Being a video broadcast instructor, I've captured using firewire IEEE from a wide variety of DV camcorders and to various pc's, so I'm not a novice, but have encountered a problem I can't figure out. Maybe someone's encountered this before and knows of a solution? I'm putting my attempts and discoveries in bold so you can see what I have already tried or ascertained: FIREWIRE CONTROLS CAMERA BUT WILL NOT CAPTURE! - I'm using Premiere 6.0 on my home pc and here's what happens - When I connect the camera, the pc recognizes and 'installs' the cam immediately. All good. Then when I try to capture, the play, rewind, stop, etc. buttons on the software WILL make the camera respond as expected, BUT the VIDEO WILL NOT APPEAR on the capture screen, nor will the audio. Video and audio plays when mouse clicks play, so firewire is obviously connected to some degree, but the signal does not make it through. Premiere device control options show that the camera IS connected, but when I try to edit capture settings, it gives a message: "UNABLE TO CONNECT TO CAPTURE DRIVER". DIFFERENT CAMS - SAME PROBLEM - I tried two other cameras, different brands and models, and same thing. All of my cameras previously captured to this same pc with no problems. IT'S NOT THE SOFTWARE...I tried Premiere, Windows Movie Maker, Nero Vision, Ulead Video and even WINDV that I found on this site. They all allow camera operation but get no picture/sound or give an error message. DEVICE MGR SEEMS OK...The IEEE 1396 card seems fine in the Device Manager. I've even deleted its driver and had the computer re-start and re-install. Made no difference. Device Mgr also lists the camera and it is working properly. No device conflicts on anything. FIREWIRE PORT WORKS FINE FOR EXTERNAL HD...There are two firewire ports. Either one works just fine for an external WD "MYBOOK" 500GB that I installed very recently. I thought there might be a conflict with this new HD (which I purchased specifically to hold or capture large video files), so uninstalled the HD and tried my cams in both ports - made no difference. TRIED RESTARTING COMPUTER WITH CAMERA HOOKED-UP AND RUNNING...no difference. TRIED ROLLING BACK TO EARLIER SYSTEM RESTORE POINTS...did not solve the problem. Unfortunately, I can only go so far back because I made the unfortunate mistake of deleting all sys restore data a bit more than a month ago to free-up hd space. TRIED UNBLOCKING 1396 FIREWALL...no difference. Still could not connect to capture driver. SOME IDEAS/QUESTIONS I HAVE: 1.) Did installing the new external mybook drive permanently mess-up the firewire hardware? Is it possible that the card now is 'somewhat functional' but the dev mgr still shows it as being fine? p.s. - after I installed this 1/2 TB drive I reformatted it to NTFS - after doing so, I transferred a 15 GB file of thousands of photos from my internal HD to this new external drive. It took about 20 minutes to do the transfer over firewire - is that normal?? It seems quite sluggish for a reputed fast drive! I also learned that WD had some issues with bad firewires shipped with some of their earlier drives of this model - I never took the chance and used an existing cable that had no problems, so that can be ruled out. 2.) Is it possible that my camera-to-pc firewire has stopped working? I've never heard of this, but would that allow camera pc to cam operation but not video capture? 3.) About a month ago, before leaving on an extended vacation, I installed a patch onto my pc that was supposed to allow me to repair a bad usb drive that I got from a liquidation place. I later learned that the pen drive was bogus and found an ALCOR patch on the internet that was supposed to reset its fake 4GB capacity to its actual 1 or 2 GB cap. It did not work and I ended up throwing-away the drive. However, I remember that after installing the patch for a few days my printer would not print. That somehow corrected itself. Any possiblity that this so-called 'patch' messed-up firewire capability? 4.) If I have to resort to this, is there a way to re-install the XP OS without having to reinstall my numerous programs? I remember doing an OS reinstall on top of an existing one (not a clean install) some years ago, but can't remember what things looked like after that. Sorry for the novel, but I figured it would save time suggesting things I've already tried. ANY THOUGHTS ON MY IDEAS OR A HOPEFULLY NEW SOLUTION I HAVEN'T CONSIDERED WOULD BE VERY MUCH APPRECIATED!! Thanks!
Just found out... Firewire is NOT the problem. Borrowed a friend's working firewire cable and it made no difference. We can strike that option from the list. These problems are SO frustrating!!!
Go to the microsoft download page and download hot fix 'KB885222'. That may fix your problem if you are using XP SP2.
Well, here's where things have gone in this saga... GOT A NEW IEEE 1496 CARD TODAY and after install, everything went to hell. Put the new card into an available slot and instead of solving the problem, more problems erupted. Internet would no longer connect and things were going very strange. PC started to crash repeatedly for no apparent reason. Tried removing older card and then newer card but neither approach would solve problem. Things got worse, Win XP would not boot at all - kept hanging on one of the first three splash screens. With no other alternative, I inserted the XP OS disc and had the computer boot from the CD drive. Did an OS repair (install over the old one, as I asked about in my first post) which of course took a lot of time. After OS reinstall/repair, I installed the new IEEE 1396 card and made sure it was seated properly. The pc recognized and all looked OK. THE GOOD NEWS - When I tried a capture, the camera not only responded, but the software displayed the video and audio. I installed the older IEEE card and it also works fine. Took a few more tweaks here and there to get things working without dropped frames, but all looks somewhat normal now. The worst part of it has been having to install hundreds (literally) of XP windows updates, including SP2, in order to get back to where the computer was before all of this. So... what caused the capture problem in the first place? My guess was that bogus alcor patch from China that was put into motion because of the bogus cheap Chinese bootleg pen drive. (Wasn't so cheap after all!!!) Either that or something went strange when the WD mybook external HD was installed. (Which, by the way is back up and running just fine.) Either way, the only thing that solved the problem was an OS repair/reinstall. I hope this post and my experience helps someone else who has a simliar set of circumstances, but I sincerely hope nobody has this happen in the first place!
