Help - Can't capture DV from firewire DV camcorder

[Jiggytrav]

I have a Sony TRV22 DV camcorder that I haven't used for a while. So I got it out to try to capture some DV video to my PC via the firewire connection and I can't get it to work. Here are the details of the problem:

When I plug in the camcorder to my firewire port and turn the camcorder on, the system seems to detect it just fine. I hear the connect sound and a window pops up asking if I want to open Pinnacle Studio 9 (which I have installed with the latest patches).

When I try to capture DV footage, everything *seems* to be working fine. I see the camcorder footage in the preview window while it is capturing, etc. When I actually look at what was captured, however, there's nothing there - it's just black video with no sound. So for some reason, it's not actually capturing the footage even though it appears to be during the capture process.

It isn't a problem with Studio 9 either because I have tried to capture with WinDV as well. When I press the Capture button in WinDV, nothing happens... it shows "capturing" in the status bar but again, nothing happens. No footage is captured, no hard drive writing, etc. In the video source dialog in WinDV, it shows "Microsoft DV Camera and VCR" - is that right or should it show Sony?

I also tried to capture with VirtualDub and it just locks up when I choose "Capture AVI" from the file menu. It shows "Microsoft WDM Image Capture (Win32 in the status bar and then just locks up and eventually gives me an error: "unsupported video format".

So it seems that something is broken with the DV capturing on my PC. I have WinXP with SP2. Do you guys think this might be a CODEC problem or some kind of Microsoft capture driver problem? How would I go about further troubleshooting and correcting the problem? I tried rebooting to no avail. The only other device I use on my firewire port is my iPOD and it works perfectly.

Thanks in advance,
Travis

[Jiggytrav]

CORRECTION: Using WinDV *does* work - I didn't have the checkbox enabled for capturing (go figure).

[Richard_G]

Iy sounds like Pinnacle is transferring but you haven't got a codec installed that allows you to view the transferred video. Try installing the Panasonic DV Codec and see if that makes any difference.