Capturing D-VHS thru firewire (1394)

D-VHS is video recorded on a digital VCR. The machine is a JVC HM-DH30000U which has an I-Link (Firewire) port on the back. Whenever it is connected, windows recognizes the device but cannot find a driver for it. I am running Windows XP Home using Premiere 6.5 and/or MyDVD to capture. I also have a digital camcorder but that only allows analog to past through.

I know that unit, but D-VHS never made a deep impact in spite of how good it was.

Here's what you will end up doing. ANALOG CAPTURE.

I could help if we knew more about the HOST PC/MACINTOSH machine. It's only my opinion that to get a FIREWIRE ANALOG VIDEO DIGITIZER is not a great idea.

Bob

If you digital camcorder will pass the analog video and send it out the firewire port as digitial video you can use it to capture you video. John

The following is one of the features described on the JVC site about the HM-30000.

"i.Link
High-speed digital video and data interface technology standard for connecting digital television and computers to various components and peripherals, such as D VHS, set-top HDTV tuner boxes and digital camcorders. aka: Fire Wire and IEEE 1394."

As indicated it does connect to a computer, but windows does not find drivers for the device.

At least form what I see on their web site.

You can verify this by using a phone and calling them up. As it stands, I fear you have to use the 'old school' methods.

Bob

Thanks for all of your help Bob. The 'old school' method doesn't work either. I called and they were vague to say the least. I am currently running down a few leads on the D-VHS forums and will let you know if I finally get it; and how.

Late to this thread - but it is possible to connect the 30K to a computer. Need to manually choose "JVC tape unit" as a Windows XP driver. Details at:

http://www.webtc.com/DVHS/default.htm

I got your name off of an earlier post, where someone was trying to get his 30000 to connect via firewire to his computer.

I have tried this process on both PCs that I own, each is running Windows XP Pro SP2. I plug in the firewire frrom the deck, and I first see "JVC Tape Deck" or something like that. I only get the device name to show for just a second before ANOTHER device shows up called "AV/C Tuner". Somehow the AV/C Tuner jumps ahead of the Tape Deck in the identification process, and of course, the driver for the Tuner doesn't install properly.

I saw that you had a link to webtc.com, and I clicked there with great anticipation, only to find that it was a broken link. I went to the main page for webtc, and there is a username/logon page with nothing else. Looks like a dead end.

I am just looking for the firewire driver for this 40000 unit, or some process to eliminate this crap AV/C tuner. I went through the JVC manual to see if I could disable the tuner. No dice.

Hopefully, you can lend your assistance. I have seen that others have had the 40000 working with their NLEs, so I know it is possible. I'm just missing something.

Download "Capdvhs". It is free and widely available for both Mac and windows. The Mac version is available as part of the Apple developers toolkit. (You must first register as a developer but anyone can and it is free.)The windows version(xp and Vista) not only provides drivers but opens a window that allows you to set the start and run times of the capture. That way you it will stop the capture of the mpeg2 ts stream from the deck at a predetermined time. The Mac version has a capture control panel window, but no timer. There are also free apps available that can shrink the file size (8.7MB/hr for 1080i HD video) to h264 codec, which reduces the file size by 60% , with no visible quality loss;will reduce a 20 MB file to about 8MB.