I put together a PC a little while ago.
P4 3.0 lots of memory ... blah blah - it works well.
Anyway, I just put in a firewire card (which windows was happy with and installed it's own drivers for) but cannot get the camera to talk to the computer properly.
(I'm using a 4 pin to 6 pin cable if that makes a difference)

I plug the camera in, the windows (XP) pop up message comes up saying I've plugged in a camera (Sony PDX10P), do I want to 1. Capture with ... 2. take no action etc....

I then open my NLE and try to capture, but, any action that involves the camera (such as capturing or external preview) makes the computer run incredibly slooooooowly.
It also will not capture any footage. After waiting for about 3 minutes it says the microsoft dv thingo is either being used by another program or unplugged or something like that.

I tried using scenalyzer but after hitting the capture button, nothing happens and after about 20 seconds the program stops the capture and I have no footage on the PC.

Am I missing something? Do I need some other driver?

(I set this computer up to be exactly like my work pc and that captures fine)

err.... Now it's working properly .... damn computers! haha

I think it was an issue with premiere when I first installed the firewire card and plugged the camera in.

Found the problem.
It seems the PC does not like to talk to the camera when it's set to record in DVCAM mode, as apposed to DV SP mode.
(I can't believe I haven't come across this before).
Anyway, the easy fix is to make sure it's in DV SP mode when capturing but, is this normal and is there another simple fix such as a software driver update?

Matt,

Thanks for sharing your experience here; no doubt it will help others along the way.

I'm not really conversant in DVCAM but since it is a variant of the format (I think the main difference is track pitch?) I would assume that capture software does have to specifically support any differences between the variants of the DV format. Hopefully others who use DVCAM cameras can also share their experiences.

Ok I've still got problems.

It seems I have to turn the camera on and off quite a few times and start programs and close them before it will eventually work.
Same problems as in the first post.
Does anyone have any ideas or at least something I could try. It's driving me nuts.

Just in case anyone else has these problems and is looking for an answer - it turned out to be a bad firewire cable.
It was brand new so nothing you'd expect. It certainly explains why it started and stopped working a few times.