Sharp Camcorder VL-NZ159U in W7?

[johnwayne]

I have inherited an oldie - the Sharp Camcorder VL-NZ159U
(?circa 2002?). It seems complete, and works pretty good. It came
without any drivers which seem to be needed to upload recorded video
and/or pictures to a PC.

I found drivers which work okay on my PC in XP, but not on my other PC
in W7:
http://members.driverguide.com/matc...1]=137014&cid=937&model=SHARP+DVC+USB+Ver.1.0

I cannot find any drivers for W7. Anyone know of any?
I have emailedSharp, but no response.

Thanks

JW

 

[Paul]

I have inherited an oldie - the Sharp Camcorder VL-NZ159U
(?circa 2002?). It seems complete, and works pretty good. It came
without any drivers which seem to be needed to upload recorded video
and/or pictures to a PC.

I found drivers which work okay on my PC in XP, but not on my other PC
in W7:
http://members.driverguide.com/matc...1]=137014&cid=937&model=SHARP+DVC+USB+Ver.1.0

I cannot find any drivers for W7. Anyone know of any?
I have emailedSharp, but no response.

Thanks

JW

The DV interface is Firewire aka IEEE1394.
You can record from that interface. I recommend
a four wire connection, rather than six wire, so
there is no danger of computer power, blowing out
the Firewire port on the camcorder. It almost
looks like the DV interface is four wire anyway,
so you don't have a say in the matter, and only
a safe connection can be made.

VL-NZ150U
http://files.sharpusa.com/Downloads...der/Manuals/Archive/cam_man_vlnz100u_150u.pdf

This cable gets you from DV iLink port, to Firewire.
This is a 6 pin to 4 pin, which means two pins
on the six pin end aren't actually wired to anything.
Only four of the six pins are used, on both ends.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3SD1JG8671

The Firewire pins are VBUS,GND,A+,A-,B+,B-. The first
two are optional, and provide power to peripherals.
The A pair and B pair are transmit and receive differential
interfaces, for the actual data transmission. On the
DV port on your camera, it just has A+,A-,B+,B- for
connecting to Firewire on some computer. Firewire cards
for desktop computers can be purchased separately, if
you don't happen to have a four or six pin Firewire port.
You want to make sure the adapter cable you buy, fits
the card you add to the computer.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815150074

*******

The camcorder a bit of a bastardized design, with what
looks like separated subsystems.

sensor --+-- SD_card_photos_only --- USB mass storage to fetch photos
|
+-- Cassette_tape_video --- DV_Firewire_Out

You can pull the SD card, and use a USB to SD adapter
if you want. WinXP or later should have a USB Mass Storage
driver already for that purpose. I like ones with
fewer interfaces on them, in the hope of getting
a better quality connector. This one does SD and microSD.
The one I own, just does SD. It's quite possible, you
don't need any USB driver from camcorder to USB, on WinXP
or later. So using this adapter would be purely optional.
The camcorder should already be doing USB mass storage.
But if it isn't, this kind of adapter can help.

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/20-208-470-Z05?$S640$

The Firewire protocol stack uses SBP-2 for disk drives.
For video recording, the protocol is "61883". Both of these
protocols should be built-in, on a WinXP or later computer.
You generally press "Play" on the camcorder, so the protocol
is live on the camera end, then attempt recording on the computer
a fraction of a second later. Something like that. I've never
had to do this. Recording is real-time, so transferring a
half hour of video, takes a half hour over Firewire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_61883

Paul

 

[johnwayne]

The DV interface is Firewire aka IEEE1394.
You can record from that interface. I recommend
a four wire connection, rather than six wire, so
there is no danger of computer power, blowing out
the Firewire port on the camcorder. It almost
looks like the DV interface is four wire anyway,
so you don't have a say in the matter, and only
a safe connection can be made.

VL-NZ150U
http://files.sharpusa.com/Downloads...der/Manuals/Archive/cam_man_vlnz100u_150u.pdf

I have this manual in a pdf and I see on page 51 it shows the IEEE
cable for video editing. As it happens, I got a lot of extras with
the camcorder, including said cable. Looks the same.
I have already successfully uploaded jpegs from the camcorder to my XP
PC. I downloaded a working set of USB drivers to provide that.
I assume that I can upload video the same way? I have AVS4YOU
video-editor on that PC. I have not tried to upload a video clip from
the camcorder to the XP PC. Plan to do that later today or tomorrow.

