DV Codec Questions, Premiere Export to Tape

[doshin]

I recently bought the Sony DVMC-DA2. It really is a great product, effortless install, captures are a breeze. However of course, being the dv newbie that I am, I ran into a couple of problems and questions regarding dv out and dv codecs.

1. I cannot get Premiere's export to tape function to work. When I try it, it returns an error saying "The DV device is unavailable for device control". My workaround is to use MainActor's DV Out applet, which obviously means it cannot do the things I need to do in Premiere.

2. Is there any way to convert a non dv codec encoded avi to a dv codec encoded avi? For instance in Premiere, I converted an avi MS MPEG4v2 to a DV avi file. The size was consistent with DV, it played in Windows Media Player, but will not output using DV Out. For some reason I get the first frame, and thats it. I want to do this because some of my footage is from different sources and I cannot get it in DV.

3. I am using Premiere 6, DirectX 8.0a. Is it necessary to get the MainActor codec? I have read that it is superior to Microsoft's, but by how much? Does anyone have any experience with it?

4. This is sort of bizarre, but can someone explain to me why this happened on my machine? I installed Premiere, DirectX 8.0a and VirtualDub (I want to save computer only copies as well). I did a couple of dv captures, but I could not open it in VirtualDub. I then installed MGI VideoWave 4, and voila, I could open the dv in VirtualDub. Does anyone know why this is, or what MGI Videowave 4 installed?

5. Lastly, does anyone know of any dv tv software? Meaning, an app that lets me watch tv on my machine via the DVMC-DA2. Obviously, Premiere and other software does it while doing previews for captures, so I would imagine it wouldnt be too dificult to write.

Well, if you lasted this long, through my long winded email, you have my gratitude.

If anyone can lend some knowledge or help, I would greatly appreciate it.

[doshin]

Should I have posted this in the Editing forum?

[moog]

1 I use Dv500+, so I can't help you on the Sony. Did you try the support for Sony? Also see if anyone at the Adobe forum site has this issue. Did you go to set your options in Preferences Scratch Disks and Device Control for video settings?
http://www.adobeforums.com Got to premiere.
Sorry about the others.