Hi to every reader. I have recently purchased an used Sony MiniDV camera from year 1998. I want to make use of its FireWire port, so I bought a FireWire port (PCI card) and installed it. But the problem appeared on the software side. I first tried to install a trial mode of Adobe Premiere Pro 1,5. But the installation failed because of two reasons: my OS is Win2000 Pro and my CPU is Athlon Thunderbird 1100MHz. This version of Premiere requires WinXP and a CPU with SSE instruction set. I have neither. So, which other program could I use? I don't need anything very professional, I am going to use this stuff as an amateur and later maybe as a semi-pro. Please give me more than one alternative. And one more thing. When I attach the camera to the FW card, nothing happens in the OS (no "found new hardware" message etc.), and I don't get any new device in Device Manager. Is this OK?
If your camera does not show up in the device manager, it is not OK. If your serious about video editing and even think about getting semi-pro: upgrade to the latest technology and get yourself at least XP. There are many progs for video edditing in various levels of sophistication: Here some pages with relevant info: http://www.digitalvideoclub.com/basics/editing.php (check at the bottom for a listing of some programs) http://www.digitalvideoclub.com/siteinfo/suppliers.php To try of the capturing works OK, here are some freeware capturing programs: http://www.digitalvideoclub.com/downloads/freedownloads.php
Thank you for the links and device manager info. And as for Windows XP, I consider that OS to be something like a cartoon OS. I don't want to discuss that further.
Even if you don't want to discuss that further: although it is a Microsoft product ;-) it is much more stable than any of its predecessors. For multimedia applications it certainly offers a lot more than the older OS. Don't be fooled by its look. One of the first things that I did anyway, is change it to the classic Windows 98 look so if you're behind my machine you would not even see that it is XP..
I know all about WinXP, I had it for almost two years. After that wasted time, I reverted back to Win2000 and I live happily with it since then (and I lived so before XP). Win2000 is also far from perfect, but in today offering of OSes, it is the best balance between user-friendly/compact/efficient/stable.
