Hello all - hope someone can help!

I have just bought a new Toshiba laptop, with decent specs, but it has Windows Vista Home edition as an operating system.

It runs Vegas 7 okay, without using the Media Manager. However I have one massive problem, and it mean massive. It won't recognise the FAM driver and therefore I can't ingest any proxy or high def footage!

It can find the camera (pd350) on other devices in the device menu, but I can't assign my PD350 a driver. I am attaching it by using a firewire lead.

Is anyone out there using Windows Vista with their 350- if so are you using Vegas 7 okay with your xdcam okay? - and more importantly how did you assign your camera with a driver.

I would really, really appreciate some help!

Thanks, sparky

www.sparkymedia.net

Just incase you don't get to solve the problem, just format the drive and install windows xp on it, vista is not ready from prime time yet.

I agree. Vista is near worthless without the very latest hardware and HUGE amounts of ram, def. not stable/efficient for the masses where DV/HDV editing is concerned.

Bad news, Mark. I spoke with Sony about this the other day. No plans to release a Vista driver until first part of next year. They are kind of waiting on the NLE vendors to get Vista'd before they write the driver. I have a system here that I'm evaluating that has Vista and I have Vegas 7e running on it. I was able to install the Proxy Browsing Software and the XDCAM Viewer, but the driver wouldn't load. So, like you, I can't attach the F350 and have it recognized as a disc drive.

My workaround is to attach my WinXP laptop via ethernet and hook the camera to the laptop and make the F350 a shared network drive. It's slow going, but it works.

-gb-

Thanks guys.
Greg, have you thought about dual booting your system with Vista and Windows XP?
That may be a way of getting around the problem.

Just bought a new laptop for editing with Vista three days ago, I'll call them tomorrow to see what the situation is with regards to refunds. The problem is all notebooks are now loaded with Vista, and downgrading to XP is a real hassle.

May look at buying a MAC which has a dual operating system (one that runs windows as well).

Thanks again from a very frustrated sparky.

Intel Macs and XDCAM HD are just made for each other. You won't be able to edit using the proxies, but everything else works very well and there are numerous options for export from DVI to HDSDi adapters to HD component cards. Plus FCP is a real bargain compared to Avid media composer and an extremely powefull suite of tools from editing through to grading. As well as my Mac's I also use PC's for some tasks and one of the great things with XDCAM is that the files can easily be transfered from FCP to Avid or Vegas etc, which is not something that can be done easily with HDV.