I've set up my equipment so I can digitize old VHS tapes. I have a VCR going into my camcorder, which is then going into my computer via firewire, and then I'm capturing the video to AVI using WinDV. This has been working fine, but it's strangely unreliable. For example, today I was capturing a tape with three recordings on it, and everything was going smoothly. But once the first recording ended, WinDV seemed to stop getting the video signal. The second recording started up, but all I saw in the preview window was solid gray.

So I tried queuing up the tape at the right point to start capturing the second video, and closed and relaunched WinDV. Nothing. Even less than before. It was just solid black, like there was no input device at all. I don't think this is a problem with the application, because I tried opening up VirtualDub and using its capture tool, but it gave me the same result: a black preview window.

At the moment, it appears that if I restart my computer, I'm able to capture again, but this problem keeps occurring, and because I plan on capturing a lot, constant rebooting isn't an attractive option for me.

Does anyone know where I should start looking?