Hi. This is my first post on here. I've been a proud owner of the XH A1 for about 3 weeks now and I'm really happy with its performance so far. I've been visiting this forum for over month now and have read dozens of messages that were very helpful to me. I think it's great that there are so many XH A1 owners on here that are willing to share their knowledge and help people with their problems. To those I say thank you. It is greatly apreciated. I hope one day I will be able to contribute and share my knowledge as well.

I do have a problem I would like to address that is driving me crazy. I posted this problem on other forums (Vista forums) but have not recieved any solutions so maybe someone here can help.

The problem is that my computer will not recognize the XH A1 when I plug it into my IEEE 0394 port.

It did the first time I plugged the XH A1 in. It went through the normal "found hardware" routine and installed a driver for it. But what happened was that when I went to capture video via Ulead VideoStudio it didn't work. At the time I didn't know what the problem was (it was a software issue) so I went to turn the camera off to troubleshoot. But instead of turning it to the off position, I accidently turned the dial to external mode. What happened next was that Windows Vista kicked out a dialog box that read something like.. "New hardware found. Windows is deleting current driver." I had no option to stop this action and it deleted the driver and attempted to load a new one, which of course doesn't exist. So since that first episode whenever I plug the camera into my computer nothing happens. The "Video In" flashes on the camera screen and the camera is not present in the device manager. I've spent hours on the phone with Canon but they are clueless.

Interestingly though, I can get the computer to see the XH A1 if I use the ADVC110 converter box as an "in between." In other words, if I plug the ADVC110 into the IEEE 0394 port on my computer and then plug the XH A1 into the IEEE 0394 port on the ADVC110, bingo; the computer sees the XH A1 and its there in the device manager as well.

While this workaround is useable, it's still a pain connecting everything up everytime I want to capture my video. I would very much like to resolve this issue but I think this is a Vista issue so I'm probally screwed. I did everything from restoring my computer to earlier dates to talking to the Canon and Dell people for hours at a time on the phone.

Other than that though, so far I have been successful in taking some good video, capturing it using HDVSPlit and editing it with Adobe Premiere Elements with some great results. I'm still working on finding a good solution to export to DVD, so when I finally get a decent work flow I will share it with you.

Thank you for reading this.

-John

Gonna be displaying my total ignorance of Vista here (stop laughing at the back there...) but this may just be worth giving a shot.

The following is XP speak, I don't know the Vista ones.

Go to Control Panel, Hardware, Device Control and scroll down till you reach the IEEE 1394 Bus Host Controllers. Double click on it, then whatever appears under it. Click on the "Driver" tab. In XP it gives you a number of driver options - if Vista gives you the same, there's both Rollback and Uninstall. Try Rollback and see if that solves your problem.

If not, try uninstalling it. Re - boot and try the camera again.

The worst that can happen is you lose your Firewire!

Anyone got any better ideas?


Cheers,


Chris

One of the things Dell had me try was to update the IEEE 0394 driver which I did. The driver is RICHOH OHCI Complimant IEEE 0394 Host controller as opposed to the OCHI Complimant IEEE 0394 which was the original, I'm assuming anyway. I tried both, your suggestion and trying to update again but no go.

I am really tempted to do an uninstall but I am afraid of losing the firewire. I would think restarting the computer it would see it and install the device, but I dont trust Vista at all, so I'm leary.

Oh yea.. I'm not laughing. Ok, maybe a little.... hehe

Hi John,

This looks like a 'combination' error.
The drivers of your 1394 port are not recognising the A1 and it will stay that way.

You can solve it by searching for other (newer) 1394 port drivers or use the external ADVX110 box like you do that right now.

I had a similar problem with an USB port. We had some ethernet converters to USB which did not work on our laptops with USB2 ports. Unless we used a USB hub.
The protocol of USB and firewire is different but the function is almost the same. (firewire is better for video).

