I have recenlty borrowed a DSR-11 to capture around 36 hours of footage. I didn't want to
put the hours on my xh-a1. However, I can't get Premiere to see the deck at all.

I am running a Windows laptop with Vista-32bit. The first time I plugged the deck in using a firewire 400 plug, windows saw the device and looked for drivers. After about 4 minutes it found them and installed them. It said it was using "Sony Audio/Video device driver".

So I opened premiere when I opened the capture window nothing was there.

Since I really needed to get captureing because I only have so long with the deck, I decided to give the Windows Capture Wizard a shot.

I unplugged the deck, plugged it back in and was prompted by Windows to choose either the Capture Wizard or Premiere Pro to capture footage. I clicked on Capture Wizard, which launched and worked on a 1 min. test clip. The quality was good so I unplugged the deck and plugged it back in to get back into the capture wizard, Windows prompted me again and I clicked on the Capture Wizard and nothing happened. After about 5 min. I decided to unplug the deck and try again. When I unplugged it Windows said that Capture Wizard encountered an error when it lost connection with the deck. So after several more attempts I can't even get Windows to prompt me when I plug the deck in.

So I guess the sum of it is I need to get this deck working with my computer, I don't care right now which program I use, I would prefer Premiere of course but since I am on a tight schedule I will take what I can get.

Thanks in advance for any help.

I use the same deck with CS3 and no issues. The problem might be with your power-on procedure or perhaps a bad cable. In general, I will fire up the deck before Premiere is opened (computer needs to recognize the drive first).
What mobo are you using? Do you have a PCI card for your firewire or is it integral? All of your drivers updated? Any issues with other firewire devices? Hopefully, you're not trying to import HDV footage with the DSR-11, its strictly SD.

I finally managed to get deck control using Premiere but never got video. I had to return the deck so I guess this will go unsolved for me.

To answer your questions,

1. What is mobo?

2. Firwire is integeral.

3. Windows says I have the latest drivers.

4. No other issues with fire wire connected hard drives, cameras or decks.

5. I have tried several different power up procedures and didn't have any luck with any of them.

6. No it is not HDV footage, it is SD.

One often overlooked issue with the DSR-11 is the switch on the back for NTSC or PAL. Make sure that the switch is in the correct postition for the material you want to capture.