Jerry:

This is my configuration:

No name computer with intel motherboard
On board intel firewire ports
Pentium 4 (3.2g)
512 ram
Windows XP Home edition (SP2 preinstalled)

When I turn on my camera, Windows recognizes it but after a few seconds, Windows beeps and the camera "disappears".

Ron

Is this a PC-only poll?

As a Mac-user, I realize that the integration of Apple software and Apple's built-in FW ports cause them to have much fewer issues in this area. In 4 years, with 6 different Macs (one with a generic 3rd party PCI FW card), 3 different DV converters (Dazzle, DAC, Canopus), and 2 MiniDV cameras (Sony and Canon), I have only had one FW issue with a Canopus ACDV300 that had both 4-pin and 6-pin FW-out ports but didn't like 6-pin to 6-pin cables (of course, the Canopus manual clearly said to use the included 4-pin to 6-pin cable, but as a Mac-user, I'm not accustomed to reading manuals).

Yes, I wrote it as a poll/survey for PC's.

For the record, I have never had Firewire problems with the six or eight PC's I have used. I have not used or owned a Mac in a long time, but their Firewire appears to possibly be easier to set up than some PC's.


Rich

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FireWire Survey

Never had a problem with FireWire on my PC or a Mac machine.

Counting my blessings...

I have 2 PC's at home & & work. My editing computer is a Mac G4 1 mghz, with Final Cut Pro 2. I have never had a problem I could not solve w correct settings.

As far as PC's are concearned I am sick & tired of the the OS locking up on an intermittent basis. Down w Microsoft; long live Apple.

The advantage with Apple is that the guts of your computer are Apple.
If you have a PC, every component is made by a different company with the chance of a compatibility problem that may not show up on "day 1". Also I feel that more PC users add more third-party devices and use more questionable software in their machines than do Apple users.
This eventually ends up in serious, hard to diagnose problems unless you get lucky and everything works well together. I believe this is why most camcorder manufacturers don't like to diagnose PC related problems, placing little if any info in their manuals and not providing IEEE1394 cables.
My PC has gone through many upgrades and changes over the years, from being a Pentium 60 with 16MB RAM, a 520MB hard disk and 14kbps modem, to a Pentium 166MMX with 64MB SDRAM and 2GB hard drive, to this Celeron 500. The only original parts are the tower case, power supply, and monitor. I have a lot of freeware and shareware, but I think I have eliminated all the "problem" software that affected my PC from time to time. All the hardware is very stable. I also do very frequent maintenance in these areas (at LEAST once a week): Registry cleaning (I use 3 programs), Defragmentation (I use Norton SpeedDisk), and Ad removal (I use 2 programs). I have no intentions of purchasing a new PC as I am very familiar with the few idiosyncrasies of what I have and am not anxious for a whole new learning curve to begin: especially when I hear all the "horror stories" from people with 2.2 GHz Pentium IVs with Windows XP SP2. My PC may be somewhat slower, but it makes DVDs effortlessly. My major problem at present is that the latest programs from Cyberlink (PowerProducer Gold and PowerDVD 5) will not even install. I either get "Application Error" from InstallShield or an error from the installer saying I don't have Windows installed!!!
I continue to use VideoStudio 8 and PowerDVD 4 XP until Cyberlink comes up with a solution.
Here are the components I utilize that work like a charm:

M-Tech M628 (LX440 chipset) motherboard: 66MHZ FSB
Evergreen Performa 500 (Celeron 500 in Slotket)
mixed SDRAM: 2x32MB 66MHz, 2x128MB 100MHz
PowerColor GeForce2 MX video card with 32MB
Hercules Fortissimo III 5.1 channel sound card
Maxtor 20GB (3 partitions) and Maxtor 30GB (4 partitions) 7200 RPM hard drives
LGE 8080B CD-RW
LGE GSA-4160B DVD-RW

Have been with Norton Utilities since the beginning and it's share of problems the most recent being InstallShield. I don't recall any problems with PowerProducer but it did give me initial problems with Sony Movie Studio. InstallShield has also affected Firewire transfers on one of my machines and not the other. After three tests I got tired of testing. Besides since transferring video is usually an hour or two project I don't want to take chances in having to trouble shoot. That's why I recommend re-booting, shut down everything and just use WinDV to transfer.


Rich

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FireWire Survey

Hi Poncho:

Well WinDVD may not be the answer, unless it is capable of burning Double-Layer DVDs.
I already use Ulead's VideoStudio8 for single-layer burning.
LGE service support told me I need PowerProducer Gold 2.0 (which came with my GSA-4160B double-layer burner) to burn the Double-layer media (quote from tech's e-mail: " It's the software that
determines if it can burn a dual layer disc or not").

I don't "really" need PowerDVD 5.0 as I have 4.0 XP working ok, but I would like to know if this is the "tip of the iceberg": i.e. have some changes been made to Cyberlink's software installer to prevent me from using any of their future products.

I have a Sony TRV-950e and an ASUS P4P-800 SE motherboard. The board has inbuilt firewire ports (about three). I use adobe premiere and i have never had any problems transfering data via Firewire. All i can say is check you have configured your editor properly (set scratch disks, NTSC or Pal etc.) and also make sure that it is set to the right device. Strangely Premiere doesn't like it if i set up the capture device as a a Sony TRV-950 (which is the camera i have!) - it refuses to capture, so i set it to a generic sony cam and it works fine. Ohhh computers - they're so crazy! It's usually just a matter of trial and error and if you come to a brick wall type it in in google.com or some to this forum - it's more than likely that someone has experienced the exact same problem.

