Capture from miniDV Looks Awful in Vegas Studio 8

[Mike Kujbida]

You need to get a firewire card and do your captures through it.
USB was OK for your school camera (hard drive model) but not OK for a tape-based one.

[Joe Maguire]

It’s funny, but as I typed my original question, the more I thought about the DV cable being the difference. The manual that came with my JVC camera didn’t say anything about a discrete DV card being superior to a USB connection, but in checking some queries on Google I started thinking that DV might make a diff. I’ll stop by Fry’s on the way home and look at what they have available for DV cards. Thanks for your advice!

[Mike Kujbida]

It’s extremely rare for the hardware (your camcorder) side of a company to talk to the software side (your NLE) of a company to figure out what the best video capture approach should be.
Having said that, most camcorder manuals I’ve seen strongly recommend using firewire (aka IEE 1394) to get video from the camera to a computer.

Just make sure that whatever firewire card you get has a Texas Instrument chipset as other makes/models have been known to cause problems when you least expect it.

[Joe Maguire]

Unfortunately, I’m still having issues.

1 – I bought a Belkin 3-Port 1394a card, but Windows Vista isn’t recogmizing it. But that’s OK because…

2 – I discovered my Acer PC actually HAS a built-in 1394a port…unfortunately, it’s a VIA motherboard, and apparently a VIA chipset.

Although Vista recognizes the built-in 1394a port, it will not recognize my JVC camera. I contacted JVC, and they claim this is a known issue with miniDV tape-based camcorders, 1394a ports, and Windows Vista with NO KNOWN SOLUTION!!! They say it works in Windows XP, but my PC didn’t come with XP and I don’t want to roll it back.

Microsoft says the issue is that Vista “only enumerates a device that sets its link status to request enumeration. If an IEEE 1394a device does not report the correct status of its link, the IEEE 1394 stack in Windows Vista does not enumerate the device.” They suggested a registry hack and/or a firmware update. I couldn’t find the latter, and after applying the hack Vista still didn’t recognize my camcorder.

In performing a Google search, one user said to apply this registry hack, then power down both camcorder and computer; turn on the camera and start playing the tape, then turn on the computer, and Vista should recognize the camcorder. It didn’t.

Any ideas?

[Mike Kujbida]

Joe, you’re making me REALLY glad I stuck with XP Pro.
Seriously, I’ve never heard of this happening before and I’m on a lot of different Vegas forums.
I sure hope someone else who’s had this trouble has some ideas as I’m lost.

My only suggestion is to post this question in the regular Vegas forum as it gets more traffic from experienced users.

[Terry Esslinger]

Joe,
Have you tried borrowing a friends camera that is not a JVC (say a Sony oe Canon) and see if you have the same problem. Just curious if this is really limited to JVC or even your JVC model? Should just be able to hook them up to yoour discovered(?) firewire port.

[Joe Maguire]

I don’t have a camcorder to borrow with Firewire. I have used my office’s Panasonic HDD camera without issue, but that is merely using USB to copy files from the camera’s hard drive to my computer’s hard drive, so it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison.

BTW, I have been able to get my home computer to recognize my Belkin card. I went into the computer BIOS and disabled the onboard 1394 (with a VIA chipset), although I had to swap the network card and the Belkin Firewire cards from their original PCI slots to get Vista to “see” the Belkin card. Alas, even with this and the Microsoft registry “fix,” the JVC camera still isn’t recognized.

I think what I’ll wind up doing is use my work computer with the Belkin card to capture the footage from all my tapes so I can edit them, and look to get an HDD camcorder (or at least a miniDV camera that Vista will recognize).

[Joe Maguire]

GREAT NEWS! I am happy to announce that my setup now works…but sheepishly, I have to admit that after I got the new Belkin card installed, I forgot to hook up the Firewire cable to the camcorder. As soon as I hooked up the cable and turned on the camera, Vista recognized my camera and asked what I wanted to do and offered a couple of programs, including my Sony Vegas Studio Capture program.

So, if anyone else on this forum has a problem with Vista and Firewire/1394a, do these steps:

If your Firewire card does not have a Texas Instruments (TI) chipset, buy a Firewire card such as the Belkin that does. Remove the old card or disable the onboard 1394 device in the BIOS before you install the new Firewire card.

Apply the registry fix detailed by Microsoft in their Knowledge Base article https://support.microsoft.com/kb/927827

Ensure the Firewire cable is connected to both the Firewire card and your camcorder, then set your camcorder to Play mode and start the tape. At this point, Vista should recognize the camera.