Unable to capture on Windows 7 or 10

[mike86325]

Hi, I have about 32 Digital8 tapes that I am trying to capture in the best quality possible. I originally attempted your GUI program on Windows 10, then Ubuntu, and finally windows 7 before giving up. My capture device never showed up on any of them even on the stable or nightly builds (build date was early July 2023). I went ahead and captured all of the tapes using ScenalyzerLive 4.0, but many of the scenes have errors after reviewing them with DV Analyzer 1.4.2. This situation brings me back to this project since I really believe the capture method you have created (automatic rewind and recapture up to 3x with merging of best frames) would help me immensely with my project. I just wish I could figure out a way to make it work with my setup. It seems to work so well in the Mac version shown in the Youtube videos that have been posted, but all I have available is either Windows or Linux with Windows 7 being preferred (I never get frame drops on 7).

Here is my setup for reference:
Desktop PC with i7 4770k running a clean install of Windows 7
Firewire Card: Ableconn PEX-FW107 - A PCIe card with a TI chipset (XIO2213)
Camera: Sony DCR TRV-140

I'm not sure what the best method would be moving forward to salvage these various scenes as best as possible, but if there is anything I can do, please let me know. Thank you so much for your time and for this project, it seems to be the best solution out there for us preservationists!

[mike86325]

I'm guessing at some point capture worked on Windows. If anyone can tell me which build to use that has capture functionality working for Windows, that would be awesome. I'm at a loss on what else to try.

[dericed]

Hi @mike86325, capturing from tape was a problem we had to solve one operating system at a time. Unfortunately Windows dv capture wasn't fully resolved and integrated into dvrescue yet. The other features there work on Windows, like packaging and analyzing dv, but not yet for capture.

[mike86325]

Ok, that makes sense, thank you for the response! I know with any sort of developing it is hard to put a timeline to things, but how is capture coming along for the Windows platform? I have so many scenes showing errors that I could definitely use an automated process for recapturing. The idea of recapturing and then splicing and replacing frames manually will take an obscene amount of time.
If capture compatibility on Windows is still a ways away, is my only option to buy a Mac? Is there a particular Mac or MacOS version that will work flawlessly? I saw in the docs that the Mac mini 2012, 2014, and 2017 were mentioned. Are those the tested go-to options and if so, is one better than another? My thoughts would be the 2012 would be best with the native support for firewire, but it would be running an older MacOS. The idea of going through 1 or 2 thunderbolt adapters worries me for dropped frames and errors, but maybe this is not an issue?

[JohnstonJ]

Here's how I've gotten started using DVRescue on Windows: #897 (comment)

TL;DR: use WinDV to do the actual capture into a single, large AVI file. Then, use FFmpeg to extract the raw DV data from the AVI file into a .dv file that is readily ingested by DVRescue.

[dericed]

cc'ing @libbyhopfauf as we were discussing doing more documentation for windows-specific workflows. I think the manner than you extract the dv from avi is important. In dvpackager there is a -u option to unpackage the dv from a container. This uses the equivalent of ffmpeg -i input.avi -map 0:v:0 -c copy -f rawvideo output.dv which dumps out the dv-based video track to a separate file.

[libbyhopfauf]

cc'ing @libbyhopfauf as we were discussing doing more documentation for windows-specific workflows. I think the manner than you extract the dv from avi is important. In dvpackager there is a -u option to unpackage the dv from a container. This uses the equivalent of ffmpeg -i input.avi -map 0:v:0 -c copy -f rawvideo output.dv which dumps out the dv-based video track to a separate file.

I'll add this to the documentation to do list! We'll need to get our Windows set up working to test and create documentation, but I agree it would be helpful. @JohnstonJ thank you for the recommendation! I'll include this in the upcoming documentation.