the incorrect format. You can use VitualDub for this.

[wild4trv30]

Well, after reading the replies to my original post I was hesitant to reformat my HD again. So, I had a few-month cool-down period and started searching for posts on the problem again. One post mentioned making sure the DMA was enabled on my HD. I thought I had tried that previously, but when I checked this time around, it was not enabled. Sure enough when I enabled it, I was able to successfully use DV out again. I can't believe something so simple caused me so much frustration! In any case, I wanted to post this solution in case anyone else had the same problem.

[The village idiot]

That is a surprise. DV doesn't really move fast enough to require DMA, but since it worked, it's good to know.