I am very new to this, but I purchased a Sony TRV 22 with the intention of making some DVDs of my son using my Time 2400 pc which runs with windows XP.
I also purchased a NEC multi spin dvd rewriter, which came with some Sonic myDVD software.
Please can anyone help with the following problems;
1) When using the data capture with the Imagemaker software that came with the camcorder, it will capture on about 6 minutes before an error message appears saying "HDD full". I assume this means my hard disk drive, but when I look, there are over 100 GBs free
2)The Sonic software says it cannot detect my camcorder when I plug it in
3)My computer, whilst recognising that I have replaced the CD rewriter with a DVD one, sometimes will only try to save to CDs and not DVDS, giving an error message of "this is not a valid blank CD" when I insert a DVD.

What method are you using for capture? Firewire or USB? In either case it is worth checking that there are no breaks in the time code on your footage. Possibility being that a break in Time Code signals the end of footage to the software.

Are you capturing via USB? Check your version of MyDVD. MyDVD v3.5.1 does not support USB devices. May be worth checking with Sonic on this.

Will depend upon what software packages you use and whether these support the DVD device. If you provide more details I'll try and find out.

Incidentally if you are capturing by USB and your final output medium is DVD I would consider upgrading to Firewire and Capturing that way. I would also recommend using something other than ImageMixer. The bundled software with Sony Cameras is really only useful for VCD creation rather than DVD. Main reason for this is that ImageMixer will only capture in MPEG1 at a maximum resolution of 640x480. great camera, iffy software.

Good luck

Thanks for this.

Yes I am using the USB cable to capture the footage, so that could explain some of the problem.

I have heard mention of using firewire to cpature the data, but I don't think my PC has the necessary port / card. Is it expensive / easy to rectify this ?

Thanks again.

Firewire cards are not expensive. Try eBay where you can pick them up for less than £20 ($30). Alternatively you could try a numebr of providers who bundle some editing software with the card. For example

http://www.adstech.com/

Good luck

As for the disk full problem, what format is your disk. Although Wndows XP will gladly deal with large files, earlier version of Windows do not. Not user if it was the OS or the disk format (Fat32????) but you might be hitting fiels size limits rather than hard drive full limits.

Someone correct me if I get this wrong but I think you ideally want your drive formated as NTFS for 'best results'.

Dunno if this is your problem but worth checking out.