Capturing Old Camcorder Footage

[Stephen Mann]

Everything after “access violation” is of value only to the original programmer, and then only in controlled conditions.

We have all seen access violations occur since we took ownership of our first x86 PC’s. The infamous “Bluescreen”, application crashes, it doesn’t really matter, access violations are all over the place. For any of you that remember the good old Windows 9x days, a General Protection Fault and Invalid Page Fault are basically the same thing (and a segmentation fault too). To many people, the phrase ‘access violation’ is synonymous with “crash”. But what exactly is an access violation?

To put it simply, an access violation occurs any time an area of memory is accessed that the program doesn’t have permission to access. This can be due to bad code, faulty RAM or even a bad device driver. It really doesn’t matter who the culprit is, the root issue is the same.

But

You have provided so little information to go on. What kind of tapes? what kind of camcorder? And the big question, what capture hardware?

You say that you connected the composite video and left-channel audio to your, PC? I am unaware of any PC with capture hardware built-in. The yellow-red-white plugs on your PC are analog video and stereo audio outputs.

Last, the capture program is looking for a Firewire connection to a camera.

So, if you provide more information, we may be able to help you.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Mike Kujbida]

Some video cards will allow you to capture analog video but you have to do it the way they tell you to.
With Vegas, the best (and only) way to do it is to convert the signal from analog to digital and bring it in through firewire to your computer.
If you have a miniDV camcorder that has a feature called pass-through, this is the cheapest method.
BTW, this can be a model where the tape transport no longer functions as you only need it to function as a converter.
Connect your yellow and white cables to the camcorder’s analog inputs and then hook a firewire cable to your computer.
Then and only then can you use Sony’s capture utility.
The other method is to buy a card like a Canopus ADVC-55 which does the analog to digital conversion for you.
Some folks like to spend even more money and buy either the Canopus ADVC-110 or ADVC-300 as you have more options.

[James Rudge]

ok sorry for lack of information

my computer is windows vista 32 bit operating system with a 3070mb RAM.

The camcorder is an Samsung 8mm video recorder (pal) non digital and using standard pal 8 tapes i believe

and i am using the sony vegas capture 6 thing as i dont have pinnacle or premiere

i have yello and white sockets in computer and the capture is finding the picture

[James Rudge]

ok sorry for lack of information

my computer is windows vista 32 bit operating system with a 3070mb RAM.

The camcorder is an Samsung 8mm video recorder

edit:

Mike: how might one convert from analog to dogital?
and what is a firewire/ do i need to buy one

thanks

[Greg Barringer]

Here’s how I do it and it works very well. I have a Sony mini DV Handycam model DCR-TRV33. The Handycam came with a cable for playback to a VCR.
I connect that cable from the Handycam to the VCR line out, red, white, yellow. Then connect the Handycam to the computer with Firewire. Set the Handycam to VCR mode and Analog In / Digital Out (AV IN/DV Out). This is selected in the menu. Use Vegas to Capture.
Any camcorder with AV IN/DV OUT will work.