capturing problem
 

i am a new proud owner of xha1 have been reading this forum since a few months and have got a lot of useful information regarding xha1.
i am no pro in this field this is my first camera and so please forgive if anything is too dumb.....
problems i am facing

when i connect the camera via firewire cable to my pc and turn the camera to ext cont i dont hear any noise ( normally heard when installed new device)
i had windows vista and tried on windows movie maker and adobe premier pro cs3 but with no luck none of them even sees that the camera is connected
phoned up the canon and they said that the firewire port might not be working rite, so went out and bought a new external case for a dvd drive with firewire port that worked as soon as i plugged in without a problem.
does any settings has to be changed on the camera ??
do you guys think that the firewire port on camera is faulty ??
any help would be greatly appriciatead thanks to all of you

Sorry if I misunderstand, but are you trying to capture previously recorded material from tape to the computer?
(In this case, the A1 shall be in VCR/PLAY mode not EXT).

Bw
Sven

thanks sven i have tried that too but without any luck....i even have installed xp now and still cant get the camera connected, are there any settings on the camera that has to be changed for connecting it to computer ??

Mickey, I take it you have the SP2 installed?

yes i have sp2 installed...cant i just use movie maker in xp to capture the video?? that too is not working at the present it says no video capturing device is detected, now when adobe pp is running and i go to capture and turn the camera on the computer acknowledges that some device is turned on by that sound...... but still cant see the camera and pp says cant activate recorder try reseting the camera but when i reset no progress same thing..........please help

Mickey,

I'm a new xha1 owner (10 days) and am enjoying a steep learning curve, and then a dip, and then a rise.....etc.etc. But, I think Sven has seen your problem which is simply to have the camera set to "vcr/play" for capture not "ext cont". Trust me, do not go to ext cont. for what you are trying to do.

Set the camera to vcr/play, then try to capture your material,....please let us know how you go.

Regards,

Brendan

Another thing to check (which stumped me as a new A1 owner last week!) is the automatic downcovert to SD mode when you are trying to connect to the camera in HD mode.

So in VCR/PLAY mode make sure HD DOWN-CONV mode is set to off.. I can't remember which menu it's in but you'll find it.

I'm using a Mac, but I found that both iMovie and FCP wouldn't see the camera when they were loaded with HD projects, and it was seeing an SD feed from the firewire.

I've not tested this idea thoroughly, but everything started working fine once I changed this setting ;)

thanks brenden yes i have tried the vcr/play mode but it didnt help..am gonna try a few other things
thanks steven i know where the setting for HD DOWN-CONV are and will see that they are off......thanks for the help i will keep u guys posted as the problem is solved..... is there any way i can check to see if the firewire port on camera is working correctly??

try and find the PC equivalent of something like this, as simple as you get for firewire streams really.

http://www.bigmugsoftware.com/monitor/

Mickey, I have experienced the same problem you have.. see my post below:

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=96839

The only thing that I can recomend for now is to use a capture device as an in between. I am using this:

http://www.canopus.com/products/ADVC110/index.php

My computer recognizes this as a video device and when you plug the A1 to the device, the computer should recognize the A1 as a video device as well.

This is the only solution that I know of as of now. Hope this helps.

-John

John,

Isn't the device firewire-SD? It would not know what to do with HDV, would it?

Hey Mickey,

I have been using the A1 and PP2 without a problem, I did notice you are using PPCS3. What is your footage recorded in 50i or 25p? I am assuming your using PAL over there. I don't know if you have to download any Project templates with PPCS3, I did for PP2 in order to use the 24p or 25p. You can find them on the Adobe Download site.

There's also a free program by the name of HDVSplit that will capture HDV footage. Do a Google search for it. I have been using this recently as PP2 is a system resource hog.

I would give HDVSplit a try and see if you can capture with that.

Maksim, I have no problem capturing HDV with my current setup. The ADVC110 transfers the HDV with no problem. It's up to the software to handle the data, not the ADVC110. Right now I'm using HDVSplit for capture and then edit with PSE 3.0.

-John

Kevin.....i have recorded in 25 aswell as 50 thanks to all of you guys for the help got the problem sorted out by a exchange ;) the new camera works perfect so definately the other one had a firewire issue............thanks again and hope of learning a few tricks from you guys......