Hello Everyone. I am running Avid Media Composer v3.1.1 on a Mac Pro(not a laptop) and using the leopard operating system.  My footage was shot in 1080i on Sony HD miniDV tapes.  I have a Canon HV20 camera that I am using as a deck to import the tapes via firewire.  The project is set to 1080i/59.94 HDV and I've had to use the generic deck option because I can't find it in the menu.  So there's the info, here's the problem.  Every time I attempt to capture or even watch the video it freezes and at times crashes Avid.  Is this a settings problem?  Is it because the deck is not recognized?  If so, is there a way I can manually add it?  Thank you all for taking the time to think about this.  I've been trying to troubleshoot for 3 days and I'm starting to lose it!

A couple of suggestions

Try capturing with timecode turned off?

Or crash recording with both timecode and machine control turned off.

Thank you so much for getting back to me!  I have tried turning off the timecode and unfortunately that didn't seem to work.  Can you tell me how I would go about crash recording with the machine control turned off?  Again thank you so much!

Deselect the Icon that looks like a tape deck (top row of buttons, last one before the speaker icon)

Press play on the camera and record in Avid (still need a tape name to be selected in the capture tool)

Thanks.  I gave it a shot and it behaved in the same way.  The video was jerky and eventually froze, then Avid crashed.  Your feedback is really appreciated.  Any other ideas?

I dont know that camers.

Try searching the forum for the HV20.  Maybe a specific menu setting in the camera you need to get right.

Good luck

I use a Canon HVD10 as an HDV capture deck. Some ideas:

-- Try using one of the other Canon HDV devices as your deck settings (XL2, XLH1 60). I think I use XL2 as my settings.

-- Also, in the Capture Tool, make sure you set the "Res:" to HDV

-- In the project window, under format tab are you set to "Project Type: 1080i/59.94" and "Raster Dimension: 1440x1080"?

-- What kind of a hard drive are you capturing to? Is it a separate media drive? Is it on it's own FW bus?  Pretty sure you won't be able to capture to the system drive or a drive connected to the same FW bus as your camera.

--- Also, what are your complete system specs? It's possible your machine isn't up to the task.

Thanks for the ideas.  Unfortunately it's still not working.  

Here are some specifics about what I'm working on.  Hopefully this is what you were looking for.

 Model Name: Mac Pro

  Model Identifier: MacPro4,1

  Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon

  Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz

  Number Of Processors: 1

  Total Number Of Cores: 4

  L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB

  L3 Cache: 8 MB

  Memory: 3 GB

  Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s

  Boot ROM Version: MP41.0081.B04

  SMC Version (system): 1.39f5

  SMC Version (processor tray): 1.39f5

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GT 120

  Type: Display

  Bus: PCIe

  Slot: Slot-1

  PCIe Lane Width: x16

  VRAM (Total): 512 MB

  Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

  ROM Revision: 3386

I have the camera connected via firewire.  The firewire inputs on my computer are 800 and the camera has a 400 out.  I have the camera daisy chained through another external drive (different from the one I'm attempting to capture to).

The cameras used to shoot this footage were Canon XLH1 and Canon XHA1 onto the Sony HDV tapes.  It has been suggested that perhaps the camera that I am currently using (Canon HV20) may not be able to be used to capture this footage.  Any thoughts?

Thank you again for your help.  This is very overwhelming!

Hi Angela,

That daisy-chain could be what's killing you.  You need to connect that camera directly to the computer with fw400/800 adapter. You can get a cable or a little plug adapter.  I bough mine at Best Buy.

Also, is the drive you're trying to capture to also a FW device? If so, that might be a problem. Unless you've got a FW PCI card you've only got one FW bus (all the built in FW plugs are on the same bus). If you've got another internal drive (other than the boot drive), try capturing to that.

I honestly don't think it's the camera, I use a Canon HV10 (the model previous to the HV20) and it works fine as a DV and HDV capture device on my MacBookPro. The fact that you're getting a video and audio signal and have deck control is a positive sign. From your description, it really sounds like a bandwidth issue.

Can you capture a tape shot with the HV20?  Sometimes there are problems when the tape was shot with a Sony HDV camera and you are playing it back with some other brand of HDV camera.  HDV isn't like DV, every company kinda has their own flavor and they are not necessarily compatible.  Just a thought.

In my experience with trying to capture 24F from a HV40 or an XLH1 the port that you plug into is very important.  Sometimes it needs to be directly into the computer, sometimes I had to daisy chain it through my GRAID.  Weird stuff man, but we've all been there.

Thank you all for all of these suggestions!  I was able to buy a 4-9pin firewire today so I will be testing that tonight.  I will let you all know how it goes!  

Well, still no luck.  I tried the camera connected directly to the computer.  I unplugged everything else and just tried to capture to the internal drive.  I'm at a loss.  Any more suggestions?  I'm up for anything!  Thanks everyone!

Having gone back to a different connection did you retry my first suggestions?

Yes, those suggestions have become a part of my rituals.  Knowing my video card and such so you think that it could be an issue with that?  Thanks!

Angela5:

Knowing my video card and such so you think that it could be an issue with that?

The order of start up has been problematic for some.

I would try closing the CPU down, disconnecting the mains power and leave it off for 5 minutes.

Connect the camera and turn it on. Insert a tape and start it playing from the camera.

Turn on the CPU. Make sure the camera is still playing and start Avid in a HDV project.

In the settings make sure a similar Canon camera is selected in the deck config.

Cross your fingers and open the capture tool.   Good luck.

If this does not work I would be looking at the Cameras menu setting and make sure the FW out option is set to HDV.

If this still does not work it may well be what one of the other posters suggested (that the Canon does not like to output from a Sony recorded HDV tape)