Pixelation Upon Transfer from DV to Computer

[Jabbawonga]

Hi everyone,

I have an old Canon Elura 80 miniDV camera and some miniDV tapes with family videos on them that I would like to transfer to my computer. I've connected my camera via firewire to my desktop PC, and I'm using Adobe Premiere 10 to try to capture the video. What I've found is that, when I watch the videos on just the camera screen they look fine, but when I capture them on my computer, they show a bit of pixelation at parts. The weird thing to me is that, when the camera is connected by firewire to the computer, if I press play on the camera and watch the video on the camera's screen, it's pixelated on there too. If I unplug the firewire cable, the video is normal on the camera's screen.

When I set up the project in Adobe Premiere, I made sure that the settings were the same as the camera settings (the program gives you a warning message if they are different), but the capture is still pixelated. I also tried an old version of Scenalyzer freeware and had the same result.

Any ideas or feedback that anyone has is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Jabba

[JVRaines]

Wind the tape end-to-end, run a cleaning cassette, and try it again.

[Jabbawonga]

Thanks, I'll try that. Out of curiosity, why would the pixelation only show up when the Firewire cable is plugged in?

[LMotlow]

Why people bother to answer queries like this, I don't know, must be the mommy in me., Members keep telling people that NLE's suck as capture software, but people keep capturing with editors and whining about it. Well, here goes......

Use WinDv or something similar to copy (not capture) DV direct 1:1 to non-re-encoded DV. If that's not possible with the system you're using, then live with what you get.

[Jabbawonga]

So....thanks....I guess? If you read my original post, you'll see that I'm not really "whining" about the software. The pixelation shows up on my computer screen and also on my camera screen when the Firewire is connected to the camera. That happens even when I haven't opened any video software on my computer at all. If I plug the firewire into my camera and play a video on the camera, the screen *on the camera* shows pixelation in the video. When I unplug the Firewire from the camera and then play the video on the camera, everything looks fine.

And, for the record, I did try WinDV as well. Same result.

[LMotlow]

OK, we need more info on this. Are you talking about one tape, or multiple tapes? Everything plays oddly with Firwewire connected and then plays OK without Firewire, or all of your MiniDV's play that way?

[JVRaines]

Thanks, I'll try that. Out of curiosity, why would the pixelation only show up when the Firewire cable is plugged in?

I was guessing that the correlation is a coincidence, because what you describe is a symptom of shedding tape. But if it only happens when you are running over FireWire, then you have some electronic problem with the camera.