I connect the DV slot on the camera to the firewire port on the laptop,
and WMM starts, so I "automatically capture the entire tape" on a
reasonable resolution. It starts perfectly normally, so I leave it
capturing away, until I have a quick chek 10 minutes later when the
captured video time is about 6 minutes, but the time elapsed on the
Camera is 10 minutes. I then watch the captured video time ticking
over, and it's very erratic, one moment ticking normally, then a pause
of a few seconds, then ticking away again.
Can anyone tell me why this happens?
1) As mentioned, never CAPTURE anything except to DV-AVI. Then it's a
simple capture, recording on the hard drive exactly the same as your
camera tape. ANY other setting will require your computer to process
and render the incoming Firewire data and your results are not
predictable. There are no settings to fiddle with with a true capture.
It'll say 720x480 etc, but it's a capture, not a process. And a
standard avi file is about 13 gigs/hour, so your 3 gigs for 15 minutes
is still about right.
2) Try using another capture program. WMM is free and worth every
penny. Many other major editing programs give you a free 30 day trial,
so you can download them and try. Most companies have two types of
editors. A professional one that costs hundreds, and a amateur one for
$99 or less. Stay with the less expensive ones until you get going and
"get the bug." They are much more powerful, but take longer to learn.
3) I'm capturing and editing high definition on my 3 year old laptop,
on battery, so it's not computer horsepower IF you know what you're
doing. For one thing, stop all TSR programs. Go to Start- Run - type
in msconfig - Startup - Disable All. Then reboot. This will stop all
programs that run in the background, like virus protection, email,
Word, etc. Now your computer can dedicate itself to editing video.
When you're finished, go back and Enable All, or selectively enable the
programs if you wish.
4) Make sure you have enough hard drive space. And that means double
what you capture. A 30 minute capture will take 6-7 gigs. As you edit
the program creates a very small editing file, and leaves your original
captured file intact. This is called non-destructive editing and is
the way all programs now work. (Before, working with film, editors
actually cut the film and spliced together, and early programs changed
the original file, that's destructive editing.) After you are finished
editing, you'll create a new file, say now 15 minutes long, but with
titles, music, ets. Then render to a file version. Now you have your
choice of quality and settings. I recommend creating a new avi file
with the same settings so quality is the same, but that will take 3-4
gigs for your 15 minute final version. And some programs will take
hours to render, here it depends a lot on your computer power. My old
laptop has only a 40 gig harddrive, so I usually connect a Firewire
external harddrive with about 250 gigs. And I do recommend Firewire
instead of USB2, and never USB1.
Before starting most newbies think video editing is just a matter of
making a few connections and in half an hour it's all done. I know a
lot (not all), and I'm taking 2-3 hours per minute of final video. So
block out a major time frame.
Hope this helps
Jim McGauhey
Washington State
I specialize in underwater video. some sample clips:
Wolf Eel on youtube
Diving British Columbia
Intro to Commercial Diving at DIT
Maui Jan 06
