I bought my HDR-HC3 last OCT and I have not been able to capture video on my old main computer (tower with 6 pin firewire). When I tried to capture it would be choppy video with a blue screen and it never actually captures any video. The only way I could capture was to use my laptop(4pinfirewire) with half the computing power of my tower.

So I bought a new tower AMD duel 2.6ghz, 3gigs of ram, 2 internal 400gb HD's with 6pin firewire. I install Vegas and HDVsplit to try to capture same problem no capture with choppy video. I tried captureing on 2 family members laptops no problems. So I went to Fry's and bought a 4pin firewire card since all the laptops worked with 4pin. I installed the card and I was able to capture but I have dropped packed constantly.

DOES ANYONE KNOW WHY I cant capture with a tower but I can with laptops with half the computing power ? Is it the 6pin vs 4pin ?

I have to capture on my laptop them burn to a DVD , then upload video to my tower before I can edit. It's killing me any help would be great.

The only differences between 6-pin and 4-pin are the size of the connector and that 6-pin can supply power. Which can be bad for camcorder firewire ports of not treated carefully (Always have the camcorder shut off when connecting firewire, some people have the computer off too).

I know there will be posts saying "i've never done that for thousands of captures". I work very closely with a rental company that has had to do numerous firewire port repairs at customer expense.

Back to your problem, sometimes windows will select the wrong driver for your camcorder and then nothing works as it should. You want the DVHS driver, see the instructions from Douglas Spotted Eagle in this post:
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=48908

Finally, there can be hardware issues. Your firewire card must be OHCI compliant (most modern ones are). Many people have reported issues with firewire cards or motherboards using VIA chipsets.

on some motherboards controllers other than the primary controler often operate and only support PIO rather than DMA mode which can really bog things down... you may want to check this too.

Thanks guys

Seth I will try that when I get home. If that doesn't work -----

Martin what do I do or how do I check ?

Thanks Joey

here are several links to understanding PIO v. DMA mode

http://winhlp.com/WxDMA.htm

although related in this discussion to CD drives it still applies...
http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=163993

http://sniptools.com/tipstricks/getting-back-to-dma-mode-in-windows-xp


heres one with several screenshots to guide you

http://www.blackmaxpc.com/Guides/Enable_DMA.htm




Another do it yourself method below...

Re-enable DMA using the Registry Editor
My thanks go to my fellow MVP Alexander Grigoriev who taught me this method.

Run REGEDIT. Go to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

It has subkeys like 0000, 0001, 0002, etc. Normally 0001 is the primary IDE channel, 0002 the secondary, but other numbers can occur under certain circumstances. Check the DriverDesc value to see which one it is.

Delete MasterIdDataChecksum or SlaveIdDataChecksum, depending on whether the device in question is attached as master or slave, but it can't actually hurt to delete both. Reboot. The drive DMA capabilities will be redetected.

Open Device Manager again and check whether the device is now actually using DMA mode. If so, congratulations, you've made it (at least until the next time Windows disables DMA





Thanks guys

Seth I will try that when I get home. If that doesn't work -----

Martin what do I do or how do I check ?

Thanks Joey