Not just a Newbie,a 1st time Ulead user. Firewire card help

cocori1 · Post by **cocori1** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 5:40 am

Hi. I am trying to run Ulead Video Studio and realized with my minidv cassette camcorder, I needed a firewire card with (ports?) and a 1394 cable to go from the ports to the camcorder before I even got started. So I bought those over the internet and hooked them up to an empty slot inside my tower. I plugged the 1394 cable into the camcorder then plugged the other end into the port.
The problem lies there. Nothing will recognize that it's even hooked up. When I try to force a capture or anything, it'll say," Make sure device is connected then retry" or something. The capture button never gets highlighted. After I installed Ulead, I did reboot the computer. Anyone know where I should start? Thanks Corey

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 5:49 am

... And you have your camera switched on and in PLAY mode?

Have you also checked in Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager that you don't have a yellow question mark over the 'IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers' icon...?

jchunter · Post by **jchunter** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 3:56 pm

Coincidentally, yesterday, a friend also experienced capture problems with firewire capture from his Sony DV camcorder. He had just returned from a trip, captured the first 20 minutes, or so, stopped the capture to fast forward thru a "nice" shot of the inside of his camera bag, and when he tried to resume the capture, VS would not recognize his camcorder.

He wiggled the firewire cable and could see that the camcorder would alternately detect his computer and not. So we tried his camcorder using my firwire cable on my computer and everything was fine for capture.

Then we tried his cable on my computer and it was intermittent. Fine, we thought, just get a new cable. So he got one and - damned if it did not work - on either his computer or mine. We looked at the camera end of cable with a magnifying glass and could see that his new cable had the contacts recessed about 1/64 of an inch further in than my cable. It just didn't seem to make (reliable) contact with his camera.

So he went to exchange the cable and found that all the firewire cables in that store had pins that were similarly too short. There seems to be quite a variation in manufacturing specs for the pins...

So, he bought a new firewire board that came with a cable (with longer pins) and installed it. After some difficulty getting the computer to recognize the new hardware, it finally did and he was able to capture another half hour of video.

However, when he tried to capture from his second tape, the same thing happened - no camera recognition.

He just sent me the following email: "No amount of jiggling, shoving would work. I think my camcorder has buggered pins in that 4-pin connector and the new cable just jammed them in far enough where they don't make contact. I feel like poking around in the camera's connector to see if I can pull anything straight. The problem now has to be the camera and up your cable no longer works either."

Bottom line:
(1) It seems that the firewire connectors on the camcorder may not work well with some of the new firewire cables that are being sold,
(2) These connectors may not be able to withstand the repeated insertion, wiggling, etc., that naturally occurs during capturing.
(3) Personally, I'm going to treat my treat my firewire cable with "kidd gloves" when capturing and will try to minimize flexing stress that can happen when moving the camera with the firewire cable plugged in.

GeorgeW · Post by **GeorgeW** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 4:11 pm

I've had recent sporadic problems with my computer recognizing my Sony digital-8 camcorder. The only way to make it work is a power down, and turn on the PC (a restart computer doesn't always work for some reason :roll) ).

ymmv,
George

cocori1 · Post by **cocori1** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:54 pm

Thanks George. I just turned off the computer and waited for a few minutes and turned it back on...nothing.
Thanks John. I unplugged the cables checked them closely and plugged them in again. I think that's o.k.
I forgot to say the first time that I am getting the "ding ding" sound from the computer when I turn my camcorder on, but nothing ever pops up saying,"do you want to run new device" or whatever.
Thanks Ken. Yes I am playing the cassette in the screen on the camcorder but it's not being read by Ulead. If I could get Ulead to read it, I could try and capture it but it isn't.
I don't have a question mark by the "bus host controller.." but I do have a yellow exclamation mark next to 2-"SCSI/RAID host controllers". Does that have anything to do with this?

GeorgeW · Post by **GeorgeW** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:02 pm

One thing to try (turn down the volume on your computer before doing this). Instead of turning your camcorder to "Playback" mode, turn it to "Camera" mode (as if you were going to start video recording new footage).

Does your computer recognize the camcorder in the "camera" mode

Note-1 the reason I said turn down the volume on your PC first is because the "feedback" from the mic on the camcorder to your computer starts to get loud and annoying...

Note-2 this does not resolve the "capture" problem, but it will help indicate if the firewire card and cable are working...

Regards,
George

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:09 pm

I honestly don't know. But the yellow question marks mean that something is wrong with your hard drive set-up. If they are in a RAID array, then it seems a driver or drivers are missing. But I wouldn't have thought that would affect your firewire set-up. Someone with more 'techie' experience than I will need to address this...

I notice, from a quick Google search, that other people have the SCSI/RAID host controller problem when virtual SCSI hosts are installed by third party programs like Alcohol. The solution seems to be simply to uninstall them...

By the way, if you go to My Network Places > View Network Connections, do you have an icon for the firewire connection, and is it shown as being 'Connected'?

cocori1 · Post by **cocori1** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 7:41 pm

George, I tried the camera mode. I still hear the "ding ding" but no recognizing screen pops up...
Ken, I did look up the " view connections" and the 1394 cable is connected according to that. So we just gotta get Ulead to recognize it, I guess.?
Also I'm not sure if I used a 3rd party or not.
I did go into device driver and clicked on the yellow exclamation point next to SCSI/RAID and uninstalled it according to microsoft's support and then when I reinstalled it and rebooted the computer, it still had a exclamation point there.?.?

cocori1 · Post by **cocori1** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 7:50 pm

Also, like I said I am new still. But when I install something, I'm used to installing stuff with the wizard taking me step by step. But with this driver disc it allows you to click on whatever icon you want.
Like just in the driver tab alone, there is; a setup folder, a setup config settings icon, a setup installshield icon, a setup INX file icon, a setup HTML document icon, and a setup.boot icon. I'm used to just going through one setup, reboot the computer, and you're good to go.
My point is, I don't know if I've installed everything or not. And I have 7 other folders in ADDITION to the driver folder...AAAGGGHHH!!

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 8:28 pm

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 8:54 pm

cocori1 · Post by **cocori1** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 1:27 am

Thanks maddrummer.That's a lot to take in. But let's start from the beginning: I have now shut down and taken out the card. Now how do I perform a restore on my computer to a date...etc?

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 5:44 am

cocori1 · Post by **cocori1** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 3:13 am

O.k. I restored it to way before I installed the drivers. Turned it off and put the card in and rebooted but...nothing. When I go into Ulead and hit the "capture" tab a pop up says "Either no capture driver is installed in this system or no device is connected."
Is there anything I need to do besides restore it to before I installed them in order to get them off?
And how come it seems like XP isn't installing it's own driver? Can I force it to?
Also, you said to watch putting it in the top slot and the bottom slots cause they might conflict. Did you mean I should try not to put it in either one or just don't put a firewire card in the top AND bottom slots.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 3:16 am

Another suggestion to add to the one above by MD.
Remove the firewire card and then do the system restore.
Now check to see if you still have that yellow exclamation mark.

This will at least reveal if that exclamation mark has anything to do with the installation of the firewire card.

Last year I had a similar problem with Windows XP identifying hardware incorrectly and it turned out to be my (at the time brand new) hard drive was faulty. If after the above steps you still have the exclamation mark try running the Windows XP chkdsk function.

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