Can anyone explain this problem with video capture?

[The Big Cheese]

Hi everyone

I'm trying to back up an archive of 8mm camcorder tapes on a Sony TRV-480 camcorder.

It's a PAL camcorder and it's detecting that the tapes are NTSC and seems to be changing them accordingly without a hitch - they play perfectly on the screen, both picture and sound.

However as I'm trying to capture the footage via firewire into the PC I am getting an error with Premiere. I click the record button to capture, the camcorder starts and stops almost immediately with a "lost connection to device" error message.

I tried using a different camcorder (same make/model) on a different PC with the same Premiere software and it did the same thing so I have ruled out mechanical error.

I downloaded WinDV to test it out and putting in a standard PAL 8mm tape it worked perfectly but when I put one of these NTSC tapes in it recorded just blank until the very second when I stopped it, the sound came on and the picture showed for a second. After I stopped the WinDV capture it recorded just a second or two more which showed the picture was scrambled and not watchable.

I'm guessing it must be something to do with the fact that it's trying to convert NTSC but I can't understand why it would display perfectly on the camcorder but wouldn't capture to PC successfully.

I should note then when I tried to use Premiere I did set the NTSC setting.

I'm totally stumped, any thoughts or advice would be massively appreciated!


Thank you very much.

[hech54]

Just like NTSC VHS tapes being played in Europe....they are easily viewed but very difficult to copy/capture. I suspect the same is happening here.

[The Big Cheese]

Thanks for your speedy reply!

That's what I'm worried about, is there any solution to actually be able to copy them successfully?

[DB83]

I suggest you try WinDV but start the camera manually BEFORE you hit the record button.

Tapes can not magically change from PAL to NTSC unless there is some setting on the actual camera (hardly)

[The Big Cheese]

Thanks, I'll give that a try this evening.

I had been setting it capturing before starting the recording so hopefully something simple like that will help!

[DB83]

Do post back whether it works or not.

If the tapes were NTSC and recorded in that camera I would have thought that WinDV could still have grabbed the footage since it makes no assumptions in that respect. My gut feeling is that there is a bad signal coming through which is 'fooling' the capture sw. Starting the camera first, and making sure you see a picture, before capture might clean that up.

[Cornucopia]

No, stop wasting your time with these fixit attempts.

If you have an NTSC tape, you must use a camcorder/tapedeck that is configured to accept & output true NTSC, and you want your A-to-D to also be set to the same system (if it's a seperate device from the cam/deck), AND you need your capping hardware &software to be preset for the same system.
Without all those, you will just get garbage!

Scott

[The Big Cheese]

Do post back whether it works or not.

If the tapes were NTSC and recorded in that camera I would have thought that WinDV could still have grabbed the footage since it makes no assumptions in that respect. My gut feeling is that there is a bad signal coming through which is 'fooling' the capture sw. Starting the camera first, and making sure you see a picture, before capture might clean that up.

Well blooming heck, you God amongst the forum, it's working!

I've run a quick ten second test, starting the footage then loading up and running the program. Of course I lose a few seconds of footage but that doesn't matter, the main thing is it seems to be working!

Thanks so much for your very logical (but completely escaping me) suggestion!

[DB83]

Flippin' heck. There must be a y in the day