Conduit Live - firewire capture?

[marchdigital]

Hi - I am unable to get conduit live to capture (or preview) a live feed from my video camera. I am using a Canon A1 (HDV) connected via firewire. When I try to change the input image source to anything other than USB Video Class Video it snaps back to USB Video Class Video. A shame the product doesnt come with any documentation.

[Pauli Ojala]

Hello,

Conduit Live currently doesn't support capturing HDV (or any other types of MPEG-2 streams).

The good news is that it's coming: we have a new version in internal testing that supports HDV. (However it will require OS X 10.5 and Final Cut Studio, because the necessary system software components for HDV capture aren't otherwise available.)

I'll be sure to post here when the new version is available. (Another good place to stay up-to-date on Conduit development is the Conduit forum at pixelcorps.com!)

Pauli Ojala

[marchdigital]

Thanks for letting me know. It's pretty disappointing that this is not made clear on the site where I purchased the product. Also - where's the documentation?

[marchdigital]

Thanks for getting back to me re: wheres the documentation. (NOT)

I must say I am feeling somewhat ripped off. I purchased the upgrade because I wanted to be able to use the live capture function with my HDV cameras. No where did it tell me during the sales pitch or subsequent purchase pages that your product would not work with my camera gear. I was also under the impression that I would get 3 months membership to Pixel Corps (so I could atleast access the forums to get support) - but I have heard nothing from Pixel Corp.

Is this really how you want to treat your customers - take their money and then forget about them?

[Pauli Ojala]

Thanks for getting back to me re: wheres the documentation. (NOT)

Apologies for the slow reply. You can find the Conduit reference manual and a number of tutorial videos on the dvGarage samples and tutorials page (http://dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=conduit2&sub=samples). The posts in my Conduit blog (http://lacquer.fi/blog) might also contain some useful information.


I must say I am feeling somewhat ripped off. I purchased the upgrade because I wanted to be able to use the live capture function with my HDV cameras. No where did it tell me during the sales pitch or subsequent purchase pages that your product would not work with my camera gear.

I'm sorry that you feel this way... But surely as a HDV camera owner you've noticed that software support for this format has been spotty and slow to market, to say the least? And it's not just because we video software developers are a bunch of useless lazy twits: the HDV format squeezes HD video into 25 Mbps by using an MPEG-2 transport stream. With this format frames are compressed as long temporal blocks, which is very different from the kinds of video streams that professional software traditionally has operated on. IMHO, it's not reasonable to expect HDV support as a given. (Apple is a 100 billion dollar company, and they only got HDV capture working reliably in FCP 6 last summer. It would be far beyond our resources to start writing the MPEG-2 capture component from scratch just to support HDV.)

Anyway, HDV capture is coming soon to Conduit Live, thanks to the new capture API that Apple introduced in Mac OS X 10.5.


I was also under the impression that I would get 3 months membership to Pixel Corps (so I could atleast access the forums to get support) - but I have heard nothing from Pixel Corp.

Were you contacted by Pixel Corps support about this? I'll forward your message to them to make sure.


Best regards,

Pauli Ojala

[rober]

What about a Conduit Live manual? Conduit live is enough different, as in capturing, that a separate manual is needed. No talent wannabees such as myself need step by step instructions. I want to shoot an new videocast using a green screen (should that be one word?) and a background image.

I too am somewhat disappointed. The low price is appreciated but does us no good if we cannot use the product.

Thanks,
Robert A. Ober

[marchdigital]

To perform live capture from HDV (or DV) use scopebox ( see www.scopebox.com ) - then use DV Garage's DV Matte Pro to pull the key.

[Pauli Ojala]

A status update...
The Leopard version of Conduit Live that supports HDV is in testing and doesn't appear to have major problems left, so it will be released soon. (If you're a Pixel Corps member, you can download the preview release in the Conduit forum there.) It will be a free addition to the Conduit Suite.

I'm working on writing a Conduit Live manual, please check out the dedicated thread (http://forums.dvgarage.com/showthread.php?t=6286).

Thanks for your patience!

Pauli

[matsonda]

How do I get my free Pixel account so I can download that HDV beta? I just got your great program and had some fun with the DV setting of my Canon HV30, but would really like to go to full HD (HDV). Have not received any instructions on how the get the pixel account. Thanks for any help, David

[Pauli Ojala]

Hi David,

the HDV-compatible version of Conduit Live is included with the 1.6.2 update. It should be available to you through the dvGarage account downloads page.

Pauli