URGENT - Canon MVX 250i firewire problem

[macman68]

First time poster, hope to get a help with a few Q's.

I'm looking at a 2nd hand Canon MVX 250i thats for sale.

The owner says it's got e few problems.

Problems are:
1:There is a dead bug in the viewfinder
2:It will not allow video to be transferred via firewire off the camera.

This is all the info I have.

any ideas about the firewire problem and what could be the issue here?

also can the viewfinder be taken apart to get said bug the hell outa there?

many thanks in advance.

[redsox_mark]

Firewire ports failing are not common, but also not a rare occurance... it happens. It will probably cost you more to get it fixed than the camcorder is worth. If you want to do any editing I'd stay away from this one.
Not sure about the bug in the viewfinder.

[senu]

Originally Posted by macman68

The owner says it's got e few problems.

Problems are:
1:There is a dead bug in the viewfinder
2:It will not allow video to be transferred via firewire off the camera.

This is all the info I have.

any ideas about the firewire problem and what could be the issue here?
...

It is difficult to know if the firewire port is blown or interface is damaged
Either way it is an essential component of transferring the digital data on the tape to a computer for editing or even to a settop camcorder for making a DVD via the best quality route.
Like Mike ,I would similarly be wary of buying it with a fault like that unless you have no aspirations to edit or make DVDs via a settop thru firewire.
It is also worth finding out from canon how much it would cost and then weight that against the cost of the camcorder bearing in mind that £200-300 gets you a brand new one with a warrantee

[macman68]

thanks for the quick replies.
The whole idea is to be able to transfer to your computer otherwise it's pointless.
He is asking ~$200-$300 AUST. for it but even this is too much I would say.
I have asked him for more details as to what when why and how?

Could even be an off chance that his drivers aren't upto date,
the firewire cable has had the dick, but it's not worth the $$ he is asking for
in the off chance that it could be something so simple.

Besides fire connection to the Mac, what other forms of transfering the recordings could one do.
Could it be done via USB or even memory cards?

thanks again for the info.

[senu]

The Mac OS and Windows Xp have built in drivers for firewire hardware,
Most transmission failures are due to

Cable
Faulty Computer firewire interface ( Card not seated properly). or faulty card
Camcorder
Very rarely is it a "driver problem" If it is then it would affect any firewire device, not just the camcorder

It may indeed be something simple but if it isnt you'll have to contend with transferring the video as analogue unless you get it fixed

For all practical purposes High quality Dv AVI ( same as on the tape) transfer is mainly supported by firewire and most software expect to capture as such.
USB can be used but this would be most unusual and only refers to connection between the external transfer device "box" and PC
USB ports on the camcorder are for transferring still or low quality video ( mpeg4., not DV AVI
As such HDD and DVD camcorders don't have firewire but then they dont "stream" large files at high data rates( DV AVI) : they merely transfer already compressed mpeg2 data via USB by simple " drag and drop".