Powerdirector365, problems capturing tapes Sony TRV125E

AndreVS

Newbie Location: Netherlands Joined: Sep 27, 2016 05:14 Messages: 14 Offline

Solved by

Mar 09, 2021 12:41

Hi,

I have a problem. After to many years I have started capturing my old video tapes. Just a little story. About 20y ago my old Hi8 camera from Sony (I think a TRV120) broke. I bought in stead second hand a newer version the TRV125E. This one is digital while the 120 still was analog. But I was able to play my old analog tapes on the new 125. The nice thing about the 125E is he has a digital out, with firewire. The 125E is still working now after about 20y.

I started capturing my newer tapes using PD365. The ones which are digital worked fine. I was able to capture them. Now I have started capturing the old tapes which were made using the 120. When I make my firewire connection both on my computer screen in the capture and on the screen on my 125 the tape has noise and a very bad feeling, though the first frame(s) are OK. But when I take the firewire cable out of my computer the problem is gone and on the screen of my 125E everything is clear and nice. I have changed the firewire cable but the problem stayed the same. I expected that the problem was in my 125E camera. On internet many people are mentioning that sometimes it is impossible to play the analog tapes back on the digital 125E. But I experienced no problems playing these tapes when the firewire cable was not connected or when I exit PD.

Now the strange thing. I still had my old version of Pinnacle Studio 23. I tried to capture my analog tapes using Studio, To my surprise everything went OK and I am able to capture my analog tapes using firewire to my computer.
But I bought my PD365 to use it in full. It looks like something is wrong in the drivers for my Sony TRV 125E. It sounds stupid to have to use Studio to capture my analog tapes and do my editing using PD.

Please advise me what to do

Kind regards,
André

tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Mar 09, 2021 17:28

It is good that you already found a working solution. You may want to report your findings to Cyberlink support.

The solution is posted here: https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/81394.page#334930 , you can use windv as an alternative.

GerryQ

Member Joined: Aug 26, 2015 14:43 Messages: 63 Offline

Mar 31, 2021 13:32

Hi André,

Perhaps not the answer you were looking for... But I too have recently played with some old Hi8 tapes.
I too found myself having to ditch the capture using PD. (I gave it a good bash, on two machines, but gave up.)
Funnily enough, I too used some pre-historic Pinnacle software (Not quite as old as the tapes !) for the initial capture !

Once I had resigned myself to this work route, I found it very easy to just grab all the content in Pinnacle Studio.
Once grabbed, it was then easy to work with everything in PD to edit and produce the final video.
I know it's a workaround, and yes it may have been better to capture directly in PD.
But at least I thought I'd let you know that you're not alone !

You may take some comfort (Little, I know...) in the fact that you could still use your firewire connection.
When I specced up my 'Modern' 4K editing PC, I had neglected this input.
I had to resort to an old Hi8 to USB connection. (I'd also tried PD Capture on my old laptop via Firewire, no joy)

The tapes I had discovered in the attic were of my two sons when very much younger.
It was an eye opener to see how 'Poor' was the recording quality of my once 'Top end Hi8 camera' when compared to my kit today.
However, my boys watched the results on a 65inch 4K screen and didn't complain at all - they just enjoyed the show.
Perhaps it is more about content after all !

I didn't complain about the fact I couldn't get PD capturing old analogue video, after all, this was a rare use for me and I'd rather they concentrate on features for the future.

Gerry