You also could try to install Windows XP. Those drivers are older but they work. Vista has many issues with hardware and software. I think that will be solved after a few months. (As they were with Windows XP when it was introduced)

Canon can't do anything about this. This is purely a hardware/software issue.

Good luck with searching for a good solution and if you found it, please let us know.


Gert

Will do Gert, for sure. Thanks.

John, you may have tried this but what the heck.

If you highlight that OHCD controller in device Manager, it will allow you to right click on it. One of the options is "Uninstall", this removes it entirely. It may well on a re - boot re - build the driver data base correctly.

Worth a try or already tried?

Cheers,

Chris

Chris, I haven't tried that yet. It's a good idea, it sounds like a logical solution.. but... what do I do if when I restart and it doesn't see the IEEE 0394? My wife will probally have to call 911 and give me CPR!

If you want to get really down and dirty, you could always dive into your system BIOS on startup, disable the IEEE 1394 controller completely, let it boot up thus re - building your driver DB, take it back down, re - enable the controller in the BIOS and see if it gets it right on startup.

Cheers,


Chris

Nope, that's definitly way over my head there. Makes me nervous even thinking about doing something like that. I might try doing an uninstall though and see what happens. Or maybe not....

You might actually get to enjoy it!

Go on, you know you want to.

Cheers,


Chris

Might be an idea, if you do any of the uninstalls/ disables to have the camera connected and running on the re- start(s) - doesn't give it a lot of options when it comes time to select drivers.

Not that Windows really needs any excuse.

Cheers,


Chris

Theoretically speaking, after uninstalling a device, when you restart, it should recognize the device as long as the device is working and installed on the puter. I remember having a problem with a CD/DVD drive once, and I fixed it by uninstalling and then reinstalling it after startup. But that was XP, this is Vista or in other words, Trouble.

I'm not very happy with the Vista OS, it's constantly giving me problems and I don't recomend anyone going that route at this time. Stick with XP for now. I wish I could install XP but that's not possible so I have to wait for Microsoft to get their act together.

Anyway, that's why I'm real leary about doing anything so drastic at this time. I mean I can still capture video using the method I'm doing now.. if I try to do an uninstall or something even more dramatic and end up losing my firewire connection then I'm really screwed.

Has anyone tried this method to resolve this or simular issue?

-John

John, found this buried in the MS Vista section - may be the answer, may not. Worth checking out anyway:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930495/en-us

Good luck.


Cheers,


Chris

Chris, thanks for trying to help me out here. I really apreciate this. I apologize for laughing back there.. hehe.

Anyway, the fix is apparantly for the 64 bit OS. Mine is the 32 bit one. Figures, huh?

I did read there though that Microsoft plans on releasing a service pack for Vista so maybe I will wait for that.

I'm still thinking about doing an uninstall, so when I get the nerve up, I'll do it. I just want to make sure my wife is up to date on her CPR technique just in case.

from my reading, it applies to both 32 ( x86) & 64 bit versions, but maybe I'm mis - reading it.

But, as you say, a SP may well be landing on a desktop near you soon, which could sort it anyway.

Cheers,


Chris

I just re-read it and you're right. I see it applies to the Home Premium version which is 32 bit and the one I have.

It says I have to contact Microsoft's Customer Support Service (that's gonna be a trip) for the hotfix. I'll do that tomorrow.

-John

boy, are you ever gonna need it!

May the force be with you!

Cheers,


Chris

John,
Like the other responders, you may have tried this already....
In Control Panel, Add & Remove Programs, check that nothing still exists in the way of a driver for the camera ...sometimes I have found that a system restore does not always remove installed items and I have to remove them specifically via that route. I have had several issues with software in the past that I have had to resolve this way.
Failing that, you talked about getting up the nerve to uninstall via Device Manager. There shouldn't be a problem regarding your Firewire with this, but even if there was, a system restore should put it back in. And, even if that didn't do the trick, then a re-installation of Windows Vista should also reinstall your Firewire ...remembering of course not to select a 'fresh installation' (unless you really want to lose all your data!), but to opt for repairing the current version.
I hope this tuppence worth can help...

