Capture DV Camcorder stream via Firewire

[jeremiahp]

Sony Handycam DCR-HC28 (MiniDV)
1394a connection to Windows 7 x64
VLC Media Player 1.1.5

According this this wiki entry...

http://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo_New
http://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo/Stream_from_a_DV_Camcorder

...streaming from a DV camcorder via firewire is only supported in Linux.

Is that still the case?

I'm connecting my MiniDV camcorder to the 1394 input on my laptop, playing back the contents of a MiniDV tape.
In VLC Media Player, I am doing the following steps:

1) opening MEDIA > CONVERT/SAVE...
2) Capture Device Tab > set Capture Mode = DirectShow, set Video Device Name = Microsoft DV Camera > Convert/Save
3) Source = "dshow://", Destination file via browse = C:\dv\test.mp4, Profile = Video H.264 + AAC (MP4) > START

I get a gray screen in VLC with a window titlebar of "dshow:// - VLC media player". All the buttons are gray'ed out. The camcorder is playing back the file on the device's screen.

I suspect I am misconfiguring the SOURCE value in step 3 above. Or, is capturing DV camcorder input via Firewire still not supported in Windows like the old documentation says? If so, is that because of some proprietary code in the 1394 drivers or something?

Thanks... I'm new to this stuff.

[VLC_help]

Is that still the case?

No.

Don't do live captures with H.264, because x264 requires so much CPU power that dropped frames and other issues can come and ruin your capture. So first capture huge file with minimal encoding and after that compress to target format.