HDVSplit 0.75 - utility for capturing HDV with scene split by timestamp

[documentaryman]

a tool can be written that will read in and out timecodes for certain clip (maybe I'll write it at this weekend).
...............................
Thank you. But if it's writing timestamp inside mpg file, then it won't be compatibale with other editor.


If you can write the tool to read in and out timecodes from your captured m2t files they can be copied and pasted into PPro's project manager and the problem can be solved that way. It would be very helpful if it's not too much work.

Thanks, Paviko.

[BabaG]

thanks paviko. a tool like that would indeed be a lifesaver.
would probably encourage a lot of users as well. i followed
the instructions you gave for dgindex and, while i don't
really know what much of it means, i can see that there
does seem to be a timestamp there. another indication
that your proposed indexing tool would be of great use.
as i think about it, probably the best way to implement
such a tool is as a part of hdvsplit. perhaps something
like a checkbox option to save a list as a text file as the
capture, split, or capture with split is happening. that
would be ideal.

thanks again,
BabaG

[paviko]

I don't have good news :(
I've spent some time with timecodes. There is special place in MPEG header (not only with TS file - .m2t) for storing timecodes. Unfortunatelly Sony camcorders are not using this field. It's empty, always 00:00:00:00. Because of the nature of HDV it's not possible to take timecode from camcorder and associate it with a frame. That's probably why Premiere only for first scene is including timecode (it's read before starting recording) and the next are reset.
Sony is using timecodes from tape for encoding/decoding MPEG, but this timecode is slightly shifted comparing to real tape time. On my HC1 it's about 400 ms (12 frames with NTSC). I've written simple application that reads these timecodes and shift it 400 ms, but probably from one device to another this shift can differ/

Link to app:
http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/TimeCodes.0.1.zip

It output timecodes to the edit box with format "in / out / filename".
If you think that it's somehow usable for you, I can add this to HDVSplit.

Regards

[BabaG]

thanks paviko. i'll look at it monday when i get in front of an edit machine.

[BabaG]

paviko,

tried to run the timecode app and got this error:



all i did was unzip the file and run the exe from the folder it was in in my
download directory.

[BabaG]

from the description, the app sounds very useful. perhaps it includes
an input box in which the user could add their own value for the ms
offset you describe. this would allow for variances in the
recording/playback gear. a calibration method for users would be to
record a tape of a white wall for 15-20sec, then another 15-20sec
with the lens cap on, repeating this pattern of white/black segments
for a while. this would give an easily deliniated source of clips to
use for adjusting the ms field. one would capture several times,
each time adjusting the ms value until they are correct. a default
might be suggested by your original test.

thanks,
BabaG

[paviko]

I can't see the error (not approved link), but I've tried running this app on Windows 2000 and get message that there is no MFC library. I've linked this library statically now, so download the file again.

from the description, the app sounds very useful. perhaps it includes
an input box in which the user could add their own value for the ms
offset you describe. this would allow for variances in the
recording/playback gear. a calibration method for users would be to
record a tape of a white wall for 15-20sec, then another 15-20sec
with the lens cap on, repeating this pattern of white/black segments
for a while. Maybe the calibration can be even simplier. Before we start recording we can read what timecode is shown by camcorder. We can compare this timecode with the first timecode received from m2t file and get the diffrence.

Regards

[BabaG]

got it! yes, paviko, this is very good. in this form it is limited
as it does not print or export this list. if we could export this
list we could use it, or edit it and then use it, in another app
that is batch capable. we could also use it to replace a damaged
or lost file. very helpful. of course, i'd love to see all of these
folded into hdvsplit in the future ;)

i just remembered one side issue. there seem to be two or
more timecode streams somehow. many cameras, more likely
the pro level ones, will allow the user to set the timecode value
they choose. often users will set this such that the values
correspond to something like a roll or scene number. for
example, roll twelve might begin with the timecode value of
12:00:00;00. roll 13 might be 13:00:00;00, etc. this seems
to be different than the timecode that we are using here which
always seems to start at 00:00:00;00. i have to look into this
further to see if there is actually a discrepancy here but i
thought it is worth mentioning. i try to anticipate issues should
they arise and this seems like it could pose one down the line.
i'm thinking specifically of an instance where we output
timecode from your new app and try to capture in another app
using this info. if the list we output always uses the tape
location timecode but the capture app sees the user set
timecode we might run into a problem wherein the capture app
refuses the capture or captures improperly. on the other hand,
if these features eventually make their way into hdvsplit, we
would have no issue as hdvsplit would know what to use or
simply be blissfully unaware of the other format of timecode.
just anticipating here.

thanks again for your wonderful work and help,
BabaG

[raymod2]

I tried using this tool to do simple captures (no scene splitting) with my Sony HDR-HC3. It worked great. Can this tool also record the stream back onto the camera?

