“Can’t activate recorder, try resetting the camera”

[Kevin Lawrence]

Greetings,

I know this thread is really old, but in case someone stumbles across it.

In Premiere, change the mode from DV to HDV….

Worked for me 🙂

Kevin

[Bryan Myhr]

Changing the options to HDV fixed it for me too. Thank you!

[Rob Lehne]

Changing the capture settings may solve the problem for a lot of users out there. It has to match the settings of the format that you used to record you footage. If you use HDV, then you have to set the capture mode to the same (the settings tab at the top right of the capture window). If you are still using a camera that does not support HD video or had your settings on DV, then you have to set Adobe Premiere to the same, or it will not recognize your camera (at least thru Premiere 5.
I hope Adobe has fixed this, or will fix this in the future. Since it is a basic setting issue, the program should adjust the settings for you or at least suggest that you try changing them, instead of issuing a vague error message.

[Doug Swift]

In my situation, the capture setting did match the settings of the format. I shot in DV, and capture settings were DV. The wrinkle was that, in the meantime, I had shot in HDV. It was the CAMERA’s settings–its shooting settings–that caused this error message. Once I changed the shooting settings back to DV, the error message went away.