dell,XP not recognising my XHA1:(
 

dell computer, windows xp, not recognising my XHA1 via 4x4 pin firewire. any definitive answers yet? tried all the trouble shooting on computer. read the manual re: connection 5 times. still no love!!!!
HELP!!!
anyone!!
i cant edit anything.
i can watch video through the monitor via video in cord. BUT NO CAPTURE!!:(
i have checked the forum and there were a couple of unresolved threads regarding the exact same problem.

thankyou in advance to whomever will be my hero!

aloha

jai

Here are a few suggestions:

Is the firewire port part of the motherboard or a separate card? If it's part of the motherboard, go into the bios (set up) and make sure that it is enabled.

If its a separate card, check the device manager and make sure the proper driver is installed. If there's an exclaimation mark or question mark next to the device, you have a driver issue.

I've had a couple of occasions where the onboard firewire just wouldn't work so I dropped in an inexpensive firewire card and that would work fine.

By the way, if you do have a separate card and an onboard port, try disabiling the onboard port just in case there is a conflict.

Also, try connecting your camera to another computer to make sure it isn't your camera.

One last thing, in the signal setup menu of the A1, be sure that the Playback STD is set to HDV or DV (as applicable) and not to Auto. Many times Auto will cause the camera not to be recognized by the PC.

Hope one of these suggestions gets you up and running.

Similar problem
 

My macbook won't see my XH-A1. My pc does. The playback auto/hdv fix didn't help. I've found some other similar problems online, Apple "shut off" one of the unresolved discussion threads about the same problem. Apparently they don't like discussion about their products that have problems.

Set Dial to VCR
 

I'm sure you're doing this already, but just in case you're not...

After connecting the camera to the computer's firewire port, turn the XH-A1's main dial to the "VCR" setting. The computer should see the camera at that point.

If the computer doesn't recognize the camera, take a look at the Hardware list to see if there are any problems shown there (right-click on "My Computer", chose Properties select the Hardware tab and click on the "Device Manager" button). Look for exclamation marks next to your Firewire devices.

I just noticed something very quirky with the XHA1 and Windows (Vista at least).

When hooked up via firewire, I turn the camera to VCR, I get the tone that a device is connected. If the tape is an HDV tape, I DO NOT get the Windows device autoplay popup that asks me what I want to do with the device. If the tape is a DV tape from another camera and If I hit play on the tape so the readout on the XHA1 changes to DV16:9 (if I am capturing a tape from an XL2 for example) Then hook up the firewire, I get a little tone and the autoplay DOES pop up.

So for some reason Windows doesn't seem to like HDV. (although I can capture with HDVSplit!)

Put your camera in the VCR mode, then press the menu button and go to Signal Setup. Put the Playback STD to "AUTO" and see if that makes any difference.

I'm on a Dell running WinXP, so can't check for Vista problems, but I have the following settings on that camera setup page:

Comp OUT: 180i/480i
AV->DV: Off
HD Down-Conv: Off
Letterbox: Off

I had a similar issue when I first got my Camera as well.

I don't believe the issue is with the camera or OS. I believe the issue is a hardware issue, namely the firewire port/card etc.

I have a new machine (both are Dell) and this machine with VISTA originally and now XP is able to see my camera.

I am still not able to get my old pc to see my camera. Which is fine since it can't handle HD anyway.

So if you can try and get a new firewire card and see if that works.