[Corben9]

Same question here !!! Is there a way or an app that easily writes m2t files back to the Tape.. I kinda got my workflow up to date with the new premeire and Avid Xpres HD and notices that Avid doesnt transcode everything like studip PPro every time *with quality loss* but just muxes the conform files together if u do a cut .. saves u HOURS of encoding AND keeps ur qulity just the way u like it ...Compositing can still be done in After Effects .. a little bit of info on the side for the people interested ...

Back to my question .. I tried Avid and Premier to get my new sequence back to the tape ... in Premiere over export to tape and in avid over export to HDV... I get an odd Flametrower blabla error in Avid and in Premiere when the recording phase starts it just records nothing .. blank ...

I tried recording back to the cam in DV and that works flaweleslly ... so my question is this ... is there a HDVSplit like tool that does the oposite aka. storing m2t files back on the Tape ... if anyone has played with this and found a solution for the HDR HC1E please help or can something like that be implemented in HVDSplit ???

[paviko]

Hello.
Sorry for so long silenece.
@BabaG
n this form it is limited
as it does not print or export this list. if we could export this
list we could use it, or edit it and then use it, in another app
that is batch capable.
The list can be copied by selecting whole text, using keys combination "Ctrl + C" (Copy) and then e.g. paste this to Notepad - "Ctrl + V" (Paste). It's a bit limited ;)

@raymod2 and @Corben9
Can this tool also record the stream back onto the camera?
HDVSplit can't record back onto camera. I'm planning to add this in free time, but for now I'm very busy :(
Don't know about any free tool that does that, but maybe there is some. It shouldn't be hard to transport stream back to tape.

Regards

[Backwoods]

I believe CapDVHS can. It would be nice if HDVSplit could also. Having it be a one in all app (also if it could do the step frame record, that would be nice...in due time).

[raymod2]

Any chance you could describe how to do this in CapDVHS? I downloaded that utility and installed it. I can capture (camera->PC) but I can't get it to play back (PC->camera).

[Backwoods]

The WrtDVHS tab I believe.

[raymod2]

I tried using that tab. It allows me to select a file and there are START and STOP buttons. I can press the START button but nothing happens. The STOP button is always greyed out.

[bobkart]

Hello Paviko, great program your HDVSplit is. Some questions/observations.

First, I think I detected a bug, or at least a misfeature. In the process of trying to transfer a tape with no dropped frames, I tried transferring to a file over the network, on another PC in the LAN. The transfer finished but the file did not end up on the other PC. In fact at the time I did not know where the file went. A few days later I noticed I had too much space being used on my hard drive for the files I had on it. It was over by 12GB, the size of one of these transferred HDV files. It said the Nethood folder in Documents and Settings/Robert had 12GB in it but all I could see there by browsing was a few folders that linked to Network Places. As part of my trying to track down this file I defragmented the drive, and it reported moving HDV-Tape2.m2t, the name of the file I tried to transfer across the network. But a search for such a file turned up no matches. Looking in those folders in Nethood just showed me the contents of folders on other PCs. Finally I went into a CMD shell and did a DIR /S and could see the errant file in one of the folders that link to another PC. I was then able to remove the file. Seems there is a target.lnk file in those folders that indicates that they are connected to other PCs. Writing a file in them is a pretty good way to hide the file, I could only see it through the use of a CMD shell. Maybe the fix is as simple as adding "don't do that" to the README file. Just thought I'd pass my experiences along.

The question would be along the lines of wondering if/when you might consider adding transfer capability in the other direction (PC->camcorder).

And thanks for helping the video community with this great application. Keep up the good work!

[raymod2]

@paviko: Have you had any free time to add the copy back to tape feature? I have some hidef footage that I need to dub to another tape but I only have one camera.

[jmac698]

In the wrtdvhs tab of dvhs, pick the file, hit start, but then hit record on your DV device. This may do it. It's the way some other programs worked.

