status
windows xp
ag dvc30
firewire
adobe premeire two

problem

plug in the firewire turn the camera on change mode. bing bong windows recognises new hardware has been attached and therefore, the dailogue box to intall pops up but it cannot find driver for it and does not recognise what i have attached, and of course premiere doesnt recognise.
i ve downloaded checked compatability issues read nearly everything i can on here and eslewhere. change the camera s menus to match the directions of the manual.

help

i noticed on this site and many others many people have had the same problem and 99.9% of them have never posted a solution. many threads with no conclusion. at last after literally days of searching i found on creative cow the solution posted. as follows in this example this guy has a sony but the solution is the same for all makes

Was curious to see if anyone else has had the following problem. Did a search on Google to discover posts from all over the world in every language where people could not get their Sony Z1 HDV cameras and Sony HDV HVR-M25 vtr’s to be recognised by Win XP Pro SP2 systems. It appears a lot of people have no problems but there are many, many instances of folks at their wits end trying to solve this problem.

When they plug in their units WinXP SP2 acknowledges that a unit has been plugged in on the 1394 bus but Vegas, or for that matter many other software capture devices don’t see these cameras and vtrs. Looking under Device Manager it shows an unknown device with the dreaded yellow ? Now it’s looking for a driver. What driver? It’s looking for an AV/C Subunit driver. Where is this? Sony don’t supply it, Microsoft don’t supply it. In some cases WinXP has listed a D-VHS driver that will drive these Sony products. Trouble is in many cases there is no D-VHS driver to select under Device Manager driver installation. What do you do? Tear your hair out is what I was doing as I have two systems that had no problem seeing these Sony devices and correctly installing them as AV/C Subunits under ‘Sound, Video and Game Controllers’ and one laptop running WinXP Pro SP2 Windows Media Centre. This last unit refused to see either the Z1 or HVR-25 as recognisable AV/C units.

Well finally I think I have got to the bottom of it. The current issue of the Windows XP file ‘AVC.INF’ does not recognise these units as there are no device ID’s in it for it to see and install the necessary drivers. All the drivers are there in WinXP SP2 but the handshake is missing to initialise the driver stack for these units and enter the necessary info into the registry.

Depending on the AVC.INF version and contents there are two approaches to solve this problem. With both the cameras and vtr’s this has to be run through three times in both HDV mode and DV mode as WinXP sees these as different devices.

Method #1

First go to Folder Options and check the ‘Show hidden files and folders’ checkbox.
Next uncheck ‘Hide protected operating system files’ even though it says this is not recommended but it is required for the following steps.

Select HDV out on the device you are going to use. Make sure ‘i Link Conv or Set’ is set to OFF. Cameras say CONV and vtr’s say SET. Connect your camera or vtr to the firewire port. You will hear the ‘boing’ sounds indicating a connection. Now go to Device Manager and locate the device with the yellow ? Right click on it and select ‘Properties’ and then select the ‘Driver’ tab and the select ‘Update Driver’. You will now be presented with the ‘Hardware Update Wizard’. Check the ‘No, not this time’ checkbox, hit Next. On the next dialogue window check ‘Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)’ checkbox. On the next dialogue window select only the ‘Include this location in the search’ checkbox. Under the Browse tab navigate to the C:\WINDOWS\inf folder. Hit next.

Now all things being equal Windows may find the driver and install a 61883 type device. You will be presented with this selection process three times in total. In all cases follow exactly the procedure outlined in the above steps.
Now if this all worked fine we are under way and your camera or vtr is now registered under Device Manager under ‘Sound, Video and Game Controllers’ as an AV/C Tape Device. Capture away!

But this is only half of it! Next disconnect the camera or vtr and set it for DV out. Make sure ‘i Link Conv or Set’ is set to OFF. Reconnect and ‘boing’ it’s not recognised. Under Device Manager we are back to the yellow ? No problem. Go through exactly the same steps as outlined above when the unit was in HDV mode. Capture away!

Method #2

If all of this didn’t work you may have to modify the AVC.INF file. First disconnect from the firewire port. You will find the AVC.INF file in the ‘inf’ folder which is under WINDOWS\inf. Copy the AVC.INF file to another location as a backup, should you need to revert to it. Now copy it to another location to enable us to work on it. Rename its extension to .TXT . Now open this with Notepad and scroll down and look for the following entries:

; Virtual AV/C Device
%VirtualAvc.DeviceDesc%=VirtualAvc,V61883\50F2&0&10001
%VirtualAvc.DeviceDesc%=VirtualAvc,V61883\10001

Now directly under these lines add the following:

%VirtualAvc.DeviceDesc%=VirtualAvc,V61883\A02D&10001
%VirtualAvc.DeviceDesc%=VirtualAvc,V61883\A02D&1
%VirtualAvc.DeviceDesc%=VirtualAvc,V61883\A02D

The entry should now look like:

; Virtual AV/C Device
%VirtualAvc.DeviceDesc%=VirtualAvc,V61883\50F2&0&10001
%VirtualAvc.DeviceDesc%=VirtualAvc,V61883\10001
%VirtualAvc.DeviceDesc%=VirtualAvc,V61883\A02D&10001
%VirtualAvc.DeviceDesc%=VirtualAvc,V61883\A02D&1
%VirtualAvc.DeviceDesc%=VirtualAvc,V61883\A02D

Make sure there is a line space under this block before the next entry which is
[ControlFlags].

Save this file as avc.txt. Rename it avc.inf. Copy and paste it back into the WINDOWS\inf folder. Say yes to the overwrite warning dialogue.

Now go through all the steps outlined way up above somewhere. Good luck! It works perfectly here. The latter was what worked for me. Don’t forget to set your folder options back to hide hidden files and operating system files!

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

Many thanks for supplying the answer that will help many..

Cheers

I had (and still have) the same problem with my camera. Come to find out, it's NOT the camera or the pc. It's the firewire card. Apparently, cards that DO NOT have a Texas instruments chipset tend to run into a few problems.

Here's another solution

Start
Turn off computer
Standby

With your computer in standby mode, press play on your camcorder
Plug in your firewire cable to the camera and to the pc

Bring the computer out of standby mode

Click on My computer and scroll to the bottom, you should see your video playing.

Open your editing program and import as normal