DV camcorder to computer using Windows movie maker...

[rubberman]

i have a Canon ZR100 dv camcorder. WHen i upload the video from the 'corder to computer via windoews movie maker it will not transfer the whole tape to computer. i have about 50 minutes and it basically stops at 5 minutes. then says no tape. anyone experience this or have a solution?

[edDV]

It could be gaps in the timecode. Try WinDV and see if it does the same thing. If it does uncheck camcorder control (next to capture button) and run manually. Press play on the camcorder and then capture on WinDV and let it run.

[rubberman]

well i transferred a vhs tape to my dv camcorder. so when i upload that to computer it is very jumpy and it also stops after 5 minutes. I tried windows movie and maker and WinDV. and of the parts that it uploads its very jumpy and not worth watching. My desktop is a P3 733mhz with 512mb ram. could that be the issue? may have to get a firewire card for my laptop and do eveything on it.

[gadgetguy]

What does the DV tape look like when played from the Cam to a TV?

[rubberman]

its fine, no skip. i also tried Ulead Video Studio and its jumpy on there too and stops too.

[gadgetguy]

Are you capturing to the same drive as the OS?
700Mhz should work, but it won't compete well with other processes. Have you disabled all other nonessential processes, (like virus protection, one-button scanner software, firewall software, etc.)?
Does WinDV indicate dropped frames?

[rubberman]

yes, capturing to the same OS. the capture software is the only thing running. it starts off capturing fine then seems to bog down freezing on the computer screen and it doesnt matter if i have the preview screen checked or not. not sure what else to do. they all seem to do the same thing. the video size file stops and the recorded time stops while the camcorder continues to play.

[gadgetguy]

On your system you'll probably need to get a second hard drive to capsfer to. Normal OS processes access the hard drive regularly and when they do, it is interrupting the flow from the Camcorder. WinDV utilyzes a buffer to attempt to compensate, but it's still dependant on cooperation from the OS. Do you have a second drive that you can install to see if it will fix the problem?

[rubberman]

yes i do. i will try that and respond back

[gadgetguy]

Another thing to try is DVIO. It is another free capsfer program, but I believe it doesn't have a preview window so it's processor overhead should be even lower. (I don't use it myself, but I've heard good things.)

[rubberman]

well i had a small 2gig HD which i formated and installed winDV on. i had it save to it too. Well after 30 seconds of transfer it had 163 frames dropped and would hiccup every 6 seconds i guess cause it was writing it to the HD.

[gadgetguy]

Some more things to check...
Make sure the drive is set for DMA not ISO.
Put the 2nd hard drive on the opposite IDE cable that the OS drive is on (If OS is on Primary, put 2nd Drive on Secondary or visa-versa).
Use Task Manager and see if/what else is running. Also check the CPU usage of the tasks.

Edit: Also WinDV should not be installed on the 2nd drive. Note that DV-AVI is approximately 13.5 gig per hour, so a 2 gig drive is not going to hold very much, but it should be adequate for testing.

[Jim44]

rubberman,

Going back up to your earlier post, you mentioned that this is a VHS recording on the DV tape? If you can set it all up again, you might try just using the DV camera as an analog-to-digital converter and transfering directly to the computer (bypassing recording to the DV tape).

I was able to do this pretty successfully with several VHS tapes, my Canon ZR80, and WinDV. Had to hook up the VCR in the office near the computer, though

Anyway, just a thought. Sounds like you've tried just about everything else.

Jim

[rubberman]

where do you find the DMA setting cause i cant find it.

[gadgetguy]

I knew you were going to ask that. Unfortunately I don't know since I don't use WinXP, but I'm sure someone on here can help with that.

Edit: -Jim44 That's a good suggestion for future reference, but I don't think it will have any affect on the problem at hand. This appears to be an issue with the computer not being able to keep up with the video stream and that would be the same whether using pass-through or from tape..

[Jim44]

Yeah, you're right. I think I jumped around the thread too much and thought he said the quality when viewed on the cam wasn't real good either.

- DMA: I can't recall (been a year since I build the current computer), but isn't the "DMA" setting in the computer's BIOS? And I think it usually defaults to "DMA".

But, as we've found, YMMV

Good luck!

Jim

[rubberman]

well i used win movie maker and encoded as dialup resolution which was the lowest, to see if i would have problems. it did fine but was so distorted and fuzzy it wasnt worth watching. i also tried the Windoes Media encoder and it has trouble keeping up on screen. its gotta be the processor/video card issue. I'll have to get a firewire card for my laptop. i use this same computer to ripand burn which do fine so i really dont know the difference .

[rubberman]

another thing i have noticed is that when i play the uploaded video in winamp, win media player or WinDVD it plays very jumpy and skippy. BUT if i play in a player called BS Player then it plays fine. DVD movies play fine in all those programs so i am really confused.

[edDV]

DVD movies play fine in all those programs so i am really confused.

To put some context to the problem, DVD movies need to run 4-9Mb/s and you may be getting some hardware assist from the display card.

DV needs to run constant 25 Mb/s (video) + PCM audio and has no hardware assist in your machine. The CPU must perform the DV to RGB decode. The MS DV codec is usually used for simple playback.

XP assigns DV transfer and playback to DirectShow (part of DirectX). Run the DirectX tests under Accessories, System Info. and make sure you are up to date with 9c.

As said above, you system should be fast enough to play DV if nothing else is competing for HDD or CPU. Turn off anti virus and other background tasks.

If your goal is to make a DVD, direct DV playback may not be needed. You might try encoding segments of DV to MPeg2 and view those. If a MPeg2 segment plays ok after being encoded then it can be used to author a DVD.

[rubberman]

under windows task manager > processes tab it goes from about 5% to 99% as soon as i hit the capture button

[gadgetguy]

Are you on the latest DirectX as edDV suggested?

[rubberman]

yes - 9.0c

[edDV]

under windows task manager > processes tab it goes from about 5% to 99% as soon as i hit the capture button

If you use DVIO, it will just transfer the video and not try to display it during transfer. This should work better for a slower machine.

[rubberman]

after 1 minute, 30seconds of video transfer time, it dropped 220 frames using that program. im gonna take my camcorder over to a friends house and firewire it to his computer to make sure its not the camcorder.

[rubberman]

well it worked find on his computer so it basically what we said - my computer.