However, as I said, the USB drivers do not work on my W7 PC. So I was
hoping that someone might know if they even exist and wherefrom -
considering the age of the camcorder. May not.
I did email Sharp to no avail. As yet anyway. Weekend now.

Are you saying that the camcorder will only upload video from its
cassette to the PC using Fireware (and not USB)? I did not anticipate
that. Sounds like it.

 

[Paul]

I have this manual in a pdf and I see on page 51 it shows the IEEE
cable for video editing. As it happens, I got a lot of extras with
the camcorder, including said cable. Looks the same.
I have already successfully uploaded jpegs from the camcorder to my XP
PC. I downloaded a working set of USB drivers to provide that.
I assume that I can upload video the same way? I have AVS4YOU
video-editor on that PC. I have not tried to upload a video clip from
the camcorder to the XP PC. Plan to do that later today or tomorrow.

However, as I said, the USB drivers do not work on my W7 PC. So I was
hoping that someone might know if they even exist and wherefrom -
considering the age of the camcorder. May not.
I did email Sharp to no avail. As yet anyway. Weekend now.

Are you saying that the camcorder will only upload video from its
cassette to the PC using Fireware (and not USB)? I did not anticipate
that. Sounds like it.


Thanks

JW

I'm reading the manual, just like you, and so my interpretation
is just a guess. I don't see any evidence the unit is unified,
and "any interface can access any storage facility". It looks
to me like the cassette is hooked to firewire, and the SD photo
card is hooked to USB.

While the camcorder is hooked to USB on the working computer,
you could look at the drivers used and so on, to see if they're
standard ones that came with the OS. You look in Device Manager,
for those details (Start : Run : devmgmt.msc). For example, Intel
used to distribute an INFINST driver, with a "USB driver" in it.
But all the Intel driver did was:

1) Assign an Intel branded name to an entry in Device Manager.
That is just a text string at the bottom of the INF file.
2) Call the standard Microsoft INF file, to do the rest of
the installation. An "include" call to USBPORT.INF.

In other words, the driver was doing nothing special.

And whether you would expect anything special, depends
on whether the product is "steered by USB" or it is just
file transfer. For file transfer, the USB Mass Storage
(or later, MTP protocol) is used to move images. But
if the camera "Play", "Record", "Stop" were accessible
over USB, then the USB driver would be "custom" and
absolutely essential. Given the chopped up nature of the
design, and the fact it is not unified, my guess is the
USB is just the "mass storage" flavor. Typically, they
distribute a USB driver for Win98 users for such cases,
whereas later OSes are likely to work with just the built-in
OS drivers. Windows 7 would be the same, and have similar
functions to the WinXP ones on USB.

*******

Another way to check out the camera, is with Uwe's utility.
You can run USBTreeView when the camera is plugged into the
USB port. The utility is modeled after USBView and UVCView
utilities.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtreeview_e.html

The "config" space for the USB device will attempt
to bury you in data... Some examples here.

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/151187-unkown-usb-mass-storage-device/

In "Interface Descriptor", this is the one that caught my eye.

bInterfaceClass: 0x08

And this decoder table tells me the device in the MSFN example
is USB mass storage.

http://www.usb.org/developers/defined_class

08h Interface Mass Storage

The driver for accessing "08h" devices is already in the OS,
for Win2K/WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8. For Win98, you need
a separate driver.

For decoding other parameters in the USBTreeView, try
this page.

http://www.beyondlogic.org/usbnutshell/usb5.shtml

HTH,
Paul

 

[johnwayne]

is just a guess. I don't see any evidence the unit is unified,
and "any interface can access any storage facility". It looks
to me like the cassette is hooked to firewire, and the SD photo
card is hooked to USB.

While the camcorder is hooked to USB on the working computer,
you could look at the drivers used and so on, to see if they're
standard ones that came with the OS. You look in Device Manager,
for those details (Start : Run : devmgmt.msc). For example, Intel
used to distribute an INFINST driver, with a "USB driver" in it.
But all the Intel driver did was:

1) Assign an Intel branded name to an entry in Device Manager.
That is just a text string at the bottom of the INF file.
2) Call the standard Microsoft INF file, to do the rest of
the installation. An "include" call to USBPORT.INF.

