Hi, I have a sony dcr hc-30 mini dv. When I am capturing video, it skips every second, almost exactly every second. I have 2.4 ghz quard core, 4 gigs of ram and a xfx 8800 gtx video card, so I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with computer speed. I just recently started having this problem. Video captures fine with the same camcorder on my old computer, so it has something to do with this comp..

A few clues.. When using windows movie maker, the preview window doesn't show it skipping, but when I play the captured video, it skips. When I am using sony vegas 6 it skips in the preview window and captured footage. Confusing..

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

I've uploaded a video on youtube, here's the link:

YouTube - skipping during capture


Also notice the bad distortion, which I just realized when capturing the video.

How did you connect the camcorder to the computer, was it using USB or Firewire? For Mini DV it should only be Firewire. When did you last de-fragment your hard disk? Do you have any other programs or utilities running during capture such as screensavers or anti virus software? If you do, then deactivate them until after the capturing is done.

__________________
Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

Thanks for the reply nikosony.

I am using usb. My firewire went out on the camera a couple months ago. I wish I could still use the firewire. I don't have any other programs running besides nvidia control panel in the task bar. I haven't had my computer defraged yet, I just built it about 3 moths ago. But I will go ahead and try it.

You have to use a Firewire connection to transfer video from a Mini DV camcorder to get the best results.

__________________
Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

I know, the firewire was a lot better quality, But it doesn't work anymore. The usb works fine on my other computer. It's just on my newer comp, it stutters and the quality is bad. I posted a link in my first post to a video showing what it was acting like.

Firewire doens't have 'better quality' but is rather the intended transport mechansim for miniDV cameras. If you use USB on a miniDV camera, you will inevitably get dropped frames as the format wasn't designed to work in this way. To be honest, I'm surprised that your other computer was able to capture on USB. The answer?

__________________

| video editing guides | our videos |
| wedding guides | website hosting |

The answer is either get that old computer working again or buy a second cheap Mini DV camcorder with a working Firewire port and hopefully that will solve your problem.

__________________
Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...