Digital8 unwanted 2X capture speed & codec problem Windows Live Movie Maker

[Titletown Tom]

Any help greatly appreciated!

Sony DCR-TRV330 (D8 camcorder)
Sony GV-D200 (D8 VCR)
Dell Latitude E6420 laptop, Windows 7 SP1, Intel Core I5-2520 CPU @ 2.5 GHz, 64 bit, 4.00 GB RAM
ExpressCard to Firewire Adapter
Windows Live Movie Maker Build 15.34.3555.0308

Finished capturing around 50 tapes to .avi using Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM). Process has gone well for around 40 of these tapes. The .avi files seem to play back fine in Windows Media Player (WMP).

For roughly 10 of these tapes, there are two problem outcomes:

Outcome 1: The file is captured at approximately 2X speed, audio & video. Have tried everything I can think of, nothing seems to work to correct this. Same result whether converting from D8 VCR or D8 camcorder. I've looked through the owner's manuals thinking there may be a way to turn off the time code information? No info in the manuals.

Outcome 2: The file is captured and will play briefly at correct speed in WMP before it stops and an error is given about not recognizing the file type/codec. If I start a WLMM project, the same file will play all the way through in preview mode! For this type of issue, I could settle for saving and publishing these as .wmv using WLMM, but haven't tried yet.

Seems a little convoluted, but next I may try playing these out of the S-video or composite connectors and pass through the other component with analog to DV conversion, I'm sure at reduced resolution.

Again, any helpful suggestions greatly appreciated!

[davexnet]

Have you tried a simple capture, ie. Firewire and WinDV.

[aedipuss]

to that i'd add make sure that the tape is playing before starting the capture. sounds like the tape mode is switching after the tape has started playing which will muck up the capture.

[Titletown Tom]

Back at it again. Thank you for the suggestions. I did try WinDV; somewhat similar results although with WinDV you can start capture with the tape playing. This "corrected" a tape/.avi that was previously 2X playback, but .avi file playback again stopped after a few seconds and gave the "not recognizing the file type/codec" error in WMP.

Note that WLMM does not allow the tape to be running at the start of capture. Although you can search for a start position, it seems to automatically pause the tape and then start capture. It may be worth trying to manually start capture at least a couple seconds into the tape rather than right at the beginning (as with the preset option for capturing the whole tape).

Thanks again, any further suggestions most welcome! I will move on to my redundant pass-through solution and hope for the best...

[smrpix]

WinDV is a great tool, you may also want to look at Enosoft DV Processor. You are probably going to have to babysit the capture.
I agree with aedipuss, and some of the specific mode issues to look for are:

switching from SP to LP mode
switching from 48K audio to 32K
switching from D8 to Hi8 or standard 8 if the tape has been previously used
physically damaged tapes and/or dropouts

Any of these changes will require separate files.

I'm very curious about what codec WMP doesn't recognize -- though it's probably a generic error.

Best of luck