...assets.
I recently got a Sony HDR-HC3 high definition camcorder, and I wanted to transfer some of the video to my PC so I could send it to my dad in Florida.
Little did I realize that attempting to do this would put me through a week of HELL, and cost me another hundred and numerous trips to various electronics stores!
Here's how things went:
To get HD video off the camcorder you have to use firewire. The camcorder doesn't include a firewire cable. Buy 15 foot firewire cable at local PC shop. About $20.
Plug firewire cable into PC. AV/C driver missing. Search google for hours. No AV/C driver. Suggestions to rename INF files but the names are already correct. Suggestions to install Sony DVHS driver. Do that, does nothing. Uninstall it. Reinstall it. Stand on head. Pray to gods. Reinstall it again. Try insallting INF drivers manually.
Try another cable from Circuit City. Cable is 6 feet. Too short to be convenient. Costs $60. Doesn't work either. Bring that one back too.
Reinstall drivers again. Can't get WinDV program to recognize camera in any config. WinDV was suggested for this purpouse by one of the helpful people on some website, so it should work. It doesn't.
Give up on firewire. Try capturing standard def video with TV Wonder. Video looks like crap! Rainbow artifacts everywhere! No idea why this is the case with composite video, but it is. Video is worthless.
Consider getting HD Wonder video capture board. Discover to my horror that all those HD boards... They don't acxtually capture HD! Well, they do capture OVER THE AIR HD which has ALREADY BEEN COMPRESSED, but they don't actually have component inputs for capturing an HD signal from just any old place you might want to capture HD from, like say, an HD video camera! The few boards which can do this are pro boards that cost thousands. No thanks.
Consider firewire again. Get firewire card from Best Buy. Another $60. Then go to small PC store to get firewire cable again. 15 footer again. $20 again. Also decide to get another firewire card which supports newer firewire standard and has a DRIVER DISK! Install new firewire card. Nothing. ARGH!
Deperate, attempt to install service pack 2 on Windows XP. Hear service pack 2 works better. Install freezes at 50%! ARGH!
Even more desperate, bring video camera and laptop to PC store. Laptop has SP2 on it, but I don't have the 4pin to 4pin firewire cable I need to connect to it. The one on the PC is 4pin to 6 pin. Borrow 4pin to 4pin firewire cable from them and plug in camera at store to laptop. Have guys there look at it. They haven't got a clue what the problem is. Suggest Adobe Premier. I choose not to buy it until I've tried a demo version or have done enough research on it to be sure it will allow the video transfer. I buy the 4pin firewire cable I opened there cause they were nice enough to spend half an hour helping me for free.
Go home. I've searched hundreds of terms on google trying to find a way to capture the stuff. Mainly terms revolving around missing AV/C driver. The guy at the store seemed to think my video capture app WinDV was not up to the task even though it was suggested specifcially for the task, so when I go home I'm thinking WinDV... I wonder if this type of video is called HDV because DV is the term for standard definition video I think.
So I search google for "capture HDV". The first link amazingly enough brings me to a tutorial. It explains how to install the drivers. It mentioned the AV/C error. It says to install that sony DHVS driver. But it suggests a DIFFERENT free capture program! I install this capture program, plug the video camera into the new firewire card, and WONDER OF WONDERS, the video starts transferring!
Then I try to plug the video camera into the motherboard firewire, and it doesn't work. Even if I uninstall the drivers and reinstall them. So I plug it back into the new firewire card and once again the transfer works! Looks like I can't bring back the $60 firewire card, but I do bring back the one I got from Best Buy. I think I could get the motherboard firewire to work at some point but I don't feel like screwing around with it anymore, and this card gives me the ability to use devices that need the newest firewire connectors. Not that I have any idea what I would ever use those for. I want nothing to do with firewire ever again!
So in the end, it seems the problem was that:
1. The Sony DVHS driver doesn't get installed automatically, and their manual doesn't tell you anything about how to get the camera to work with the PC so it certainly doesn't mention this.
2. My motherboard firewire might be defective.
3. The program suggested to capture HDV video by most people doesn't actually capture HDV video or at least doesn't work with this camera.
So anyway, everyhting is finally working. And I wanted to try out google video, so I put up a portion of the video I took recently there. It's not high quality because it's google video. The video from the camera is 1440x1080 so my PC can't even play it it is so high res.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8802700822284204459
Oh and you might note that 1440x1080i is actually a square res. The video camera does display it widescreen on widescreen TV's. So why is it not 1920 wide? Probably to save tape, and probably because it is a lot easier for the camera to divide the height and width by 2 to display it on a standard TV than to scale a widescreen image to an arbitrary size. I'm a bit dissapointed it doesn't capture the full 1920 horizontal res, but it's still 1000x better than the video you get off a standard def camera. Even if I put up the 60 meg 640x360 avi before google compressed the hell out of it, and even though it is pretty dark sharp for 640 video, it's not anywhere near as detailed as the full res version looks. And even if the new Canon high def camcorder has better picture quality and is higher res, the camera body sucks, and is unergonomic, and the menu system isn't nearly as slick as the Sony one.
