Canon’s firewire standard?

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

[Don Greening] “When the first version of Mac OS X came out there was a rumor that Macs so equipped were sending too much power to the FW port and was burning out the FW ports on cameras”

The problem with with this idea is that the only “power” that is applied to the FW ports is in the 6-pin jack. The 4-pin plug does not carry power, just digital info.

That’s the difference between the 4-pin and 6-pin plugs… the extra 2 pins/wires carry POWER.

Since no consumer camcorder uses a 6-pin FW, the “too much power from the Mac” theory does not make much sense.

[Craig Alan]

Thanks again. We are on 10.3.x, so it

[Don Greening]

[eyecamiam] ” I think that constantly reaching around to the side of Macs and pushing the USB cords out of the way and plugging in can stress the firewire plug connections.
“

I’m in total agreement with that. it only takes one poor or worn out connection within the FW plug to cause havoc.

– Don

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[Mark Wieser]

…..I’ve had similar expereince with my XL2 and SONY DSR20 deck – audio dropouts, blips, stutters….GL2, XL1, and 2 (cheaper) Canon cameras work fine (I can capture from deck on tapes shot using those cameras). Here’s what I happened upon yesterday: when I enable dv control on my XL2 (which is supposed to enable you to control camera as cature device via firewire) and proceed to shoot, I can then capture without a glitch – That’s what works for me…Curious to see if it works for anyone else?

[Mike Morris]

Interesting. My experience has been otherwise.. I’ve been able to use Canon source footage on anything, but when trying to use Sony time-coded DV tapes, that’s when the stuttering goes in to affect.

I’m not as familiar with Sony, but I’ve been told on multiple occasions that their time-coding is a special “sony-only” method. I’ve never been given any reasoning as to why, other than angry producers claiming it is sony’s “high and mighty” way of making sure you only buy sony products.

–With that said, I’ve never been able to confirm it with anyone who ACTUALLY is in the know with Sony. It’s is merely hear-say. Thought I’d put it up as a general point of interest, and I’m going to continue my research.

Sib Ntsib Dua

Xeeb

[Jerryc]

My son just bought a used (but almost new) Canon GL2.
We also have a sony trv540.

We thought that the firewire died in the sony, but The Canon doesnt work either.

We have three PC’s with firewire ports. The two cameras don’t work on any of them.

We have googled the problem and found many have had problems with xp and SP2.

We have tried a few things and no results.

Have you heard of this problem?
Are there any non microsoft firewire drivers that you could recomend?

We think that the chances of both cameras having broke firewire ports are remote. It is also unlikely the all three pc’s ports are broke. But the xp and sp2 issue is common to all machines.

Thanx
JerryC

We use:
adobe premiere pro
microsoft movie maker
we have:
Creative labs firewires on two machines
And a TI driver for the pci card in the third machine.

[Mike Morris]

Hmm… so neither camera is working across three seperate PC’s, each using the same firewire cards in each machine… To me, it sounds like it is a capture issue within Premiere. (I assume that is what you are using to capture the footage.)

Premiere can be a nasty bugger with firewire and DV cameras at times. I used to use Premiere Pro 1.5 on my old PC, and it was always kind of a crapshoot to see if my camera would connect. If you could give me the current settings you have within premiere for your capture settings, it’d be a great help. I might be way off the mark here, but I think it’s worth looking in to. (you’d think the default settings would work just fine… not always.)

The other issue is that it could be SP2. Service Pack 2 did all kinds of crazy things… My installation of After Effects would no longer work after updating to SP2… So, I feel your pain.

Hopefully we can work it out.

Sib Ntsib Dua

Xeeb