Panasonic DV Camcorder via firewire to XP SP2 appears and dissapears

[ASE]

Hi,

I have recently been attempting to extract video off my panasonic
camcorder and after attempting USB (terrible quality) I installed a
firewire card onto my machine. It installed and was recognised
successfully.

The card is a combo USB2 and firewire card, and connected all of my usb
components which were all recognised fine. I then moved onto setting up
the camcorder.

I plugged it into the firewire and got the standard hardware
recognition ping, the hardware "Panasonic DV Camcorder" drivers were
installed and it appeared successfully in windows device manager.
Although it then dissappears out of device manager soon thereafter.
Thus I only have access to the camcorder for about 10-20 seconds. I had
to move pretty quick to see the camcorder in device manager.

Does anyone have any ideas. I have over 3 hours of kids video that I
want to download.

Thank you
Anthony

 

[Jim]

Dumb question: do you have the camcorder turned on and the dial set to the
video playback setting (2nd position on my Panasonic)?

Jim

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

And in addition to Jim's comment... camcorder powered by A/C and not its
internal battery?

 

[ASE]

Jim I wont argue about the dumb question - question

Yes the camcorder was on and set to playback - this is why it was
visible at all in the device manager. When off or not on playback mode
it is not seen at all.

Cari - Yes definitely powered by A/C.

thanks.

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Have a quick look through Graham Hughes' site and see if one of his
solutions works for you.
http://www.myvideoproblems.com/ProblemPages/ProblemPages.htm

 

[ASE]

Thanks I did actually see his site and reviewed the problems that were
there. My problem does not seem to fit any of the problems that people
seem to have had with the Panasonic DV and WinXP SP2. The issue here is
that the camera actually appears then dissapears in the device manager.

I have also installed a number of matches from Microsoft discussing the
situation where WinXP SP2 does not enumerate DV cameras (and in some
case Panasonic specifically) - these did not help.

Thanks.

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

The first thing I would try is to go to a friend's house and try it with
their PC and with your cable. If everything is fine here, then go home and
retry there.

Sometimes, wiggling the cable helps. Or of course, replacing the cable. If
the friend has a similar setup, try his cable too

 

[Guest]

I have the same problem with my Sony HC18 DV camcorder, I think the problem
might have started occuring more seriously with one of windows new updates.
My band is getting pretty angry about not getting their videos but I cant
sort it!
I read somewhere that there is a hotfix for it.
Also I find that sometimes the thing works for several minutes, and the next
for severeal seconds, tried moving the firewire card to a different PCI slot,
but that didnt fix it easier
Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[Guest]

Apologies for Double Posting, but I just remembered something.

When I go to device manager and disable my firewire card and then enable it
again, it begins detecting the camcorder again, but soon it stops detecing it
once more. Just thought you might want to know, if you wanted a quick fix,
though it isnt really good enough. The fact that I never had this probled
till recently, or at least the problem wasnt so bad, makes me think it is to
do with a new update, or my hardware has gone bust. I shall buy a new
Firewire card and try that first

 

[ASE]

Hi,

Well I got it fixed.
The resolution started with the post from Cari (MS-MVP) about trying it
at a friends house ie. different hardware - that is machine, firewire
card and firewire cable. I had previously tried a different program
that would simply download the video to AVI. This program actually gave
me an error, which I paraphrase here as "Unable to find feedback
connection".

Essentially got me thinking about the cable. Borrowed another cable
from a friend - I had been using the cable that had come with the card.

HEY presto it connected and could control and successfully see the DV
Camcorder. I then moved onto the next problem which was essentially
100's of lost frames.

First thoughts were to slow machine, slow harddrive or bad
configuration somewhere.

1. First tried to different harddrive than that on which my OS was
installed (failed).
2. Disabled all services on my machine, even disabled network, firewall
and antivirus (failed).
3. Came across a posting on the web which had one point about
decreasing colour density on screen to 16 bit (sorry forgot the website
link). I decreased to 16 bit and a screen resolution of 800x600. I am
using an onboard video driver which I believe uses the CPU and memory
to drive video generation. This combination worked - I now need to find
some software that does not display a preview of the video it might
assist further.

Thanks for all of your thoughts and assistance here.

Watson I would try replacing (or borrowing) the cheaper stuff first -
give a new cable a go you never know.

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Glad you're up and running. It's always a good option to start with the
cheapest components... no point in spending all that hard earned $s if you
don't have to. And friends, or spare PCs, come in very handy for diagnosing
exactly where the problem may lie. So if you get a new PC, keep the old
one, whether it's in a closet or the spare room, because you never know when
you may need it!

 

[ASE]

I was a little over zealous on the resolution of my second problem. It
would seem my machine just cannot keep up with the data flowing from
the camera. I think I might have been wasting a lot of time of a
fruitless exercise.

Thanks.