Laura, are you on a Dell computer? They are known for having problems with the built-in firwire ports and video capture.
Either way, you might want to try a cheap firewire card from Best Buy, you can get them for $10 to $20. That has fixed the problem for me on a HP computer.
There are several different Firewire chipsets that the various motherboard manufacturer’s use. Most of the time a Firewire card will have a different chipset than what is on the motherboard. Using the Firewire card will fix it 99% of the time.
Dave – Studio 1 Productions
Studio 1 Productions