For me, the "horrifying" poll question should read "have never been able to transfer via firewire... YET" .
I got a Sony trv260, which have (until recently) been able to transfer video through it's standard streaming USB. The PC is a 966 MHz Pentium3 Compaq Presario desktop. I accidentally kicked one of the front USB ports a month ago, while a scanner was connected to it, and it broke. Still able to use the other 3 USB ports, but since then, the video captured from the camcorder is unusable (the dropped frames ratio is about 40%). So... decided to use the camcorder's IEEE 1394/firewire capabilities. Purchased the cheapest card I could find online - NEC D72874 ($10 bucks from iwin2win.com), which even comes with a cable and Ulead 5.0. Spent about 3 hours playing with the thing last night, read dozens of posts, read the Sony trv260 manual entirely (at least I thought so), did all reasonable things (of course, not even thinking about reinstalling Windows XP...) I could find on the subject, to no avail. When connected through the firewire, the camera's display says DVin in "camera" mode. Switching to the "play/edit" mode and the DVin disappears, but none of the video capturing/editing software I have recognizes the camera as a device. Tried Windows Movie Maker, Ulead Visual Studio 8, Ulead 5, the Sony (crap) that comes with the camera, even Sony Vegas 5, which is quoted as semi-professional software and is too much for my needs. So, after sleeping on it, I started reading the treads over again. Now, the cable that comes with the NEC firewire card is a 6to4 pin and Sony exclusively says the cable that I need to use should be a 4to4 pin... well, that would only make sense if I read it, what? That's my next step - CompUSA and new cable to Sony's specs.
I'll let you know how it goes tonight, but for now, my answer is still "never been able to use firewire", since no other close option is available .

Oh, thanks Rich (poncho) and Dave, and the rest of you geeks out there, for consistently answering the variations of pretty much the same questions

Eddie

I don't know why the Sony manual states that. It seems everything is related to transferring to a device with 4 pin connectors.

I use 6 pin to 4 pin on my two desktops with my two Sony's and 4 pin to 4 pin on over six laptops...

You have to use whatever connectors match up with the terminals.


Rich

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FireWire Survey

I'm sure it's because they want you to buy their Vaio, equiped with 4 pin iLink, thus, make them more money. Yeah, I've talked to 3 buddies that use 6-4 without any trouble for Sony, JVC and Canon, resp.
I'll be trying on an HP laptop tonight that has a 6-4 NEC 720101 PCMCIA and will let you know of the outcome. The thing is, why would the camera register it's connection to the PC by displaying "DVin", but the PC has no clue the camera is connected? If the cable (connection) is bad, then there should be no recognition from either side. If the drivers ont he card are bad, that should be indicated in the device manager... I tend to think that it's the camcorder "not wanting" to be compatible with anything else, but 4-4 Sony branded hardware.

Eddie

First, I've already had another thread in the Panasonic 3CCD forum about this. There I already noted that eventually I was able to connect the cam to a pc. However, my original problem between the GS400 and my laptop still exist; The setup:
- laptop's OCHI compliant IEEE 1394 port appears to be ready and working
- camcorder was proven to be able to transmit video via DV Firewire to a pc, using a 4pin to 6pin cable
- using a brand new Belkin Pro 4pin to 4pin cable, the cam is not recognized by the laptop

Questions:
1, If it's the cable, despite being new, there is nothing special about this type of cable, is there? That is, these cables don't really do any conversions themselves, as far as I know.
2, While I think it's a 4pin to 4pin cable, because both of its ends are these small form factor types, is there a similar cable that has same size endings on both ends, but they're 4-to-6 pin conversions?

I'll be trying the cam+4pin4pin_cable combo with other machines tomorrow, just to verify that it's the laptop. However, any suggestions on what I should check are welcome.

Questions:
1, If it's the cable, despite being new, there is nothing special about this type of cable, is there? That is, these cables don't really do any conversions themselves, as far as I know. --- It is just a cable.


2, While I think it's a 4pin to 4pin cable, because both of its ends are these small form factor types, is there a similar cable that has same size endings on both ends, but they're 4-to-6 pin conversions? --- I have never seen such a cable. The 6 pin cables have the two extra conductors for devices which require power. But since camcorders do not require power from the computer the 4 pin connector is used.



Rich

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FireWire Survey

OK, so I unjustly blamed Sony for not communicating to my PC.
Plugged the camera into my HP laptop last night, WinXP Home SP2 found the new hardware - Sony camcorder, installed it, capturing like a champ from the win movie maker. The definition of "plug-and-play" in action. Of course, the laptop doesn't nearly match the amount of installed software on the PC, and is 2 months new.
So, back to the old Compaq desktop, hosting two 60GB HDs, with 15GB combined free space.
First thing I did was to uninstall the IEEE 1394 in device manager and reboot. Came up fine, WinXP Pro SP2 recognized the card, installed the drivers in a flash, plugged the camcorder in, found the new hardware (Sony digital camcorder) and installed it on it's own. However, when I started the Windows Movie Maker, it freaked out, froze up and it told me that it has performed an illegal operation and needs to be closed (didn't read the details, of course...). The camera disappeared like it's never been there:-).
So, this probably means a serious need of system clean-up on my part. I'm thinking - too many video editing applications and overall messy primary HD. Uninstalled Ulead 5.0, Sony Vegas 5 and Pinnacle (pure greed there), reboot. No camera, no movie maker. Now, I want to repair movie maker, but no such option. Maybe there is a corrupt .dll somewhere, but failed to read the error message (will do so next time). I want to uninstall it, but how?!
Will keep trying until my poll answer changes to "had problems, but fixed them".

Eddie