Capturing Video from Camcorder

BrownBoy

Hello,

I am trying to transfer video from my Camcorder to my PC thru USB. The video capture is very jerky & skips frames. Is this a problem or am I missing something ?
Here are the details of the equipment I am using :

Camcorder : Sony DCR TRV33

PC : Gateway PIII 600MHz with 256MB RAM & 80GB HDD (40GB Free)

Capture Software : Ulead Video Studio 7 / Sony Image Mixer

My friend who has a PC of similar spec (but with a ILink card) and a lower spec Camcorder, gets perfect video transfer.


Thanks

elderlemon

USB wont give you the bandwidth required for good video. The video on the camcorder is in DV format and needs a big pipe to get decent quality. I tried this with a TRV22 and got exactly the same result - ended up changing to an Ilink and everything works really good. Suggest you look at www.camcorderinfo.com - theres a section on the 19/22/33 and lots of posts on this subject.

ST

You need a Firewire/iLink card. I picked one up from Marx Computers for €30

http://www.marx-computers.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?product=controller&cart_id=

It comes complete with cable and software.

BrownBoy

Thank u both. I will go for a firewire card.

RicardoSmith

The problem is likely that you are using USB 1.1. Whereas USB 2.0 is as fast as Firewire/iLink/IEEE1394 (different names for the same thing).

But as the others have siad you need to buy a new card. As most Camcorders have a Firewire connector you'd be best getting a firewire card. Not some PC sound cards some with a Firewire connector. So check that out.

You can also get a card with USB2 and Firewire on it, and also a card with Firewire, USB2 and SATA connectors (for new harddisks). Maplins does them.

Yorky

I've bought the PCI Firewire card and am now in the process of capturing video using Windows Moviemaker. Comparing the picture on the camcorder screen to the preview screen on the PC monitor, the footage is slightly jerky on the monitor. Is this normal and is there any way of improving the quality?

When captured, I want to burn the video onto CD's and DVD's. I have Cyberlink Powerstarter burning software but the video/photo button is inactive. Any ideas why this is the case? So, how should I burn the video onto CD/DVD?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Further question 14th August: I have now captured the video using Windows Movie maker and it has separated the video into clips. This is convenient for finding a particular clip but I cannot save it in clip form.Each time I save it the entire video is saved with no clip separation. How can I save the clips?

Also, there appears to be noise interference on the captured video which was not evident on the original - it sounds like wind noise.

Yorky

Any takers for this?

I managed to record several clips onto a CD-R last night but when I went to viw them tonight they've all disappeared bar one! Where could they have gone?

andy1249

Did you use multi-session while recording to the CD-R , if so , only the first one is visible on some machines.

Yorky

Thanks for your reply. Could you possibly elaborate on this - I checked the properties and the amount used is only approx. 2MB on a thirty second clip. I diostinctly remember seeing all of the clips listed when I first recorded them to CD. How should I change the multi-session setting? If I did change this setting, would it mean I could only record to the CD-R once?