Colin.

Ok, I did a IEEE 0394 uninstall and when I restarted the puter it reinstalled fine. No problem with that part. (I don't know what you guys were so worried about.. geesh)

Anyway, I plugged the A1 in and Vista still isn't seeing it. Seems pretty hopeless at the moment.

Just read that Microsoft plans on releasing a service pack around October or November. That's quite a way's way yet. I'm still going to try to contact them for a hotfix but that could take the same amount of time.

Well it's back to the drawing board for this issue. Thanks again for all your suggestions.

-John

1.
I re - read your first post and a (small) light bulb went on - Ulead VideoStudio. Aha!

I had a similar problem with UVS and my A1 (on an XP system). Tried everything but no go (maddeningly it worked on SD but not HD). Out of sheer desperation because I wasn't sure WHERE the problem was, I downloaded the freebie trial of Adobe Premier Elements 3.
Fired it up and whamo, away it went first time.

Went back to UVS and guess what? Yep, worked a treat and hasn't failed since.

2.
On the off chance this DOESN'T work for you, can I suggest you beg, borrow or steal another camera (or almost any other Firewire gizmo failing a camera) and give that a go on this link. IT may just dislodge whatever ails it.

3.
I was going to suggest you try your camera on another system but the fact that the system can "see" it via the other box sort of renders that a red herring

4.
There is a patch for UVS (for the HV10) which may or may not have been applied to your version depending on when you bought it. Check it out and install it if it's not already there. You might want to check out ALL relevant patches as there's probably a shed load relating to Vista.

At this point the well is starting to run dry - I'm sort of hoping one of the above does the job.

5. You can always re - install UVS and see if that shocks something to life!

I'll ponder some more whilst you work your way through that lot.


Cheers,


Chris

Hi Chris,

Believe it or not.. (I'm still in shock) I called Microsoft and got through to someone within minutes. They passed me around like a football a few times to different tech people, but they did email me the hotfix in the end. This took no longer than being 15 minutes on the phone with them. I guess I really need to stop saying such horrible things about Microsoft (for the moment anyway.)

The bad news is that it didn't work. GRRRRR!

Chris, the only way I can capture video with UVS is if I downconvert the HD (which looks horrible) or use SD video. There are no patches or fixes that I could find on Ulead/Corel site that address's this issue. I made some comments about that on their forum but haven't heard anything back about that.

As for Premiere Elements 3.0 (which I purchased this past weekend) I can't capture video with it at all regardless of which format I use. I see no preferences listed for the A1 but I did try some of the other ones.. but nothing worked.

Thank God for HDVSplit!

Hooking up another camera to the puter is a good idea. My problem is finding someone who has a camera with a firewire connection to borrow. That might be a real challenge....

-John

I just discovered something:

Just to be sure:

Set the big wheel on VCR/PLAY

Press menu button
Goto Signal Setup
Is HD Down - Conv on OFF or ON ?
If it is....the camera is set to play PAL in stead of HDV.
Maybe it is...maybe not. But it could cause your problem.
I played around with some programs and discovered they did not 'see' the HDV camera when this is set to ON.

I hope it helps.

Gert, the HD Down-Conv is OFF.

The AV-> DV is OFF.

I don't know if this matters but when you go into the submenu of TIMECODE and look at the setting for HDV/DV IN (that is what flashes on the camera screen when I plug the camera into the puter) the setting (which is default I assume) is REGEN as opposed to the alternate setting of COPY.

When I told the Canon folks that the HDV/DV IN was blinking, they said it was a connection problem. Well I knew that wasn't the case because it works when I use the box, but I did purchase another cable anyway, the Canon one, so I don't think it's a connection issue.

-John

Give this a shot:

http://www.versiontracker.com/subscribers/marketing/vtwtrial13/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_content=drivers&utm_campaign=windows+3.5&gclid=CPjQ8bPZ6YwCFSm3hgod8COyzg

Don't know if it works but hey, nothing ventured...........

