Canon HV40 capture problems

[stantheman1976]

I filmed an event with 2 Canon HV40's yesterday that belong to my wife and her Broadcast class she teaches. She had been using JVC tapes until recently and switched to Sony. Before the switch she used a cleaning tape on each and has filmed and captured a few tapes in SD with not problem. I was filming in 30p HDV yesterday and when I tried capturing the image is messed up. There is pixellation, huge green areas, and jagged bars in the footage. I tried capturing with Vegas and HDVSplit and get the same with either. HDVSplit will stop caturing after a short time because of lost packets.

Playback through the view finder looks normal so I'm assuming the problem is not on the original tapes?

Edit:
It is not the tapes. I tried capturing live feed in HDV and it has the same issues. If I switch ti SD it works fine.

Can the firewire port or cable start to screw up without going out completely? Can single pins in the cable or port go out causing problems capturing one stream but not another?

[aedipuss]

if the cable and ports work in sd miniDV then they are fine for HDV also as it uses the same 25mbps data rate. try another 10sec play with a sony head cleaning tape if you have one. it's possible the lubes were non-compatible and not all was cleaned off the first time. dry mixed with wet lube makes for gummed heads. jvc tapes in my experience are the worst to mix with other brands. i try to stick with panasonic dvm63 pro quality tapes in my hv30.

try the other camera for playback.

i would also try starting the HDV tape, waiting for the video to begin and then start capturing with HDVsplit - especially if the tapes might have been used for sd miniDV recording previously.

[stantheman1976]

I'm not sure what brand cleaning tape was used.

I did try starting the tape and then capturing in Vegas and HDVSplit and also letting the program start playback. Same result either way.

I am assuming it's not the heads because if I take the tape out and go into camera mode and capture a live feed it does the same thing. HDV video comes in screwed up but SD captures fine. Same thing on both cameras.

My wife is going to bring home another laptop and cable tomorrow to test.

I know DV and HDV modes carry the same amount of data but since they are encoded differently do they transmit data over the firewire port the same? Maybe if a pin goes out DV can re-route and function normally but HDV needs all 4 pins?

[aedipuss]

try playing on of your HDV files with vlc. i don't think it uses the computer's installed mpeg-2 codec. see if it makes a difference.

[stantheman1976]

I did try that. Same results.

[aedipuss]

can you cut a sample and upload it to a filehosting site? that's a strange one. usually HDV dropouts cause the loss of all video and/or audio for around 1/2 second as that's the length of a gop.

this should cut one if you don't have a small file with the bad video.

[edDV]

If the live feed has the same issues it suggests a laptop issue handling the HD MPeg2 decode, or the HV-40 is malfunctioning.

Have you played other HDV clips on this laptop?

A sample download would allow us to check playback on our machines.

[stantheman1976]

I will try to upload a sample tonight when I have the laptop available.

I don't think it's the cameras because it started happening to both suddenly. If it was just one I would say yes but it's awfully coincidental that both are having the same problem on the same machine.

Unfortunately I don't have another machine to test on until tomorrow. My new laptop does not have a firewire port so I can only edit on it, not capture.

I don't have any other HDV files to test on right now. The last time I filmed a HD project with these cameras was November and the drive it was stored on died a while back.

[edDV]

I will try to upload a sample tonight when I have the laptop available.

I don't think it's the cameras because it started happening to both suddenly. If it was just one I would say yes but it's awfully coincidental that both are having the same problem on the same machine.

Unfortunately I don't have another machine to test on until tomorrow. My new laptop does not have a firewire port so I can only edit on it, not capture.

I don't have any other HDV files to test on right now. The last time I filmed a HD project with these cameras was November and the drive it was stored on died a while back.

If you capture with HDVsplit with preview turned off, very little CPU power is needed. A Pentium III could do it. Then move the file to a better machine to play the file.

[stantheman1976]

With or without preview in HDVSplit it was stopping capture after ~10 seconds because of lost packets/dropped frames. I tried with both cameras. Any flavor of HD coming from either camera causes the same thing. If I switch to normal DV mode everything is kosher.

[edDV]

With or without preview in HDVSplit it was stopping capture after ~10 seconds because of lost packets/dropped frames. I tried with both cameras. Any flavor of HD coming from either camera causes the same thing. If I switch to normal DV mode everything is kosher.

No reason why that would be. HDV as a 25 Mb/s data stream is even less bitrate than DV. DV is 25Mb/s video + PCM audio + Metadata.

Something wrong with that laptop.

[stantheman1976]

That's why it threw me for such a loop. DV and HDV carry information over the same connection but because of the codec are they maybe routed over the pins differently where DV can deal with a bad pin and HDV can't?

[edDV]

That's why it threw me for such a loop. DV and HDV carry information over the same connection but because of the codec are they maybe routed over the pins differently where DV can deal with a bad pin and HDV can't?

