I've recently bought a canon MV750i digital camcorder, and have captured and editted some footage using Pinnacle Studio 8 (SE) software. However, I cannot seem to output it back to digital tape via firewire.

I click on "Make Tape" in Studio 8, and it renders fine, but when trying to output it back using my DV In socket on the Canon camcorder I get an intermittent blue screen. The first few seconds or so are outputted fine, but then it goes blue for a while, then back to normal, then blue again, etc.

I have downloaded the latest patch for Studio 8 from Pinnacle's website, but still have the same problem.

I guess it is due to either:
1. A dodgy firewire cable,
2. A dodgy Canon camcorder, or
3. Dodgy software. (I've heard studio 8 has many bugs...is this one of them?)

Can anyone supply me with any info that could help me pinpoint the cause of the prob? In particular, if anyone has had this problem before...

Thanks all.

I've now tried this many times, just using the simplest 10 second long video clip, and still get the same resulting blue screen for around 7 seconds (the other 3 seconds output perfectly back onto the DV tape!).

Grr...its very frustrating...and I can't think what to try, as the settings in Studio 8 are very simplistic - it only allows you to set the "Playback Device" as "DV Camcorder" and nothing else, so I can't have wrong settings...



Any help with this would be much appreciated!

This is similar to a problem I encountered with outputting back to the DV Cam where the picture was broken, kept freezing etc with some blue screen added for good measure. The problem was solved by changing the Latency setting on the motherboard. As I can't remember exactly what I had to do, I won't try to offer any potentially wrong advice! I know this forum itself has a number of threads on motherboard Latency so possibly worth checking out?

I remember being really fustrated at the final hurdle - outputting to the DV cam - not working and only a lucky call to my computer company's helpline discovering the fault.

Hope this might help...

Thanks, Carlito, that sounds like a potential solution...however, my computer knowledge is not that hot, and I'm really reluctant to go fiddling around with my motherboard settings...!! Could this be the same problem I'm experiencing? I have outputted video analoguely before via my ancient miro DC10 video card, on the same computer set up, and that has been fine... fiddling around with motherboard settings seems an unlikely thing to have to do...grrr....

By the way, my thoughts before reading your reply were as follows:

I have now been back to the shop and exchanged the camcorder for another (due to an unrelated fault on my original model), and exchanged the firewire cable.

The exact same fault still persists, however, but at least now I know it isn't:
a). a dodgy camcorder
b). a dodgy cable
c). dodgy software (I've tried various different software packages and all have the same result).

Sooooo, where does that leave me?

Well, I'm sure my computer's spec/memory requirements are high enough to cope, so that leaves me with...um...not a lot really. Therefore, it must be a dodgy firewire port in my computer! What else could it be?

The firewire socket is on my sound card... what's my best course of action? Just purchase another firewire card? how much are they? are there any different types? whats the cheapest? can i stick it in anywhere in my computer? is that easy to do? or should i try and get my existing firewire port looked at?

hmm...

Advice please from those in the know!!