CS

except this one, and it may be a non starter depending on how much pain you're prepared to experience to get the gain.

As you've got an A1 and will, no doubt, be shooting HEAPS of stuff - consider this.

Get yourself an external hard drive - Lacie, Maxtor whatever (preferably BOTH USB and Firewire - the Maxtors used to be, don't know about the latest ones) big enough to not only back up your existing system in it's entirety, but to act as a "video repositry" when you get this sorted.

Back up your system (most of these drives come with backup software) and re - load Vista from scratch, then re - load YOUR stuff. Make sure that when you re - load Vista, that the camera is connected and powered up in VCR mode when that last fatal re - boot happens.

I realise this sounds like an awefull lot of sodding about but I really can't think of an alternative. It does have the advantage (or up side, depending on your point of view) that you can shift downloaded video off your hard drive(s) to make room for more downloads. This gives HEAPS more versatility when editing as you don't have to keep buggering around with tapes. You can ever download directly to the external drive if required, which saves a bit of mucking about.

I know it's no "quick fix" but unless someone comes along with a "magic bullet" there seems to be NO quick fix on your system.

However, as I said, this depends on the amount of pain you're prepared to go through to get there - on top of the shed loads you've already experienced.

I feel your pain - been there, done that, in spades.

Give it some thought.

CS

Occasionally neither one of my computers will recognize that my A1 is attached. No amount of unplugging, replugging, powering up or down will get the computer to see the camera via the firewire. What I stumbled on was rotating the selector dial past VCR/Play to Ext Cont. The computer then sees the camera. Then rotate the dial back to VCR/Play and all is well in my world again. Might be worth a shot?

Turning the dial to External Control is what brought this problem on to begin with. It tried to install a new driver, which does not exist.. and in doing so deleted whatever driver it installed previously.

I did find some other messages on other forums describing the same problem I am having and for some your suggestion worked for them.. but in my case no matter what setting I turn the dial to, the computer does not see the A1.

On ocassion I experience problems when I connect my wireless mouse to the laptop.. and I have to switch USB ports for it to recognize it. I'm pretty sure if I had another firewire port available that would solve the problem, but unfortantly I only have 1 port.

-John

Thanks for your help and suggestions. You're a good man. Thanks to everyone that tried to help me with this.

Chris, if I'm going to do something that drastic it will be reformatting the HDD and installing XP. I really have no use for Vista, its nothing but trouble.

I do have a few options left.. 1: Microsoft told me to call them back if the hotfix didn't work, which it didn't.. but that wil probally mean being on the phone with them for hours. Me personally, I would rather be outside shooting video with my A1. My second option would be to call someone like the Geek Squad and have them deal with it. Problem with that is, the closest Geek.. hehe.. is about 2.5 hours away so I don't know if they will travel that far.

But in the meantime I can still use the box and capture video so I think I will give it a rest for awhile.

Thanks again for all your help.

-John

Oh, BTW... I liked your idea about getting an external HD.. that is something I was thinking about doing eventually. I need to do some more research on that....

Hey, keep us posted, I'd like to hear that this sorry saga has a happy ending, sometime!

CS

PS. Happy shooting!

Installing XP was my last solution for your problem.
I was curious about your experiences with Vista.
Many people have problems with Vista. It seems that CS2 also has problems with functioning in Vista. With CS3 that problem should be solved.

I think when your XP system is running ok, you have to wait until the end of this year. Most of the drivers will be ok then and much of all software will be fully compatible with Vista then.

You might consider to use the 64 Bit version of Vista then. I heard Sony is releasing Vegas 64 bit around that period.

For now I also stick to XP because many of my programs refuse to work with Vista.

Good luck!

Gert

Been struggling with why this PC (and seemingly ONLY this PC) has this problem (on DVinfo anyway). The only thing I haven't seen mentioned to date (but may have been done anyway) is both the BIOS and the Motherboard Chipset drivers.

