Firewire setup

B

bikermol

Guest
I fitted a PC Line firewire card into my computer. The computer is running windows Me, which found the drivers for the new hardware. However, the software that came with the card MGI Videowave 5, and Ulead Movie Factory tell me I have no capture device! So I moved the firewire to a different slot, but the same message came up. Do I need different drivers? I cant find PC Line on the web. The drivers loaded by windows said Texas Instuments. But I cant find them either. What have I done wrong? I am a newbee. Feel free to insult me if I have missed something really obvious!
 
Either the firewire card is not installed correctly or your editing apps fail to recognise the card for some reason.

Not sure what the solution would be.
 
Some questions :

Does "1394 Bus Contoller" appear in Device Manager?

Is there a yellow exclamation mark against it?

If the bus controller appears, and does not have a yellow excalmation against it, then the card is correctly recognised, and probably working.

If it is working connect a DV camera to the port and check that the camera is recognised. I think from memory that Me lists it as an Imaging Device, if not look for a device that is the camera.

If the camera is recognised then the applications are not installed properly.

Strictly speaking a Firewire card is not a "capture device", it is a data port. Capture cards are normally analogue to digital video convertors. Are you trying to acquire analogue video from a non-existent capture card. If so look for DV data capture instead.
 
HELLO Guys,
Things have happened since I started this thread. I foundout my capture device was indeed my actual camcorder-Doh! Anyway, after more problems I was advised to connect the cam whilst computer switched off, turn on cam, in VCR mode, then turn on computer. This then found the cam, but it said the drivers the cam wanted to load were older than the version of drivers already there. I thought this was a new cam. Its a Panasonic NV-DS30. But the system wasnt working so I said Yes to all. And quess what? It worked I was so chuffrd. I was up till 2.30am making my first SVCD. However, its terrible! I could watch whilst capturing, and it drops loads of frames. It is set at 25 fps, can I slow it down? I am getting a DVD recorder next month. Is ther some format I can put the footage I have now onto disc, the when the DVD recorder arrives put it back into the camcoder and thence to DVD? Thanks again, dont know what I'd do without all you guys out there.
 
Unfortunately you can't slow capture down, it has to acquire the data at real-time playback speed.

The video capture (actually a file transfer) is dependant upon HDD speed. Both search and data transfer rates are important. Make sure that DMA is selected for the HDD drives. It is also wothwhile to make sure you have the latest IDE bus drivers. If you are using an Intel 800 series chipset then download the latest Intel Application Accelerator.

At a more basic level ensure that you do not do anything else on the PC while it is capturing. It is also a good idea to close all background applications.

If you want to save the edited video file then if your HDD is not large enough to hold the data then write it back to DV tape. DV-AVI format is the best format for size/quality.
 
Also, kill any virus checking software you have running, and any other optional extras that you don't need. (Keep a special eye out for Microsoft Findfast - or as I call it "Microsoft Slowyourpctoacrawlevery30minutes".)

Chris 'kiwiranger' Parke
BOFH
 
Hi, Kiwiranger and all,
Could you tell me what programs would be running un the background? I have active desktop, and someone told me that does something I also have a nifty clock thing that gives me thr day month year etc. I need this as I'm not quite sure 1st thing in the morning! As I said at the start of this thread. I'm Quite dense but am leaning . I'll tell you my system. I built it, I can do that. Athalon 1GHZ, 128 RAM Nvadia Gforce2, 40Gig HHD, devided into 3 sections. Later I can have a 10gig section devoted to video, but I'm not sure how fast this HHD is. Thanks again guys
 
Use Cntl+Alt+Del and close all applications other than Explorer and Systray.

The easy way to do this is to Install the EndItAll utility, free from the web.
 
Kill active desktop. Kill it now. Kill it good. All it does is crash at improper moments and slow your PC down. If you want fancy wallpaper, save your pictures as bitmaps. Sorted.

Other than that, follow what JefUK has said as it's very good advise.

One more thing, you say that when you watch it capturing that you are seeing dropped frames. This can be the capture software not show all the frames that are being captured. Mine does that too, but the actual capture process is getting every frame. You can test by playing back your captured material.

Good luck

Chris 'kiwiranger' Parke
 
:confused: I am trying to download my movies from the Panasonic NV-DS30 to laptop via the firewire IEEE 1394 link on the laptop. I have Ulead Movie software installed. I tried the startup mode adopted by Bikermol. The camera is not getting detected. The firewire port is using Texas driver. Please advise which drivers should be used for the camera?

-Darshan Sangodkar
 
Tjhis may seem like the "nuclear" option, but upgrade to WinXP Pro. Your card and software will almost definitely work then. If you can try it with an existing XP setup, all the better.
 

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