Avid and Panasonic GS400

I need some help! I'm working on a project and have a bunch of tapes to work with. The problem is, Avid sometimes acknoweledges I have put in a new tape and I'm able to capture clips ... but at other times, I'm not even able to scan a new tape. :confused:

A second problem I'm experiencing is the speed of each action I take in Avid... it is sooo slow! It's frustrating... it literally could take 2 minutes before I can select another action to perform --- and I'm not pressing several buttons at once.

Please help! I have a deadline and almost feel desperate enough to get a mini-dv/vhs deck player ... but I'd rather not if I could help it...

Thanks in advance for your help!
D77

PS: My deck setting is set to: Panasonic DX100 or something (the first selection under Panasonice...) unfortunately, there are no options for the GS400 model. :rolleyes:

Do you have another deck or camera to try?

I think your best option is to crash record (I hope you don't need time code).

At the top of the Capture Tool click on the deck icon until "no deck" is selected. Then turn off TC so you only have V, A1, A2 selected. Then hit play on your GS400 and record in the Avid.

Sometimes controlling some decks through firewire is realllllly sloooow.

Hope this helps,

Bowyer

Thanks so much for your tips Bowyer! I tried my old JVC camera but it didn't help any. I've tried to record on the fly like you suggested but i can't block off the deck for some reason.

I've been told more memory might help me with the speed of Avid on my pc ... do you think this is the case? I have an Dell Inspiron 600 M laptop that has a 1300 mhz processor, 1.29 ghz, 768 MB of ram, Intel (R) Pentium (R) laptop.

I am also thinking of getting a mini-DV deck if I can't fix the "capture" problem. any more suggestions? It seems my old camera isn't doing the trick to help me dump video onto avid ... do you think a mini-dv deck is going to solve my problem of 'capturing' in avid? maybe it'll even help with the timecode issue?

Thanks Again! I was so relieved to read your suggestions. At least it gave me something new to try :o ..

All the Best,
D77
(oh, do you know of a good, but inexpensive deck to get if I have to go this route?)

I assumed you went to Avid's site and looked at the system requirements. Avid Xpress DV is different form Xpress Pro.

Go here to check it out:
Xpress Pro (http://www.avid.com/products/xpresspro/specs.asp)
Xpress DV (http://www.avid.com/products/xpressdv/specs.shtml)

On that page is a list of decks that are tested that Avid software supports. So check there before you buy a deck. I would suggest getting a deck with a 422 control port and then buying a deck control cable (232 to 422). It will make controlling the deck much faster plus it will be more frame accurate then IEEE1394.

But, back to your problem. Do you have another firewire cable? If not, try reseatting it on both ends. You can also check the pins inside your cable and deck to make sure that they are not damaged.
OH yeah, your on a laptop. Do you have a firewire PCMCIA card or our you using the onboard firewire port? The onboard port I don't think is supported by Avid. Try getting a PCMCIA card and using it. It's much cheaper then a deck. Although a deck isn't a bad investment but as of right now I'm not sure it fix your problem.
Also where are you capturing the footage to..C: drive? Firewire Drive? If the c:, make sure it is not getting too full. I've seen systems become almost unusable because they were too full. Also if you are using a firewire drive you may need another PCMCIA card for it.

All in all, I would look into other (cheaper) solutions first before I bought a deck.

Hope this helps,
Bowyer

Hi Bowyer,

Thanks for the previous suggestions. I've installed AVID Express Pro on a Sony desktop (meets specs for the editing program - see below) but when I try to get on it, I get an Avid popup window that
says "exception: adm_dsound_mixer_open_error"; then the program closes up altogether...

What do I need to get this running? Is it my audio card? I tried installing and uninstalling then reinstalling but the problem still arises.

Also, the one program I'm not able to install from the AVID CD is the Avid After Effects, even after downloading a trial version. Do I have to by the After Effects program in order to use this?

Thanks so much,
Dee

specs:

DVD+R Double Layer DVD+-RW Drive24
Creative Inspire GD580
Photo Standard
VGC-RA930G
Video Plus
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT (256MB)
Music Plus
No Optical Drive #2
Microsoft Works 8.0 with Office 2003 "Student Teacher" Trial Edition 160GB Hard Disk Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center 2005
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 550J supporting Hyper-Threading Technology (3.40E GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 800 MHz FSB)
2 GB DDR-SDRAM (DDR400, 512 MBx4)