General Video Editing Questions

[agentspinach]

Hello,

Just a couple of questions. Firstly a little bit of background. I'm running Windows 98. I have firewire 1394. I have a canon dv 500i. Anyway I downloaded a trial version of ulead videostudio.

1. When I open videostudio I get the kernel32.dll error come up. Does anyone know why this would be?

2. The shop where I got my firewire installed actually installed the card. Do I need to install any drivers for the actual video camera?

3. Might the problem have something to do with the fact I am using Windows 98? I heard that if you run XP you can just plug a video camera into it and it'll instantly recognise it. Is this true?

Many thanks.

 

[cdogg]

2) As long as the appropriate drivers are loaded for the firewire card, then it should detect the camera automatically. Most firewire devices use firmware - meaning all the necessary "driver-type" information is built-into the device. So when it's detected by Windows, it should just install the needed instructions automatically.

3) XP does have better compatibility with hot-swappable devices, but it mostly depends on the quality of the firewire card and its driver.


~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[agentspinach]

Strange. My actual card is installed perfectly fine but does not recognise my camera as such. Well it recognises the camera but does not seem to work.

 

[cdogg]

Did any software come with the camera? It may be needed to access your camera's features. Although it's already being detected, there's probably not much you can do until the software is installed (and I mean in addition to Ulead).


~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[agentspinach]

Funnily enough I've been playing around with it all. I uninstalled ULead and installed the Pinnacle trial. I've now found the Pinnacle trial seems to be feeding images through (no sound ... but I'm guessing that is normal?).

I'm now undergoing the problem of not enough data rate on my computer. So now I have to take the computer back and get more processing speed, I guess.

 

[agentspinach]

Just to continue on that...and before I do anything daft.

Is it normal to have no sound playing when you've just playing the video on screen? I.e. I'm not actually capturing it.

And is datarate the same as processing power?

Thanks.

 

[felixc]

Does the sound come off the IEEE1394 connector? I couldn't swear but I don't think so. I use Studio 9. You probably have to specify where the sound comes from.

You are right about the Win98 vs Win2K/XP for multimedia. Much more functions are integrated right into Win2K/XP so the installation of multimedia drivers is much easier and less buggy with Win2K/XP.

Using the video editing software to capture your video is not a good thing, as the video editing software adds a burden to the CPU. For example, I am not able to record mpeg-2 files in real-time with my system (AIW Radeon 9600XT, AthlonXP2600+) if I use the recording functions of Studio. It loses too many frames. If I use the capture utilities that come with the board, I can record to Mpeg-2 without problem. Then I use Studio to edit my clips.

IEEE1394 under Win98 can be problematic (it barely did integrate USB), and can just not be supported or debugged by the software vendors.

So for video editing, it will be wise to shell out some cash and get a better machine. Thinking about it, what I can do with my actual machine for video editing would not be feasible under 50K seven years ago.

 

[norty303]

I remeber having problems capturing audio in Premier via firewire in Win98. In the end i ran separate audio connectors into the soundcard and selected the soundcard source for the audio capture. Worked fine after that. None of these problems with WinXP tho. I think one of your main options may be to consider that OS upgrade... ;-)

 

[Chance1234]

You should be getting sound through the firewire,

a good program for capturing which isnt that memory hungry is

http://www.virtualdub.org/features

Chance,

Filmmaker, gentlemen and My First Short

 

[CreamCake]

I capture from both DV cameras and DV decks to a Matrox RT.X100 via firewire, and YES you need to run sound in through your soundcard's input from DV sources.

If you are still running windows98, I'm betting you need another (faster newer better MORE!) hard disk as part of the fix to your "data rate" problem, so before we go further with a soulution, can you give us the specs on your current pc?

CPU speed, memory, and hard disk size(s) for starters

- a free program called belarc advisor will tell you most of this if you don't know.

 

[agentspinach]

Wow! Thanks for the replies guys. As you can tell I'm a bit of a newbie to all this. :-(

I have a Firewire 1394. When I had it installed I had another hard drive installed. My main one (with Windows on it) is 9.55gb. My new one, which is intended to hold video, is 140gb.

I have Windows 98 second editon.
I have 640 ram.

I'm not entirely surehow to find out the speed of my processor though.

 

[agentspinach]

Just a follow up message. I installed that virtualdub and captured some video (no sound). It said it wasn't the required rgb colours or something so I couldn't preview it.

I opened up Direct X and previewed it. The video is okayish.

I then tried to edit it with Pinnacle and, bah, it decides it is going to close down when I click on the file in the editing area.

I then went back into virtualdub and tried to open the file in there and it says I need some decompressor file dvsd or something. I need a videos for windows compatibile codec or something. Grrr...I dunno!

Lol!