I recently got a Sony HDR-HC3 high definition camcorder, and I wanted to transfer some of the video to my PC so I could send it to my dad in Florida.
Little did I realize that attempting to do this would put me through a week of HELL, and cost me another hundred and numerous trips to various electronics stores!
Here's how things went:
To get HD video off the camcorder you have to use firewire. The camcorder doesn't include a firewire cable. Buy 15 foot firewire cable at local PC shop. About $20.
Plug firewire cable into PC. AV/C driver missing. Search google for hours. No AV/C driver. Suggestions to rename INF files but the names are already correct. Suggestions to install Sony DVHS driver. Do that, does nothing. Uninstall it. Reinstall it. Stand on head. Pray to gods. Reinstall it again. Try insallting INF drivers manually.
Try another cable from Circuit City. Cable is 6 feet. Too short to be convenient. Costs $60. Doesn't work either. Bring that one back too.
Reinstall drivers again. Can't get WinDV program to recognize camera in any config. WinDV was suggested for this purpouse by one of the helpful people on some website, so it should work. It doesn't.
Give up on firewire. Try capturing standard def video with TV Wonder. Video looks like crap! Rainbow artifacts everywhere! No idea why this is the case with composite video, but it is. Video is worthless.
Consider getting HD Wonder video capture board. Discover to my horror that all those HD boards... They don't acxtually capture HD! Well, they do capture OVER THE AIR HD which has ALREADY BEEN COMPRESSED, but they don't actually have component inputs for capturing an HD signal from just any old place you might want to capture HD from, like say, an HD video camera! The few boards which can do this are pro boards that cost thousands. No thanks.
Consider firewire again. Get firewire card from Best Buy. Another $60. Then go to small PC store to get firewire cable again. 15 footer again. $20 again. Also decide to get another firewire card which supports newer firewire standard and has a DRIVER DISK! Install new firewire card. Nothing. ARGH!
Deperate, attempt to install service pack 2 on Windows XP. Hear service pack 2 works better. Install freezes at 50%! ARGH!
Even more desperate, bring video camera and laptop to PC store. Laptop has SP2 on it, but I don't have the 4pin to 4pin firewire cable I need to connect to it. The one on the PC is 4pin to 6 pin. Borrow 4pin to 4pin firewire cable from them and plug in camera at store to laptop. Have guys there look at it. They haven't got a clue what the problem is. Suggest Adobe Premier. I choose not to buy it until I've tried a demo version or have done enough research on it to be sure it will allow the video transfer. I buy the 4pin firewire cable I opened there cause they were nice enough to spend half an hour helping me for free.
Go home. I've searched hundreds of terms on google trying to find a way to capture the stuff. Mainly terms revolving around missing AV/C driver. The guy at the store seemed to think my video capture app WinDV was not up to the task even though it was suggested specifcially for the task, so when I go home I'm thinking WinDV... I wonder if this type of video is called HDV because DV is the term for standard definition video I think.
So I search google for "capture HDV". The first link amazingly enough brings me to a tutorial. It explains how to install the drivers. It mentioned the AV/C error. It says to install that sony DHVS driver. But it suggests a DIFFERENT free capture program! I install this capture program, plug the video camera into the new firewire card, and WONDER OF WONDERS, the video starts transferring!
Then I try to plug the video camera into the motherboard firewire, and it doesn't work. Even if I uninstall the drivers and reinstall them. So I plug it back into the new firewire card and once again the transfer works! Looks like I can't bring back the $60 firewire card, but I do bring back the one I got from Best Buy. I think I could get the motherboard firewire to work at some point but I don't feel like screwing around with it anymore, and this card gives me the ability to use devices that need the newest firewire connectors. Not that I have any idea what I would ever use those for. I want nothing to do with firewire ever again!
So in the end, it seems the problem was that:
1. The Sony DVHS driver doesn't get installed automatically, and their manual doesn't tell you anything about how to get the camera to work with the PC so it certainly doesn't mention this.
2. My motherboard firewire might be defective.
3. The program suggested to capture HDV video by most people doesn't actually capture HDV video or at least doesn't work with this camera.
So anyway, everyhting is finally working. And I wanted to try out google video, so I put up a portion of the video I took recently there. It's not high quality because it's google video. The video from the camera is 1440x1080 so my PC can't even play it it is so high res.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8802700822284204459
Oh and you might note that 1440x1080i is actually a square res. The video camera does display it widescreen on widescreen TV's. So why is it not 1920 wide? Probably to save tape, and probably because it is a lot easier for the camera to divide the height and width by 2 to display it on a standard TV than to scale a widescreen image to an arbitrary size. I'm a bit dissapointed it doesn't capture the full 1920 horizontal res, but it's still 1000x better than the video you get off a standard def camera. Even if I put up the 60 meg 640x360 avi before google compressed the hell out of it, and even though it is pretty dark sharp for 640 video, it's not anywhere near as detailed as the full res version looks. And even if the new Canon high def camcorder has better picture quality and is higher res, the camera body sucks, and is unergonomic, and the menu system isn't nearly as slick as the Sony one.