New to forum and got a major problem with video capture.

Hi Guys and Gals

New to the site and new to DV editing and already feel like i'm banging my head against a brick wall and not getting anywhere.

First here is my system spec:

3GHz P4 800MHz FSB
1GB DDR400 Duel channel Corsair RAM
Gigabyte GA-8KNXP Motherboard
Asus ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 256 gfx card
Compro Videomate TV gold Plus tv card
200GB Maxtor diamondmax 9 7200rpm Hard SATA hard disk
4x 80GB Maxtor diamondmax 9 IDE Hard drives
Windows XP + SP1 and security Updates / Directx9

DV camera: JVC jvc GR-D23 EK Digital Video camera.


And the problem.

When capturing video after a few seconds the program crashes and I cannot even close it using the task manager by ending the process!!!!!!!

This happens every time!!! the main program i wanted to use was Ulead Videostudio 7, but have also tried Ulead Moviemaker 2 and about 6 other programs I have found on the net for video capture, I get the same thing everytime, with each program, I have tried inputting the signal on both Svideo and composite ports on both my TV card and 9800PRO gfx card!

No luck what so ever!!! Once the program crashes the only option is a reboot as can't close the program down. I have reinstalled the sofftware and it didn't help!!!!

The only solution I can think of at the moment is a system reformat but only want to do that as a last resort as I have so much installed and alot of data.

Please please please help!!!!!!


EK

[MarkE19]

Evilkyote, welcome to the forum and video editing

Believe me you are not the only one to be banging your head against a brick wall with PC editing, but lets see if we can get around your problems with a bit of basic PC setup advise.

first off you say you have a digital camcorder but you are doing analogue capture - Why? You should be doing capture via firewire that is digital and therefore there will be no loss of quality -oh and it is much easier .
If you don't alread have firewire ports on your PC you can easily and cheaply add them with a £10 PCI card. This will come with the required cable to connect cam to PC. If you already have firewire ports then you need to just get a 6 pin to 4 pin firewire cable that should cost around £5 online. Firewire is also known as ieee1394, DV & iLink. Connect the cam to PC via firewire, power cam on in VCR mode and then start the editing software. The cam should be detected automatically.

The specs of your PC are easily good enough for capture etc so we just need to make sure it is set up correctly. In an ideal world you should capture to a HDD with no programs installed on it. The HDD should be formatted as NTFS and not FAT32 otherwise you will have problems captureing long video clips. Make sure DMS is enabled for the capture (and all other) drives to improve performance. If captureing to the IDE drives then don't have a CD/DVD drive connected to the same IDE cable as the CD etc will slow down the HDD.
Make sure you have plenty of spare space as capture takes 1Gb for every 4 minutes - thats approx 14Gb per 1 hour DV tape. Also make sure the HDD is defragmented.
Stop all background programs such as antivirus and firewall. Also disable screensavers and power save modes. I use a free downloadable program to stop the background programs called'EndItAll'. Do a search for it and install it - it does exactly what the name suggests. If you have problems with finding it PM me your e-mail address and I will send a copy to you.

Make sure you have all the latest patches/updates for the software you are useing as fixes are often available for free from the companies web site.

Now I'm sure somebody else will be along in a moment to add the obvious things I've forgotten to suggest - as there are so many things that can cause these problems. You should also do a search on here for other threads as this is a fairly common problem along with 'dropped frames'.

Good luck,
Mark.

[expat]

How about a new sticky for video capture?