URGENT! my camera does'nt work

[peter_g]

hey everyone,
I have a problem that needs fixing urgently. I need to present my film to the college I'm applying to this wendesday. The only way I can do this is by recording straight off my camera on to vhs cassette. The problem is that whenever I export the edited footage to my sony tcr-drv 240 camera it gets all "blocky". Frames blend together in blocks, like the interfearance you get from sky digital. Theres no audio at all,except for a fraction of a second at a time every now and again. I'm ****** if I can't sort this out,so any and all help would be really really appreciated,
thank you very much
Peter G

[digital_biscuits]

Are you exporting the final edit from a premiere etc project? I found that sometimes there is a "lag" when you export to tape because the p.c has to try so hard to find the different clips, edit points, transitions etc. A similar problem to the one you are having was resolved when i did the following:

First- EXPORT the whole project as a complete MOVIE to somewhere on the hard drive (this should take about 5-10 mins for a 5 min video).

Then open a NEW PROJECT, drop the (new complete film) file into the timeline.

Then EXPORT TO TAPE/PRINT TO VIDEO.


Hope this helps.

[peter_g]

Thank you

I'll try it

I really hope it works

[Xendar]

Hi Peter,

Is this when you're exporting from computer to camera or is it when you play the tape back in the camera? If it's when playing back then it looks like it could be a duff tape or dirty tape heads in the camera. If it is when you're exporting from computer to camera here are a few tips...

1) How many hard drives have you got? Ideally you need to capture to a second hard drive. This is because if you capture to your boot drive (the one with Windows on) you may see dropped frames. This is because Windows is constantly reading and writing information to and from the drive it is on. If you have 1 hard drive getting a second for capturing to may help.

2) Windows ME is rubbish. Get rid of it. Windows 2000 and XP are far far superior in terms of operation and stability. Plus Windows 2000 & XP use the NTFS filesystem as opposed to Windows 9x and MEs FAT32 file system. This means that you can only capture 9 minutes of footage in one go with a FAT32 file system as there is a 2GB file size limitation.

3) What are you using as your capture device? It sounds like you're using a firewire card for capture. Whether it is a capture card or standard firewire card always make sure you are selecting the correct preset. It it's a firewire card you need to select the PAL 720 x 576 48KHz setting.

4) What version of Premiere are you using? If it's 6.0 then there are some updates (v6.01 & v.6.02) that might fix your problem.

5) Is there any other software running in the background? Make sure there is no other software running in the background when using Premiere. If there is these will be taking up system resources and may be a cause of the problem. Disable any virus killers or firewalls as these can slow the system down too. Also, unplug any scanners or printers that may be attached whilst editing.

Hope this helps.

[peter_g]

Thank you xender

I only have 1 hard drive,but I have a spare one thats about 6 gb I could run windows off.luckily I have windows 2000 literally lieing around here. I downgraded to ME because I found 2000 **** for playing games on. I'm using premiere 6.5. I am using a firewire card. I have those settings listed. I think If I install 2000 it will work. Thanks