PD6 capture problems from DV

JeffK44

Newbie Joined: Jan 14, 2008 12:41 Messages: 11 Offline

Solved by

May 18, 2008 21:52

I am using PD6 with update 2319.

I am having very inconsistent success capturing video from my Sony DCR-TRV103. More failures than successes. When capturing, PD6 seems to control the camera fine but is not correctly reading the information from the camera. Either it will not recognize the video and shows only a black screen in the preview, or when is does show the image, when I hit play or record, it usually will only play for a few seconds and then stops.

I have also noticed that when in capture mode PD6 usually does not detect the time code from the camera, which may or may not be part of the problem.

I have had some or I should say 1 successful video captured normally from this camera but it usually takes many attempts that at best, results in short clips that I have to merge together.

I have recently uninstalled and reinstalled PD 6 and have had no improvement.
I turn off all other applications as best I can before attempting to capture.

Any ideas as to why I am having this trouble would be appreciated.

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

May 19, 2008 06:13

Timecodes are very much dependent upon how you treat the tape you've put into the camera. New/Old 4:3 or 16:9 - have to be considered.

If you've allowed a gap between two recorded video to occur on a new tape then the timecode has been incorrectly set and the recording will not flow during capture.

The "old school" of thought was to play/record the whole tape through and then record (after setting the start of the timecode) after rewinding it. I have always been very careful when recording to ensure I start at the end point of the last capture or one frame in. I am especially careful after extracting the video from tape to my hard drive.

I hope this info helps.

Dafydd

JeffK44

Newbie Joined: Jan 14, 2008 12:41 Messages: 11 Offline

May 19, 2008 08:05

Dafydd, thanks for the response. You mentioned 4:3 or 16:9 and I’ll have to check what I have set in PD6.
However, I am a little confused on your time code response. I understand that gaps in the original recording will cause problems with the time code and my old home video tapes do have those gaps, but this keeps stopping before it ever reaches a gap in the tape. I have tried starting at different points along the tape but many time all I get is a black screen.

Were you suggesting that I play the whole tape in the camcorder and then rewind before attempting to capture, or playing it in the PD6 preview window and then rewinding before capture? Playing the whole tape through PD6 in the preview window will not work because that is one of the times it keeps stopping or I only get the black screen even though I can see in the camera that it is playing real video.

Would it be that PD6 is not compatible with this older Digital8 camcorder? Would it matter if the tape I am using was actually recorded in an even older non-digital camcorder?