In other words, the driver was doing nothing special.

And whether you would expect anything special, depends
on whether the product is "steered by USB" or it is just
file transfer. For file transfer, the USB Mass Storage
(or later, MTP protocol) is used to move images. But
if the camera "Play", "Record", "Stop" were accessible
over USB, then the USB driver would be "custom" and
absolutely essential. Given the chopped up nature of the
design, and the fact it is not unified, my guess is the
USB is just the "mass storage" flavor. Typically, they
distribute a USB driver for Win98 users for such cases,
whereas later OSes are likely to work with just the built-in
OS drivers. Windows 7 would be the same, and have similar
functions to the WinXP ones on USB.

*******

Another way to check out the camera, is with Uwe's utility.
You can run USBTreeView when the camera is plugged into the
USB port. The utility is modeled after USBView and UVCView
utilities.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtreeview_e.html

The "config" space for the USB device will attempt
to bury you in data... Some examples here.

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/151187-unkown-usb-mass-storage-device/

In "Interface Descriptor", this is the one that caught my eye.

bInterfaceClass: 0x08

And this decoder table tells me the device in the MSFN example
is USB mass storage.

http://www.usb.org/developers/defined_class

08h Interface Mass Storage

The driver for accessing "08h" devices is already in the OS,
for Win2K/WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8. For Win98, you need
a separate driver.

For decoding other parameters in the USBTreeView, try
this page.

http://www.beyondlogic.org/usbnutshell/usb5.shtml

HTH,
Paul

I made a quick try, using the IEEE cable from camcoder to my XP PC. It
uploaded a short WMV video clip I recorded quite nicely, including
audio. Now, if I could only get it to work on my W7 PC. This may
just be another reason to keep my XP around.

Thanks

JW

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I made a quick try, using the IEEE cable from camcoder to my XP PC. It
uploaded a short WMV video clip I recorded quite nicely, including
audio. Now, if I could only get it to work on my W7 PC. This may
just be another reason to keep my XP around.

I haven't seen you say that your W7 PC has a FireWire port.

If indeed there's no FireWire port on the W7 machine, then I can say
with confidence that you won't be able to load the video from the
camcorder.

 

[Paul]

I haven't seen you say that your W7 PC has a FireWire port.

If indeed there's no FireWire port on the W7 machine, then I can say
with confidence that you won't be able to load the video from the
camcorder.

If the Windows 7 machine had a 1394a port (for the cable in question),
then the driver stack appears to share some common features with the
older stack. It still has a 61883.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff538867(v=vs.85).aspx

What's missing I thought, was they removed Firewire networking stack.
At one time, you could connect two PCs with a Firewire cable, and
the machines would be assigned IP addresses as if it was Ethernet.
There were even provisions for MAC addresses. But since nobody seemed
to use that, it got removed (not implemented) in later OSes.

But people still transfer video over Firewire, as well as run
high-end audio workstations via Firewire, so there is still some
usage of the other stacks. As well as SBP2 for disk drives.
My Firewire disk enclosure is so old, it is limited to 137GB or
less hard drives. And doesn't get used any more.

Paul

 

[johnwayne]

I haven't seen you say that your W7 PC has a FireWire port.

If indeed there's no FireWire port on the W7 machine, then I can say
with confidence that you won't be able to load the video from the
camcorder.

Agreed

Yes I have an added 3-port firewire PCI card added, reflected in W7
Device Manager.

JW

 

[johnwayne]

Yes I have an added 3-port firewire PCI card added, reflected in W7
Device Manager.

JW

This AM I tried recording a video clip on the camcorder cassette
again. Then I connected firewire cable from the camcorder to my W7 PC
and tried to upload the clip as before. This time the PC's autoplay
showed:

Capture your home video in various formats using AVS Video Recorder
Start Encoding
Record Video
Edit and Record Video

I chose the first (which was the default)

It brought up AVS Video Recorder (which I had installed in the past),
and selected 'start capture'. It captured the video quite nicely to
W7 PC's c:\users\mae\captured_file_001.dv after which I selected 'stop
capture' in AVS Video Recorder. Then I converted the .dv file to .avi
for retention. Great!