No, there is no codec involved with a DV or HDV data stream to a file except when you try to preview at the same time. It is just data to a file. If you do try to preview, you can quickly overwhelm a slow CPU. There is no GPU assist during an IEEE-1394 capture.

[stantheman1976]

I'm trying to capture on an i5 processor so that shouldn'e be an issue. The last project I captured on a 1.6GHz dual core with 3GB RAM and had no issues.

[stantheman1976]

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=54Z64GGO

Here's a 15 second clip. I tried changing the firewire port drivers to legacy but that didn't fix it.

[edDV]

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=54Z64GGO

Here's a 15 second clip. I tried changing the firewire port drivers to legacy but that didn't fix it.

The file specs look correct. I can't explain the pixel drops. If you aren't seeing these drops when the tape is played to a TV, something is wrong with the IEEE-1394 connection. Try a different computer and a different cable.



VLC reports two dropped frames in addition to the pixel loss.

[edDV]

Here is what HDVSplit looks like on mine with a 1/16th size preview. Preview should be turned off if you are having problems.

[stantheman1976]

With or without preview it does the same thing. HDVSplit stops capturing and the video is bad. I captured that clip with Vegas. I've tried pretty much every combination of preview on and off capturing from tape and live feed in SD and the different HD settings. It still comes up the same.

[aedipuss]

bizarre. the files on the computer are 1 to 1 bit digital transfer copies of what's on the tape.

were the tapes new or had they been used before?

there seems to be some bleed through from a previous video?

[edDV]

bizarre. the files on the computer are 1 to 1 bit digital transfer copies of what's on the tape.

were the tapes new or had they been used before?

there seems to be some bleed through from a previous video?


[Attachment 5737 - Click to enlarge]

But if the drops were tape related, he would see them in a direct playback to an HDTV. Plus he is getting the drops from a live camera feed.

[aedipuss]

yeah it's weird. but that line of video in the middle of the picture i posted is definitely not at all related to the main video or any frame anywhere near it.

[stantheman1976]

The tapes were new. Plus, like I said it happens with a live feed also.

My wife brought home her secondary laptop tonight and I only had time to try a live feed for a minute before I had to leave tonight. The capture seemed to work fine with a different machine. After more research I found at least one other person online mention that after putting Windows 7 64 bit on the same model I'm having problems with they couldn't capture HD video either. I think it's related to a driver or maybe BIOS issue somehow.

Now I have another issue. I went out to film a couple bands tonight with the Canons and only had a JVC tapes with me after we've been using Sony lately. I filmed one tape in each camera and the footage plays but the video seems to slow down periodically. The audio doesn't drop out and the video is clear, just slow for a few seconds and then picks back up. I'll get a cleaning tape tomorrow and try to capture again. Did I screw up bad by using different tapes? Is it something that might be able to be corrected by a cleaning tape or something that was captured on the tapes and they are unuseable?

[edDV]

The tapes were new. Plus, like I said it happens with a live feed also.

My wife brought home her secondary laptop tonight and I only had time to try a live feed for a minute before I had to leave tonight. The capture seemed to work fine with a different machine. After more research I found at least one other person online mention that after putting Windows 7 64 bit on the same model I'm having problems with they couldn't capture HD video either. I think it's related to a driver or maybe BIOS issue somehow.

New information.

A laptop needs a set of 64 bit drivers from the original manufacturer. If they don't support 64bit, don't install a 64 bit OS.

[stantheman1976]

The machine came with 64 bit and Dell's support site doesn't have any IEEE-1394 drivers available. I saw a suggestion to roll back to legacy drivers but that didn't make a difference.

[edDV]

The machine came with 64 bit and Dell's support site doesn't have any IEEE-1394 drivers available. I saw a suggestion to roll back to legacy drivers but that didn't make a difference.

IEEE-1394 is probably part of the chipset driver. I think you should call ACER support.

[stantheman1976]

It's the Dell I'm having problems with. My Acer doesn't have firewire. If it did I wouldn't be having this issue. I am probably going to call tech support and see if they have had this reported.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GJ2HXUQ1

Here's a sample of the slow video I was talking about.

I just started capturing that original video on the second laptop my wife brought home. I'm using the same camera and cable and it seems to be coming in fine. Now there's a totally new problem with this machine though. After a few minutes of capture it comes up with a blue screen and crashes. This is capturing with Vegas. I'm trying with HDVSplit now and it has gotten further than Vegas did and hasn't crashed yet.

One concern I have with HDVSplit though is that there used to be some kind of bug that Vegas didn't always like video captured with HDVSplit. I shot some HDV with these cameras last summer and edited in Vegas 8 after capturing with HDVSplit. There was no trouble during editing but when I tried to render it would crash repeatedly and I was told it was because of HDVSplit. The next time I filmed in HDV I captured with Vegas and had no problems.