There's many ways to read time codes, for example dvbdump from www.dvbportal.de , it can extract a lot of info a text file.
You could also put it in SD mode, and try to get the timecodes from the DV copy, and assume they match up to the HDV copy.

For the waveform monitor, that is quite easy. Pick a line, then draw a graph of the Y values of each pixel. Make sure to request a YUV mode from directshow. A vectorscope is a little bit harder but the scope plugin for avisynth has source. Isn't there also a way to use avs plugins in ffdshow in realtime? If so it's just a matter of configuring ffdshow.
(If you have decoded RGB, add them in this way: Y=r*0.2125+g*0.7154+b*0.0721)

[raymod2]

@paviko:

Will you release the source code to HDVSplit? I am interested in adding the copy-back-to-tape feature myself.

[paviko]

I tried transferring to a file over the network, on another PC in the LAN
Thanks for pointing this out.

Will you release the source code to HDVSplit? I am interested in adding the copy-back-to-tape feature myself.Probably the source code won't be available soon. I haven't yet tried writing copy back to tape function.

Regards

[valli]

Can I ask when will be released new version ?
It will be very useful a "split now " button or a button to split m2t file in n parts

[paviko]

If everything goes well, new version should be at the New Year party. "Split now" probably yes ;)

[JeffreyLiou]

Can't wait for the new version for the Canon XH-A1 support:D

[stevemc]

Can't wait for the new version for the Canon XH-A1 support:D

Is it true that Canon support is expected in the next release? I have a Canon HV10 and I'd really love to see that. I have been looking far and wide for a utility to capture scenes with time code file naming.

[x42x42]

While Paviko is busy with the next version of HDVSplit (that hopefully will have native Canon splitting support) I created an interim solution for the HV-10.

Attached is a patch that will modify HDVSplit 0.75 to split HV-10 streams (direct capture or MPEG transport file) correctly.

To apply the patch:


Download the attached ZIP (HV10Split_patch.zip)
Unzip the contained patch application (HV10Split_Patch.exe) to a directory
Place the original HDVSplit.exe (version 0.75) into the same directory
Run the patch application, preferably from the command line so you can see if the patch was successful


If everything went ok there will be a new executeable called HV10Split.exe in the directory holding the patcher and the original HDVSplit.exe. The new executeable is just like the original one except it handles splitting HV-10 (and maybe other Canon) input correctly.

Note that the patched application only works with the HV-10 and not with the Sonys anymore. For Sony use the original HDVSplit.exe that does not get modified by the patch process.

Enjoy!
King Sabo

[stevemc]

Awesome!! Thank you very much. As soon as this attachment is approved I'll try this out and let you know how it goes.

[x42x42]

I also made the HV-10 patch available on RapidShare:

http://rapidshare.com/files/20563162/HV10Split_Patch.zip

King Sabo

[stevemc]

I also made the HV-10 patch available on RapidShare:

http://rapidshare.com/files/20563162/HV10Split_Patch.zip

King Sabo
I've tested the patch and it is working well. Successfully able to capture scenes to separate files. Does not appear to be any overlap or other issues with the clips captured and the files are correctly date stamped.

Thanks very much!! This is awesome.

Steve

[paviko]

Hello,

I'm sorry for being so long quite. I'm very busy at work and very tired (working at weekends :( ). There is no progress on new HDVSplit, so I'm releasing beta version that was available for several months now. Users that tested it say it worked ;).

HDVSplit 0.77 Beta
- Vista support,
- all HDV camcorders support (Canon, Sony, JVC)

HDVSplit 0.77 Beta download link (http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/HDVSplit.0.77StaticBeta.zip)

Regards

[raymod2]

Does the new version support writing back to tape? If not my offer still stands to do the work if you release the source code.

[jbeale]

Hi Paviko,

Many thanks for releasing what you have now, I'm sure many people appreciate it. My condolences on the rough work situation; I hope you are able to get some well-deserved rest some times!

If you have any free time for more work on HDVSplit I would really love to see split-by-time. That is, when making a live recording to disk, an option to start a new file after a fixed interval like 60 minutes. That way I can record a long show with my laptop and back up to tape later with 60 minute tapes. Otherwise I have to manually split and re-render the whole HDV file in parts, which is a huge time sink.

