[LightEng]

I bought a new digital camcorder (Canon) and have been very impressed by the quality. I can load it to my computer or play it on my TV without issues.

One feature of the camera is that it can convert my old VHS-C footage to digital, though of course the quality is still VHS. I would like to load this into my computer to create DVDs, but I am running into a problem. I set up both cameras per the manual and have the new camera "playing" the old footage. The preview screen in Windows Movie Maker 2 shows the old footage as well.

The Problem: When I press record, WMM2 starts the digital camcorder, stopping the through transmission of the VHS footage. If I remove the digital tape from the new camcorder, WMM2 won't record, saying there is no tape in the device. I tried an ARCSoft product that came with my DVD drive and got the same issue. A third product from MYDVD also does this, but I managed to fool it once to get most of a tape into the computer. I couldn't repeat the trick to get more.

Does anyone know how to get WMM2 to record footage without driving the digital camcorder? I tried it in the "live capture" mode, but WMM2 insists the camcorder must be in "camera" mode and I have to have it in "playback" mode to use the digital passthru feature.

Worse case, I can record the old footage to DV tape in the digital camcorder, then transfer to computer, but I have 20+ hours of this and would like to avoid re-work if I can.

[Rache]

It could be you have too many b/ground progs on which pc can cope with on digital but not on the conversion too. Or it may be down to capture software not being good enough to handle it. This is a free dv editor with a capture tool http://www.webattack.com/get/zweistein.shtml
Also try capturing to another drive/partition.

[LightEng]

> It could be you have too many b/ground progs on which pc can cope with on digital but not on the conversion too.

My understanding is that the camera is doing the conversion and the computer just needs to capture the DV signal, but I'm new to this and could have that wrong.

My real issue is that the software tries to start the digital camera in play mode when I need to control that manually. I have not found a way to configure the capture device to allow manual operation. I need a way to click record on the computer and have it start capturing the signal without trying to drive the camcorder.

> This is a free dv editor with a capture tool http://www.webattack.com/get/zweistein.shtml

I'll try it tonight and post back. Thanks for the link

[rextilleon]

First determine if the Canon camera you own supports pass thru. Then go to scenealyzer.com and download there software--the most bang for the buck and the most reliable of all capture tools. Then attach your Canon via firewire to your computer, chose the drive you want to capture on. The push the capture button.