Capture problem

[drifter]

I have been using a Sony Digital 8 camcorder to capture video to my hard drive and then to DVD. I found quite good results with Nero and even Windows movie maker. I have got a copy of Pinnacle studio 9. When I try to copy from dv the camcorder starts but no files are copied. (I can copy from a capture card)
I decided to try Nero again and have found that this also does not work with similar symptoms. I get an error message saying unable to analyze the captured file. Have tried a reinstallation but without any change. Any advice please?

[jggimi]

Hello, and welcome to the forum.

I've moved your thread to the DV forum, since that is where DV related issues are discussed, including DV capture.

Can you clarify your problem? As I read it, things used to work with DV transfer until Pinnacle was installed. Now, transfers no longer function. Did I understand that properly? And if so, what happens when you uninstall Pinnacle?

[drifter]

Thanks for the reply. its a bit of a long story but a bought the Digital 8 camcorder to transfer all of my old Video 8 movies to DVD. Did a lot of experimenting with Nero, Windows Movie and even DVD Movie factory. I wanted to get the best quality that I could and use around 2hrs per DVD. I made a movie using Windows Movie Maker and then Nero and it was OK. I then tried DVD Movie Factory but wasn't too struck on it. When I decided all was Ok I reinstalled Windows (everything was a bit clogged) from a Ghost disc with all these programmes pre installed. I then added Pinnacle studio 9. The result was the problem as mentioned. I have tried uninstalling Pinnacle DVD Movie Factory and reinstalling Nero but the problem is still there. Nero finds my camcorder as Sony DV device but doesn't allow me to change any device properties (it did originally) There is no point in reinstalling as it looks like the problem is already on my ghost disc so I really need to get to the bottom of it if I can.

[errandboy]

drifter,
I don't know if this helps, but I have the Sony trv 320 digital 8 camcorder and I do a fair amount of transferring 8mm analog camcorder footage to digital media. I've had good luck making some nice quality DVD's. I use Pinnacle Studio ver 8.8 to capture the footage as an avi file. I then use same to edit the avi. When I'm finished editing, I use TMPGenc ver. 2.521 to make my mpeg files (I encode them as .m2v and .mp2 streams). In the next step I use DVD lab ver 1.3 to do my authoring and create the .ifo and .vob files. After all the necessary files have been created, I use Nero 6.xxx to burn the DVD's. TMPGenc does a pretty decent job of creating the mpeg files and I can't tell a difference between the original 8mm footage and the dvd video.
On my machine at home I am running Windows XP with SP1 installed. I have held off on upgrading to Pinnacle Studio ver 9 because I have heard various complaints about it.

errandboy

[drifter]

Thanks for that. My initial problem is still to get the capture to work correctly. The camcorder is the 340 so very similar. Theres some kind of conflict thats causing my problem but I seem to have tried everything. What length video do you get onto a DVD.

[errandboy]

I get approximately 60 minutes of video onto a 4.5 GB DVD. When I encode my mpeg's in TMPGenc I use a constant bit rate of 8000 kbits/sec and I keep all the other settings at the default value.