DV capture via 1394 firewire

[dyne]

Dear vcdhelp forum

I am trying to capture from a JVC DV camcorder to a dell inspiron 8000 laptop with built in firewire, using virtualdub 1.4.10 and encounter the following problems:
- when going into capture mode the following error window pops up:"cannot find a driver to draw this non-RGB format. preview and histogram functions will be unavailable", however Virtualdup will capture without preview.
- When capturing anythings higher than 10 fps, i get lots of dropped frames and movie will appear jerky.
- when trying to include sound into the capture only sound from the built in laptop mic is included.
- when choosing the video compression mode all installed options are disabled.

Any information, feedback, workaround is welcome.

dyne

[bugster]

You do NOT capture DV in the convetional sense, hence you should not use virtualdub for this. Use a DV aware video editing app such as Premiere or even MS movie maker (works fine for me on XP pro).

As I said, DV is NOT captured as such, it is already digital data and is 'copied' from the Tape to the HD, there is no loss and hence no quality problems.

Hope this helps

[miketree]

I believe there are some bios issues with some Dell laptops and firewire. SOmething to do with the PSU fan turing on & off.

Checkout Dell tech support for more info.

[dyne]

bugster

txs for the input. Sorry for using the wrong terminology, I actually want to "copy" the data to my HD, but thought virtualdub was appropriate for that (after reading the vcdhelp tutorials). Unfortunately moviemaker only runs on win xp and not on w2k. can you suggest any alternative (free) software?

I also tried Moviexone, but got the same problems with dropped frames etc., sound problems. challenge remainsis how to get the 1 to 1 copy on the hd.

[Riccardom]

I suggest you to try ScenalyzerLive (www.scenalyzer.com) that usually perform very well, even with non performing hardware.
But don't forget to install DirectX 8.1 or up.
They are very important.

Riccardom

[yg1968]

You can use freeware programs such as DVIO or Amcap. Don't forget that DV takes 13 gig/hour which makes it hard to capture on the hard drive of a laptop unless you have an additional external hard drive.

[dyne]

yg1968,

Txs for your input. DVIO works just perfectly (the smallest programm of all!). Amcap delivers the preview, but does not capture/copy (files is black).

Now that i have my (huge) avi's on the disc, i would like to compress them to divx using virtual dub, but when trying to open th file i get the message "couldnt locate decompressor for format dvsd (uknownn)", On the other hand converting to mpg with TMPG or just watching them in media player doesnt seem to be a problem.

Any suggestion for the the Virtualdub problem (is it the right software to go from dvsd to divx)?

[Thorn]

Mainconcept and canopus make free DV decoder codecs that virtualdub can use (you still have to encode with your microsoft DV codec if you want to encode without a watermark). I've imported DV material into Virtualdub using the mainconcept codec, and it worked fine. One caveat, though: it must be a type-2 dv file. If it's type-1, Virtualdub can't read the audio. So either get the audio out and process separately, or convert the file to type-2 with the free utility from ulead. If you "captured" the file as type-2 then you're good to go.
There are many other threads on this so you can get more information by searching the forums too.

[dyne]

Thorn

Txs for your hint. The missing codec from mainconcept was the solution (probably also to the prior capturing problem)

[yg1968]

DVIO allows you to capture in DV avi type 2 (if you select type 2 from the program's menu).