Hi folks,

I've recently bought a Sony Handycam HC14E, and after seeing the quality of USB Video Capture I decided to go and buy an iLink cable.. My laptop (Inspiron 8200) has a firewire port on it - I know that basically ilink/firewire is the same.. I've got the 4pin - 4pin cable, as my laptop has the 4 pin socket for it to go in, The connection (firewire) is enabled in Windows (XP SP2) and my camcorder is on, and the cable is connected to it too.

However, I can't actually 'see' the device in Windows, the connection doesn't have an IP Address (not sure if it's supposed to, or if WnXP would assign it a Win Private IP ?) Clicking repair the connection or trying to renew the lease tells me that TCP/IP is not enabled for that connection. The TCP/IP protocol is oviously installed for it though.

Anyway, my question is: how can I get to see/capture Video via firewire? I've tried Windows Movie Maker, and Virtual Dub, but both say that no capture device is installed, and to make sure it's turned on, blah blah - I've tried the camcorder in both play and capture modes, as well as having it on when I've powered up my laptop.

Any help would be appreicated, thanks!

Chris.

[MarkE19]

Windows does not see anything connected to it via firewire as a networked device - ie it will not have an IP address. It does not give it a drive letter etc either or any other visible sign of it in My Computer. The only way to find the camcorder is via the device manager.
To get the software (Movie Maker etc) to see the cam you should connect it up in the following order:

connect cam to PC via firewire
power up the cam in VCR/play mode
start the editing software

The software should then automatically detect the cam, and you should then be able to capture from it.

Mark.

Mark,

Thanks for the reply, however the camcorder is not shown in device manager, nor as I said does any program recognise that the device is connected..

[MarkE19]

In that case I can only think that there could be a problem with the firewire cable. Have you tried a different cable? If not then I think that this should be the next thing to try. Is the firewire card visible in Device Manager? Does it have a yellow circle with a '!' in it beside the device? If it does then there is a problem with the card.

Mark.

No, I've not tired a different cable, as its the only cable that I have.

WRT to the firewire card, it's inbuilt into my laptop - and yes it's visible, the controller is Texas Instruments. However, I've noticed that if the cable is not plugged into the laptop, then the firewire network connection within networks connections is still active?

Is that normal?

[MarkE19]

Originally Posted by crm

However, I've noticed that if the cable is not plugged into the laptop, then the firewire network connection within networks connections is still active?

Is that normal?

Well my PC is the same, so I assume it is normal.

Mark.

Hi,

Sorry about the long delay, but anyway I went out and bought a PCI Card (agere chipset I think?) and put it in my PC.. Wouldn't really install as no drivers were on the cd included - but anyway, on reboot the card is working, and is correctly installed within the device manager.

ULead VS came with it, so I load it up - CAM is in Player mode (was on before app was started) etc etc..

Still can't detect it. It's getting quite frustrating now, as I'm wanting to burn some of my movies off onto dvd - anyone else got any ideas?

I'm using a 6pin -> 4pin cable now, where as before it was the 4->4 pin for my laptop..

argh !

[MarkE19]

Well all I can think of is that you need to activate the DV port on your cam via a menu setting. Have a look through the menus and see if you can see any options to set the cam to use the DV port or as it is likely to be called on a Sony cam iLink.

Mark.