caturing vhs through my sony digital 8 camcorder

[byyu]

I have a Sony DCR-TRV 103 digital 8 camcorder and a generic firewire card with Ti chip set. I was able to capture my digital 8 tapes and create vcds using Adobe Premiere 6, TMPGEnc and Nero 5.5.

Yesturday, I tried following the capturing prcedure posted in this site and in www.dvideohome.com. I hooked up my VCR to the Sony camcorder and tried to capture the movie real time ( no Hi-8 tape inserted in my camcorder). The result was I got no frame captured.

My question is - Do I need to transfer the vhs onto a digital 8 tape first before I can capture the move from the digital 8 to AVI? If not, how I can do a real time capture without the transfer?

Your insight/help/trick is highly appreciated. Thanks.

[valterroque]

Hi
I believe that your video camera do not have DV in.
Check if you can record from video straight to dig8 tape.
Good luck.

[byyu]

The following are how I am connecting the vcr, the digital 8 camcorder and my pc.

I was using a RCA cable to connect the vcr to my digital 8 camcorder and a firewire cable to connect the digital 8 camcorder to my fireware card on my pc. The iLink port on the camcorder is In/Out capable acording to the manual and I was able to capture movie on my digital 8 tape through the port to my pc using Adobe Premiere 6.

Thanks

[ChitownTaper]

I was able to use my sony to pass through the signal w/o a tape in using the following chain...

VCR RCA outs > TRV330 RCA Ins > Firewire Out > Firewire In > Premier 6.0

I had no problems, I used it to record a tv performance.

hope it helps a bit
Cal
ChitownTaper@attbi.com

[byyu]

Mr. ChitownTaper

Can you think of any cruial configurations that I may missed either on the camcorder or the Adobe software? Thanks.

[ChitownTaper]

Okay, I just did it again as a test for you and I don't have any special settings.

Are you switched to VCR or Cam mode? It needs to be on VCR.
Other than that it's pretty much the way you'd set up a regular vcr and then just use the firewire out.

cal

[byyu]

When I did it, I was using VTR/VCR mode on my Sony camcorder.

Thanks for you reply.

[yg1968]

You have to select DV out from the camcorder's menu for the passthrough feature to work.

If you live in Europe, the process is a bit more complicated since you must activate the recording capability of the camcorder.

[EricB]

From what I can see on the web, the 103 does have analog in so you should be able to capture analog to D8 tape. I couldn't confirm that the model has analog passthrough which allows conversion without first going to tape.

If you do have analog passthrough, you should be able to find a menu choice that says AV / DV Out with a yes/no selection.

There are several Sony models without passthrough and also several European models (I think with an "E" at the end like TRV-120E) which have passthrough disabled.

[chuck1j]

My Sony trv310 doesn't have pass-through. Yours may not have this capability either. All Sony's are not created equal! I can input analog from a vcr or other analog source, and I can output digital video through my firewire port, but not at the same time. Any time a signal is sensed on the analog input ports, the firewire output port is disabled on my camcorder. A search on the terms, Sony and Pass-through should get you enough info to determine if your camera has this capability. There should be some reference to this feature in your manual too. Hope this helps.