I thought to re-try uploading photo pics from the camcorder to my W7
PC, which failed yesterday. I see that Device Manager still picks up
the camcorder as an 'unknown device' under 'other devces'. However, I
still cannot install the XP drivers on the W7 PC. And so, it still
looks like I need special driver for W7 - which may not be available.

Oh well....

JW

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, Paul <[email protected]>
writes:
[]

file transfer. For file transfer, the USB Mass Storage
(or later, MTP protocol) is used to move images. But

[]
Is "MTP protocol" an example of PNS syndrome?
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

I remember a lot of questions on a vocalist forum about the problems singing
"There is a balm in Gilead" without making it sound like a security alert. -
Linda Fox in UMRA, 2010-11-19

 

[Paul]

file transfer. For file transfer, the USB Mass Storage
(or later, MTP protocol) is used to move images. But

[]
Is "MTP protocol" an example of PNS syndrome?[/QUOTE]

It's not germane to this thread, but here it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol

Paul

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Agreed

Yes I have an added 3-port firewire PCI card added, reflected in W7
Device Manager.

JW

OK, sorry to have failed to assume enough

And sorry that I can't offer some actual help...

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

This AM I tried recording a video clip on the camcorder cassette
again. Then I connected firewire cable from the camcorder to my W7 PC
and tried to upload the clip as before. This time the PC's autoplay
showed:

Capture your home video in various formats using AVS Video Recorder
Start Encoding
Record Video
Edit and Record Video

I chose the first (which was the default)

It brought up AVS Video Recorder (which I had installed in the past),
and selected 'start capture'. It captured the video quite nicely to
W7 PC's c:\users\mae\captured_file_001.dv after which I selected 'stop
capture' in AVS Video Recorder. Then I converted the .dv file to .avi
for retention. Great!

I thought to re-try uploading photo pics from the camcorder to my W7
PC, which failed yesterday. I see that Device Manager still picks up
the camcorder as an 'unknown device' under 'other devces'. However, I
still cannot install the XP drivers on the W7 PC. And so, it still
looks like I need special driver for W7 - which may not be available.

Oh well....

JW

That's good news on the FireWire front.

And I assume you can remove the SD card from the camcorder and plug it
into a card reader.

I am curious why the USB card reader doesn't load, though. Maybe it's
just too old and fell off the list.

BTW, I do sometimes see things labeled as Unknown Device that work
anyway...

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

file transfer. For file transfer, the USB Mass Storage
(or later, MTP protocol) is used to move images. But

[]
Is "MTP protocol" an example of PNS syndrome?

It's not germane to this thread, but here it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol

Paul[/QUOTE]

Which ended up reminding me that pleonasm and neoplasm are anagrams of
each other.

One is redundant language, the other is (arguably) redundant tissue.

 

[johnwayne]

That's good news on the FireWire front.

And I assume you can remove the SD card from the camcorder and plug it
into a card reader.

I handn't thought of that. Since I can make the USP work on my XP PC
I left it at that.

I am curious why the USB card reader doesn't load, though. Maybe it's
just too old and fell off the list.

2002 give or take.

BTW, I do sometimes see things labeled as Unknown Device that work
anyway...

I have run out of ideas.

JW

 

[johnwayne]

OK, sorry to have failed to assume enough

And sorry that I can't offer some actual help...

Hey - don't apologize.
I appreciate your inputs
JW

 

[Paul]

I handn't thought of that. Since I can make the USP work on my XP PC
I left it at that.


2002 give or take.


I have run out of ideas.

JW

Did the USBtreeview show anything ?

If the device isn't negotiating properly at startup,
then no "Endpoints" form. If there are Endpoints, then
config info becomes available and then you can check
out what Class the device is. If it is a Class the OS
has a driver for, then it should work.

Paul

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I handn't thought of that. Since I can make the USP work on my XP PC
I left it at that.


2002 give or take.


I have run out of ideas.

JW

But at least you seem to have a workable situation, so hang in there

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Hey - don't apologize.
I appreciate your inputs
JW

OK, sorry for apologizing

No kidding - it's really meant as humor.