DV Capture Problem

[sailworkless]

Looking for some help. I've been having a beast of a time capturing some miniDV tapes from my Canon ZR50MC video camera. In the past I was able to do this with no problem. Now, the computer freezes up whenever I try. Camera connected via Firewire. When I turn it on, XP recognizes the camera and opens Movie Maker capture wizard. On the few times we get through the wizard before the machine freezes up, it'll start capturing, then freeze. The camera continues to play the tape, but the capture freezes, usually after only a few seconds. Movie Maker stops responding and the computer becomes terribly slow and unusable. If I turn off the camera, the computer goes back to normal functioning. Often the machine is locked up before even making it through the wizard.

Here's the highlights of what I've tried...
Complete clean re-install of XP (they replaced XP media center with XP Pro - didn't help at all)
Memory tested fine
Tried to capture via WinDV
Tried turning off anti-virus before plugging in camera
Plenty of free HD space (440GB of 500 is Free)

Here's my equipment...
Windows XP Pro SP3, AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3800+ in a Compaq Presario SR2030NX, 2GB RAM, 500GB HDD, PCI Firewire Card
Canon ZR50MC Video Camera


Any thoughts would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks,
Sail

[filmboss80]

After you did the re-install of XP, did it still recognize your camera through the firewire port and try to open Movie Maker? If not, you may have a driver issue. If so, and it still did not work in WinDV (which is what you should have used in the first place), then it may be an issue with the hard drive you are capturing to. It is always best to use a separate hard drive than your OS drive.

[sailworkless]

It recognizes the camera with no problems. The problem remained essentially unchanged after the drive was reformatted and XP Pro installed in place of Media Center. My only other HD option is an external connected via USB2.0. I'll give that a try tonight.

Thanks

[sailworkless]

I tried using the external hard drive and WinDV with limited success. The first time I started it, it captured just over 20 minutes before freezing up. I was able to restart it (making a new file) and got between 2 and 11 minutes between freeze ups. It ended up taking 7 files to capture a one hour tape. (By restart I mean stopping the capture in WinDV, turning off the camera, turn on the camera, start the capture)

Any other suggestions to get back to just turning it on and having it capture the whole tape without all the babysitting?

[somebodeez]

Do you have any problems when doing other things? I'm wondering if heat could be an issue...

Edit: Aside from that - just for the heck of it, can you try another firewire cable?

[Cornucopia]

Maybe it's the firewire port got fried?

If you've got a friend with a PC with firewire, try capping on it to rule out the possibility of bad camcorder or bad cabling...

Scott

[somebodeez]

Is your harddrive formatted as NTFS?

Also, I've been using DVIO to cap from my mini DV camera for years
It's nothing fancy. It doesn't have a preview screen (I just look at my camera's screen if I need to) and it's free. - Might be worth a shot. BTW, read the first review.
https://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVIO