Okay... turn off computer and camera... turn the computer and cam on at the same time... FCP wont connect with my camera... I get a message that says it cannot connect with the video deck. How do I know if I have blown the firewire port?

your computer itself should recognize that you have something plugged in. Are you on Mac or PC? There is no particular sequence to hook everything up, just be sure that you do not connect or disconnect your firewire cable while the camera is ON. Generally I follow this sequence:

1) power ON computer
2) connect firewire
3) power ON camera (as deck)
4) lauch NLE

-JS

I always have the computer and the camera/dr hd100/deck connected to each other before either of them is turn on.

Joe

Don't ever power on the computer without having already connected the camera to it with the firewire. And don't ever disconnect the firewire without having turned them both off.

Think your Macs are a bit iffy with connecting to certain cameras (Stephen mentioned FCP, gotta be a Mac).

My PC never gets turned off.

Plug in camera, fire up software, power up camera, bingo, good to go.

There was an issue some time ago with Windows where it did exactly the same thing as described in post#1.

Nothing wrong with the port, nothing wrong with either the camera or the software.

Windows just could not get it's head around the appropriate driver.

Where that leaves you in Mac land, I'm not sure, tho' the true test of a blown port is another Firewire device (external drive etc).

If that doesn't work either, then it's most likely the port.

If it works, first time, straight out of the box, you've got the dreaded "Mac OS/ driver/ X factor" problem so discussed over on the Apple support site.

It's worth giving the Apple support site a pretty thorough scrute (takes DAYS!) as this has been discussed ad nauseum there.


CS

I had exactly the same problem and immediately came to the conclusion that I had blown the port. Took it to JVC no problems with the port!! Lucky me - like getting a second life.

I have the latest Mac and what I did was simply turn it off (intstead of putting into sleep) and power it up again. Macs are great at healing themselves. Bingo all was working well.

I now have a firewire port isolator which gives me a great deal of comfort.

Rob

Okay... turn off computer and camera... turn the computer and cam on at the same time... FCP wont connect with my camera... I get a message that says it cannot connect with the video deck. How do I know if I have blown the firewire port?

Stephen, I had this problem a few weeks back...and I was really starting to panic having blown a camera port in the past (I now use an isolator and always power/sleep the cam and mac before I plug the FW port in).
In the end it turned out that FCP was expecting DV in easy setup and the camera was set to HDV (or the other way around). Turned the cam off switched to DV (or again merely changed FCP easy set up to the relevant setting) and it was once again recognised.
I hope for the sake of your kit it's something like this Stephen.