Thanks again!
John Beale
www.bealecorner.com

[Richard Iredale]

I began having some issues with HDVsplit 0.75. It has always worked great with my FX1 camera, but with the HC3 camera I bought a few months back it would often stop and mention that there were dropped frames, when in fact the video played fine on the viewfinder.

Today I had a chance to work on the issue a bit further. A clip that would capture fine with the FX1 would give dropped frames with the HC3. Furthermore, that same clip in the HC3 would capture fine with the Vegas capture utility, so it wasn't the fault of the HC3.

On a whim, I downloaded the 0.77 version, and to my surprise it works perfectly with both cameras. So I guess there's more to capture from various cameras than meets the eye.

I will post this same message over on the other board. It would be nice to have just one place for discussion rather than two...

[BassPig]

I have a Sony HVR-V1U on it's way to me from California. I've just downloaded your utility and found my way to this discussion as a result. I will try out this utility when I shoot my first footage on the V1U and give you my report on how it went. Thanks for applying your skills to produce a needed utility.

[Andrew Wahlquist]

Paviko,

Before I ask a request, I want to laud you with praise first. The freeware spirit of the internet always amazes me, and you are doing an amazing service to a lot of us by creating this program in your spare time with only internet glory to be gained. So thank you for your time and effort. (Sometimes it seems like requests become pushy as if people are paying customers.)

My feature request is very simple, as I've used HDV split several times as a live mpeg stream capture tool from my JVC HD-100. The program with a laptop essentially becomes your own hard disk recorder without having to deal with the Focus Enhancements direct-to-disk recorders. Extremely useful when recording long programs that are longer than an hour's tape length.

Is there any way to detect the "record" button over the firewire when it's fired on the camera? I believe that transport controls go both ways over firewire, so that when you press record on the camera, it alerts whatever device is connected on the FW. If you could detect this event and perform a start/stop on HDV's own record function, that would be amazing. (then do a quick file name increment, which I think it already does)

The application would be that you could throw a laptop running HDVSplit in a backpack, connect it to your shoulder-camera via FW, then have your own Hard disk recorder on the go. cool :)

Thanks again!
Andrew

[texmex99]

Paviko,
How much horsepower (CPU/RAM) is necessary to do simple live capture? I'm wondering if it would be possible to perform live capture on a WinCE 4.2 device (w/ external drive). I'm pretty sure there would be driver issues with WinCE (firewire, camcorder and DVHS drivers), but if those issues could be overcome, do you think a 400MHz XScale/128MB RAM WinCE device would be capable of "live capture" (basically dumping HDV to disk)? Obviously preview is out of the question. If it is enough horsepower, I think there would be a lot of interest in an "HDVSplit Lite" (live capture only) as a tool to "build" an affordable "direct to disk" solution using an ultra-portable handheld PC. The app would obviously need to be slimmed down and ported, but if you'd be willing to share the source, I'd be willing to do the work. Thoughts?

[CruNcher]

Jep a freeware app (like the commercial DVrack HD, now Adobe Onlocation) for Direct HD/HDV stream-recording would be cool and i know nothing better then HDsplit that could become that (Not in terms of Vectorscope stuff and that, even if their is the possibility to implement that via ffdshow for example) and to be sure that nothing gets damaged you record on both HD/TAPE.
texmex99 i think even less than that would be enough if you use a good active HDD/USB2 controller, but im not sure if PocketPC have those implemented it could allready work if the Transport Stream is fast enough saved on such a pocketpc so at least 25 MB/s and ofcourse a Firewire Port Firewire 400 would be allready enough, but the question remains how to get the Sony Firmware to tunnel the Stream directly to the Firewire Port on recording and another thing would be how much Power would this consume with a 180 GB 2.5 HDD it could very well hold up for arround 30 minutes i guess (outdoor recording) ;), but such devices aren't really needed anymore seing that alot more manufactures like Sony allready building HD Cams with integrated HDD's, where everything of the above is integrated in the CAM itself and with very low power consumption components, but sure for those with older non HDD recording CAM's those things are nice addons.

[John72]

Just started using HDVsplit and it's a real joy!

I have a question though, In order to keep a nice clean image, I try never to pan or zoom during HD capture. I simply press pause, reposition or zoom, then unpause. So, when I capture, I get a lot of scene change detections resulting in new-new-new files that should really be one scene.

Is there a way to tell HDVSplit not to split if the scenes are less than, say, 5 seconds apart?

