DVCPRO50 transfer to PC?

[witchingseasonfilms]

Hey gang,

I'm attempting to transfer DVCPRO50 tapes to my Windows 10 PC and cannot seem to find a solution. I've exhausted my research options online so I'm posting here looking for advice and/or suggestions. Perhaps this will help somebody in the future looking to achieve the same task.

A little backstory and context:

The camera does not have SDI out, only analog BNC out. So I bought a working DVCPRO50 deck with firewire out (in retrospect I should have found one with SDI, but here I am). I connected the deck via firewire to my desktop pc via firewire card. My computer recognizes it (using legacy drivers), but my NLE (Adobe Premiere) will not allow me to capture. It seems to recognize the deck but I get the error message "Can't activate recorder. Try resetting camera." I tried resetting the deck, switching it on and off "remote" mode, unplugging/replugging the firewire cable to no avail. I've also tried changing the capture device settings in Premiere to just about every option imaginable. I set the brand to Panasonic (same as the deck) and all other flavors available. I've also tried various versions of Premiere with the same result. So Premiere seems out.

I was able to get a capture using WinDV, but the files are always corrupt after the capture completes. As a result, I cannot import the files or transcode them into a more NLE friendly format. WinDV may not be fully compatible with DVCPRO, which is probably why they are corrupting. I'm not sure about that.

So it seems I need another NLE or software to capture. I've seen success stories of older version of Pinnacle Studio working well with DVCPRO, so I attempted the latest version and it virtually gave me the same result as Premiere. I was actually able to control the deck within Pinnacle (after setting the deck to remote mode) but no picture would display and it would not capture. I tried changing settings within Pinnacle to various option with no luck.

It seems an older version of Pinnacle may be my answer, so I bought Pinnacle Studio 12, but it will not install to my Windows 10 PC. The installation freezes partially through and I have to force-quit. Pinnacle 12 was made for Vista, so I attempted to use Vista via compatibility mode with the same result. I even attempted to install a Vista virtual machine only to realize firewire doesn't work for VMs.

Now I'm considering buying a cheap, working Windows Vista laptop with firewire, but before I waste any more money on this silly passion project, I wanted to reach out and see if anyone here has any experience/success capturing this obsolete format in modern times. Are there any NLEs that can capture DVCPRO on Windows 10?

Any feedback, thoughts, or insight would be greatly appreciated.

[lordsmurf]

Do you really need the DVCPRO50 files, or just a "watch copy", which can be had with a good lossless s-video analog capture? Sometimes "best" can be a bit too anal, and the final output quality is negligible.

Pinnacle Studio is awful software, especially 2000s/10s versions, and that is a dead end for you.

Modern OS are not friendly to legacy tasks, including all analog/DV video conversion.

[latreche34]

Panasonic DVCPRO is basically DV but with 4:1:1 chroma for both 50Hz and 60Hz variants. However in DVCPRO50, Panasonic doubled the video bitrate to 50 Mbps and raised the chroma subsampling to 4:2:2 for both, DVCPRO50 progressive provided progressive video at the cost of reducing chroma sub to 4:2:0. This is why it is unfriendly to DV tools, Have you tried Sclive?

SDI for DVCPRO50 is probably the most viable option, then just use the SDI card's modern software to ingest whether it be BM MediaExpress, Aja Control Room, Magwell... But since you have only firewire, this limits your options down to an NLE like Premiere, Vegas, and the likes.

Check video99couk channel, he has several videos about the format.

[witchingseasonfilms]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

Do you really need the DVCPRO50 files, or just a "watch copy", which can be had with a good lossless s-video analog capture? Sometimes "best" can be a bit too anal, and the final output quality is negligible.

Fair point, had I realized how difficult this was going to be I would have just run with the analog output from the camera. I was able to get a decent analog capture using VDub, but I assumed a proper DVCPRO50 capture wouldn't be just a minor difference in quality.

I'm willing to pick up an older OS computer for the project but even then, have no idea what software is actually going to work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by latreche34

Panasonic DVCPRO is basically DV but with 4:1:1 chroma for both 50Hz and 60Hz variants. However in DVCPRO50, Panasonic doubled the video bitrate to 50 Mbps and raised the chroma subsampling to 4:2:2 for both, DVCPRO50 progressive provided progressive video at the cost of reducing chroma sub to 4:2:0. This is why it is unfriendly to DV tools, Have you tried Sclive?

SDI for DVCPRO50 is probably the most viable option, then just use the SDI card's modern software to ingest whether it be BM MediaExpress, Aja Control Room, Magwell... But since you have only firewire, this limits your options down to an NLE like Premiere, Vegas, and the likes.

Check video99couk channel, he has several videos about the format.

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate the info. Sclive didn't work for me either, unfortunately. I forgot to mention that I had tried that.

I have seen several of video99's videos! Awesome channel. He seems to prefer older versions of Pinnacle for DVCPRO capture, which is what led me to Pinnacle Studio 12 (the version he uses). He mentioned in one video that he's using it on a Windows 10 machine, but I have no idea how he managed to get it installed. I left a comment on the video but haven't heard back yet.

Any other ideas?

[latreche34]

Try to change some settings in Premiere, like setting the project to DVCPRO 50 or something, I know modern NLE software dropped those formats from their project format list so I wouldn't be surprised if that's why Premiere didn't work.

[witchingseasonfilms]

Thanks. Unfortunately, there really are no DVCPRO50 settings to enable in Premiere. Is there perhaps a codec I need to download in order to ingest this format?

That said, I was able to somehow get Premiere to actually see my deck. I now have full control over it within the capture window when I set the deck to remote mode. I believe this was due to adjusting a setting in the deck's menu (setting it from outputting DVCPRO50 to DVCPRO25). Perhaps this is a limitation of Premiere or due to Firewire in and of itself.

Though that is an incremental success, I still get no signal in the capture window of Premiere, or any other program seemingly available (just a black screen). When I attempt a capture, no files are generated and Premiere says "Recorder captured no frames." I wonder if there is another setting I need to enable within my deck's menu. The deck, for anyone interested (now or in the future), is a Panasonic AJ-SD93.

I also downloaded Adobe Premiere CS5.5 to see if this is possibly an issue with the later versions of PPro but getting the same result. I also tried a new firewire card, both Texas Instruments and VIA chipsets yield the same result.

Any other ideas?

[lordsmurf]

Matrox had a codec library, but those don't work on new NLE or OS. I vaguely remember having issues win Win7 back in 2015, which is why my current encoding/restore setup lacks Matrox. I ran those 15-20 years ago, on WinXP, VirtualDub 1.8, and maybe pre-CS4 Premiere.

But those would not really have anything to do with "capture"/transfer of the digital files off the tape.

[latreche34]

Try Avid or Pinnacle studio, See if you can find a used disc online with the activation code.