I stumbled upon kdenlive (version 0.7.6) while looking for a free NLV editor and spent a good part of my weekend trying to get acquainted with it. I connected a Canon Vixia HV30 camcorder to my laptop running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty). However, I am unable to capture the video from the HV30 camcorder using the 'Record Monitor' functionality. I referred to the following video:

http://www.kdenlive.org/tutorial/kdenlive-howto-capture-video-firewire

kdenlive was unable to connect to the camcorder. I tried using dvgrab with the following options and it could capture the recorded footage into an m2t file. The options that I used are given below.

dvgrab --autosplit --format hdv --timestamp capture-

However, the video and audio is very jerky. The original footage is fine when played through the camcorder itself.

1) How can I get the 'Record Monitor' to work properly in my case?
2) Is there a way to improve the capture quality?

I assume you ran the wizard that started the first time you ran kdenlive and at that time set it to the setting you use in your camera. I've not captured with 0.7.6 0r 0.7.5 yet (openSUSE), but if you use HDV you also have to in kdenlive select Settings/Configure Kdenlive/Capture and set Capture format to HDV.

I did run the wizard and configured kdenlive to default to 1,440x1,080, 60i to match the settings on my camcorder. But my capture format in kdenlive was set to RawDV so I changed it to HDV as per your suggestion. The first problem has now been resolved. Turns out that the Record Monitor (dvgrab) was unable to acquire a handle to the /dev/raw1394 device. I faced a similar problem while running dvgrab so I restarted kdenlive with sudo option and that solved the permissions issue. I was able to record the footage to a file but since kdenlive simply uses dvgrab in the background, the second problem still persists. The audio and video still has so many pauses. Sometimes the video would just freeze after playing for about 1 second. I'll try to look around on the internet if someone has faced similar issue but if someone on this forum can offer some ideas, it will be helpful. My other concern is that could it be a problem with the camcorder itself? I have only a few days of warranty left on it so I would like to verify if its just a tool problem or something wrong with the camera (of the minidv tape). Is there some other tool in linux that I can use to capture the HD video from a camcorder?

Hi,
I have the same camera. It worked fine for me when I last used it.
I also use the "sudo dvgrab" method that you explained.

Kdenlive does provide 'jerky' output audio/video through the clip/project monitor for me also, but the video renders fine and I don't have any other ill effects. I'm not sure it is supposed to be like that or if it's just my system. I did use 0.7.5 on jaunty quite a bit a few months ago and it went well.

Video does play smoothly in vlc and mplayer. You might want to check that also.

I also only use the HDV30 or 30P settings, and have never tried the other formats in the camera.

However, I must caveat all this. I have not gotten a good working version of kdenlive yet since "upgrading" to ubuntu karmic. I'm waiting until karmic development settles down before messing with it any further.

Hope this helps, Geoff

Your system might be may not have enough performance to support HDV capture and simultaneous playback. Do not confuse distortions in the Capture Monitor with what you can expect to see in the captured file. You need to be clear if this jerk and chop is in the Capture Monitor or in the Clip Monitor after you have captured.

Test to see if your system can even perform HDV playback well. First, just make a capture at the command line. Then, test playback with 'ffplay' How good is that? Next, test playback with 'melt'. That should be worse than ffplay but still decent. Kdenlive and melt will not perform as well as a dedicated media player.

Thanks for your prompt comments. They were bang on target. Playing the captured content using VLC was much smoother. I was earlier using the default application "Movie Player" which did not do a very good job of playing the content. The CPU utilization was a prominent factor in kdenlive not being able to record/play it correctly. Running dvgrab alone consumes about 60% on my 1.6 GHz, dual core CPU. While recording through kdenlive, it not invokes dvgrab but also plays it out at the same time. The processing power becomes the bottleneck as the utilization goes to 100%. Well, up until now I never bothered to think about my machine's horse power that I assumed will be quite adequate when I bought the machine a few years back but looks like I have long fallen behind the curve.

@vipin

As I said before I also have a HV30. It worked fine a few months ago, but I'm having problems now playing many clips. I think I've narrowed down my problem to being ffmpeg/ffplay being the issue. Do your HV30 clips play all the way through? Are you having crashes or lock-ups? What camera format are you using (NTSC/PAL, HV30 or HV30P, etc.)?
Thanks, Geoff

Geoffrey,
I have kept the default (factory) settings on the camcorder, which I believe are NTSC, 1440x1080, 60i. I tried playing some of the test files I generated (*.m2t) with both the VLC player and the ffplay without specifying any option. Both the applications were able to play the clip all the way through but the clips were rather small (1 to 2 minutes duration) so it may not have been a good test.
If there is a specific experiment you want me to try, I can do that. In 2-3 days, I should have a big enough footage on my MiniDV tape. I can try capturing and playing that to see if there are any crashes.

Vipin

vipin,
Thanks for the input. Glad you don't have the same problem. Mine was locking up ffplay/melt at the end of many clips, even the small ones. I think I found a newer (latest SVN version) of ffmpeg that doesn't have this problem.

I'm now working on getting it installed on my system as .deb without messing up all the package dependencies.