Secondly, is there an easy (freeware) way to join several new-new m2t files together? (Can I just do a file join maybe or does that cause problems later?)

[ronnylov]

I wonder if it is possible to transfer HDV files back to tape on the camcorder with HDVSplit? It works great for transfering from camera to PC but I have not found any option for the opposite direction.

[Ninno]

Hi, the program don't work with canon HV20...

Don't recognize the time code...

Please Help me.:helpful:

[raymod2]

I wonder if it is possible to transfer HDV files back to tape on the camcorder with HDVSplit? It works great for transfering from camera to PC but I have not found any option for the opposite direction.

We've been asking for this simple feature for over a year now. I even offered to make the changes myself but the author is unwilling to release the source code.

[SurFan]

Hi,

Hi, the program don't work with canon HV20...
Don't recognize the time code...


no problem here with my hv20 (european PAL model). Is the firewire output format set to HDV?
Is the camera recognized by windows (what version)?

Ralph

[Ninno]

The camera is european pal, is recognized from windows xp.
The program working.
The scenes split options dont'work.

[CAFxX]

Paviko, is there any chance to have the source released? 9 months are already passed from the last release, and nothing seems to be moving.
Being a hobbyist developer myself I know perfectly well that sometimes you simply don't want to release the sources of something you wrote. Still, this tool is way too useful to be abandoned... and if you're not willing to work on it anymore (whatever the cause) PLEASE, release the source code. There's plenty of people out there that may continue where you left off.

CAFxX,
thankful user of HDVSplit

[jabloomf1230]

Well if you can get the source code and want to keep working on it, one idea that I had that would be helpful when using "semi-automatic" camcorders like the Canon HV20, would be to have an option to display the HDV stream's metadata (gain, exposure, white balance, shutter speed, etc.) during capture.

[2Bdecided]

It would be nice if the issue between HDVsplit and Sony Vegas could be solved.

I'm not sure whether HDVsplit or Sony Vegas is at fault, but many people report that Sony Vegas crashes with .m2t files from HDVsplit.

Cheers,
David.

[Richard Iredale]

It could be that this is as far as this program goes. For a freeware effort, I applaud the author's efforts, and can understand that now he is called to other activities. Perhaps he could release the source code so that others could extend the program's utility, but it's his choice.

As for Vegas, I don't know of any issues working with HDVSplit and Vegas 7d. Vegas8 seems to have some teething pains and I don't know if there are compatibility issues there, but the short time I tried V8 the captures appeared to work also. Could you elaborate?

[2Bdecided]

I read about it here:

http://www.hv20.com/showthread.php?t=6267

I haven't tried it myself. It's put me off buying Vegas.

Cheers,
David.

[Richard Iredale]

I think the message I took away from that board is that HDVSplit works fine for most people using an HV20 and Vegas. I do seem to remember reading about some issues around capturing video from the HV20, but that was with version .75. I vaguely recall that this is one of the reasons behind version .77. Could be wrong.

[Dennis Vogel]

First, thanks to Paviko for providing such a useful program for free.

I'm having trouble capturing video with scene split. I can capture without scene split with no problems. But when I check scene split, my cam runs for a few frames or maybe a second or two then I get the message

Capture started.
INFO: No more data is received from camcorder. Capture stopped.

No video is captured. I tried stopping and restarting the capture from the same point on the tape and the sequence just repeats. One time the program crashed but I can't get that to happen again. It detects my cam just fine but it won't capture and split scenes when that option is selected.

I have a Canon HV20 and I'm running Windows XP SP2 on a Pentium 4 3.4 GHz with HT. I also have Sony Vegas installed and I can capture HDV with Vegas with no problems. I understand there might be some problem with Vegas accepting HDVsplit files but I'm wondering if there is some other conflict between the two that might be involved here.

I've also seen mention of a Canon slow startup issue that causes a timeout. Could that be the source of my problems?

Anyone have any suggestions on how to figure this out? I really like the simplicity of HDVsplit especially the option to name files with a time/date value.

Good luck.

Dennis

[Richard Iredale]

Dennis, all I can see on the Vegas board is that there is sometimes a conflict between the particular firewire chip Canon uses in the HV20 and certain firewire cards used in PCs. You might try installing a different firewire card in an empty PCI slot in your PC and try it out. Such cards are cheap.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=524391