I can't believe Dell didn't run through this with you, John - but hey, I have to ask - did you download and update the latest BIOS and chipset drivers?

The former is not for the feint of heart but could really be at the root of this problem, the latter could be implicated as well.

It's a stab in the dark, but got to be worth a try.

CS

Chris, Dell had me update a chipset driver but no BIOS update. I did a system restore since then though, so I'm going to find and run that chipset update again.. but it still didn't help. I don't think there is an update for the BIOS but I will check for that also.

-John

Hi John - did you ever get around your problem? I'm curious because I'm suffering something similar, but with XP.

TIA

Here we go again...........

Sit right down and tell us where it hurts...............



CS

Sorry to hear about your problem with XP. I still have not been able to do a direct firewire connection to my laptop. Still using the ADVC110 converter box as an "in between."

I'm kinda suspicious of my firewire plug on the laptop. That may or may not be the problem. I bought a Canon firewire cable for the purpose of connecting the A1 to the laptop which of course is not working... but I use a different firewire cable (heavier) to connect the ADVC110 to the laptop which does work. I wish I could swap cables to test it, but the Canon is 4 pin to 4 pin and the heavier one is 4 pin to 6 pin, so thats no good.

Everytime I go by a Radio Shack or Walmart I look for a 4 pin to 4 pin firewire cable but they don't seem to carry them. Guess I'll have to order one from Amazon or somewhere or maybe replace the firewire card on the laptop.

In the meantime I'm getting by with this setup.

-John

I've been fighting the same issues that many of you have with obtaining a reliable firewire connection with the A1. I use DV Rack (now Adobe OnLocation) for a lot of my work and though I've been able to get reliable connections with other cameras, connecting to the A1 seems to be truly problematic.

First off, a major source of problems, imho, is the crappy connectors we're forced to work with. Why camera makers continue to use the really awful 'standard' 4-wire connector is beyond me. Considering the limited options for logging A1 footage, you would think that they would have put more thought into such a critical component. But I digress...

In my attempts to get a reliable setup with the A1, I'm beginning to suspect that the particular firewire chipset involved plays a major factor. From the audio world, it seems somewhat well known that certain firewire chipsets work better than others when connecting multi-track audio interfaces to PC gear. It depends on the maker of the audio interface but I know, for example, that Presonus gear prefers TI firewire controllers along with VIA. Presonus doesn't support NEC chips. The embedded firewire controller on my desktop is NEC and it won't even recognize my Presonus gear so I use a PCI card with a TI chip and it works perfectly.

My laptop's embedded firewire port is TI but due to the 4-pin connector, I've been using a PC-card adapter with VIA and it's worked very reliably with all kinds of gear - at least until I got my A1.

If I fiddled around long enough with powering the A1 off and on and restarting Windows and pulling the firewire cable, I could get it to connect in HDV mode. Could not get it to work at all in DV mode. Nothing worse than having to record a live event and not knowing if your setup is going to work or not. Initially, I blamed Windows for the unreliability and figured it was just cruded up. After all, my h/w setup had been working well with other gear.

Last week I decided do a fresh install of Win-XP SP2 on the laptop and updated it all the latest patches. I could not get the A1 to come up on the VIA firewire adapter for nothing, even in HDV mode. Windows just simply refused to recognize it. So I tried my laptop's embeddeed TI adapter. Came up immediately in both HDV and DV modes! Yeah! Still don't like the 4-wire connector though.

I tracked down a PC-card adapter with a TI chipset and got it Tuesday. It's working great! As long as I can get a good connection at the camera, it comes up in Win-XP reliably. Yesterday I covered an all day event without a problem except once when I lost my connection at the 4-wire port on the A1. Grrrr! It must have caught me giving it a dirty look.

Sorry for the long post but I thought I'd pass on my experience and point out that when all else fails that there may be another factor biting you that is seldom mentioned in the video forums.

-Dan