I was wondering if any of the rest of you are having problems with using the firewire interface on a Macintosh Computer. I have nine Panasonic DVC7 camcorders and now only one will connect with the computer. I've had them in for repair and talked with the regional rep for Panasonic, and he tells me that they are seeing this problem with OSX 10.3 and higher. He says if you hook up the camera "hot" it will actually burn a small hole in the circuit board of the camera. We've tried having the computer on and the camera off and then having both off when the connection is made but we still get repeated failures. Panasonic has been very responsive and helpful in trying to trouble shoot this problem, but it is nearly impossible to talk with anyone at Apple other than the low level tech support people who don't have a clue about engineering or design. Prior to the problems with the DVC7, we also experienced the same problems with the Canon ZR series. Further, we've had the DV interface burn out in two JVC decks. We are currently using Canopus converters to import and export the data from either the analog RCA jacks on the camcorders or on the back of the JVC decks. Any thoughts?
That's officially weird. I find it hard to believe that its OSX causing the burn-out, can you give us any more info or point us to some links concerning the issue?
I've been searching to try and find if other people have had the same problem without much luck. We've also used some Sonnett Harmony upgrade cards on some older iMacs. I need to find a solution that will allow me focus on teaching rather than spending hours trying to have equipment repaired. I am thinking about buying only tower type Macs so I can buy inexpensive PCI Firewire cards if the internal ones fail. All three Firewire ports on the G5 share the same buss, so if there is a problem with one, they're all gone. Panasonic is shipping me a new DVC60 to try for a couple of weeks to see if we have the same problem. The early Canon ZR series Apple included with their platinum iMacs failed both with the Firewire and the tape transport mechanism. The Panasonic cameras have had great transport mechanisms and are large enough not to "walk away." We have a fairly large video program which includes our own cable channel, an ENG truck, remote production truck and studio. Just now we're finishing our 16 game series of live basketball and wrestling events. Although the Panasonics struggled with the mercury vapor lighting in white balancing, they performed great. I know that prosumer cameras are being asked to do a heck of a lot of work, as are the Mac computers, but I hope I can find a combination that will hold together.
I'm afraid I can't help you much. I've never heard of anything like this, and I've never had such serious Firewire issues using G4s and G5s. I have, however, had major issues with older Canon ZR60s (such as recording audio out of sync from PC, and having some real lousy tape transport). You might want to head over to the forums at 2-pop: http://www.uemforums.com/2pop/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php they have a pretty good pool of very knowledgeable folk. Good luck. If you solve the issue, let me know, I'm curious about this.
I may be a little late...but I thought you would find it interesting that my company has had the DV firewire input fail on 2 JVC decks as well. Now I'm routing through a DSR-11 to make VHS dubs. JVC doesn't seem too anxious to help either. We don't use any Apple Computers...All Dell machines-Windows based. I am also searching for others having this problem. Hot swapping is something we do a lot of...could be that I guess...but a firewire deck that becomes damaged through hotswapping would be quite useless indeed.
We're having the same problem here. Every single camera and tape deck is incapable of connecting to either macs or PCs. We've got some Canon GL1s, some Sony TRV38's, and a $700 deck, all of which have apparently burnt out firewire ports. We're not exactly sure how to proceed, and have tried a number of possible solutions, including but not limited to swapping cables, starting up in various configurations, etc. Any help would be greatly appreciated. bhatch
Hi there, I received this post in another forum. It looks like there are alot of us with this problem. YES....we've had almost exactly what you describe. We have a batch of 15 eMacs that came with 10.2 and worked without a problem for the spring semester a year ago. Last September they were upgraded to 10.3 and we begin to experiance Firewire port failures like you describe. The connected device gets killed....at least the Firewire connectivity part of it. We've sent between 15 and 20 camcorders back to the shop. All have had to have their main printed circuit boards replaced (we didn't do an actual inspection so I can't say if there was physical damgage), but in talking to the Canon shop supervisor he said it is something they are not seeing in their cameras routinely. We've lost about a dozen Z series Canons (different models)(a few for the second time) a couple of Canon GL's, a few Sony's and a Panasonic and it's driving us nuts. I'd appreciate hearing from anyone else that is experiancing this so we could compare notes. Apple does seem to be taking it seriously.......but we haven't gotten a real response yet, and I do understand that these things take time.
I made the post that Ragnar copied above. Things seemed to subside for a bit but in the past week we've lost 4 more cameras, including 1 used on an older set of iMacs that previously had not had this problem and one on a "gumdrop" iMac. And two more on the set of eMacs that have been a problem off and on.
