Basic DV Information & Troubleshooting Tips
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Below are some basic information and troubleshooting tips to get your digital video system working. These are standard installation and troubleshooting procedures that apply to most IEEE 1394 setups. For specific software problems, you may want to check the website of the software manufacturer. Some of the more popular video editing programs are listed on the Digital Video Links page. A good place to start your search for Dell DV information is at Dell Support - Digital Video Capture. Check the Microsoft Support Articles for Digital Video and Firewire page. If you are having problems with the Dazzle Mojave and the Dell Movie Studio, check HERE.
Operating Systems: While some DV camera drivers and video editing software can be used with Windows 98, it will be an uphill struggle all the way. In the real world, you need at least Windows 98SE. Windows ME will get you by, Windows XP Pro is best for most PC video production. All of these operating systems support IEEE 1394 applications.
System Requirements: While a Pentium II processor, 5400rpm IDE hard drive and 64MB RAM may work, a more realistic setup would be a Pentium III(or better), 7200rpm IDE hard drive(the bigger, the better) and 256MB RAM. 512MB RAM is best for PIII - Win98SE. The hottest setup today would be a Pentium 4 processor on an Intel 865 or 875, or 915 or 925 motherboard with DDR RAM. There is never enough RAM for video editing, one gig should work well with a Pentium 4 processor. Every hour of digital video will take 10-14G of hard drive space. It really helps to have a second hard drive to capture video to. Any PATA 100, 133 or SATA 7200rpm drive would be great. A DVD writer is a typical component of a video production system, make sure your computer will be able to accommodate a couple extra drives.
What You Need To Capture Video: To transfer digital video(DV) to your computer, you will need a PCI firewire(IEEE 1394) card or a motherboard or sound card with firewire ports. Some DV cameras use USB 2.0 to transfer digital video. Most computers come with USB 2.0 ports. Some PCI firewire cards are combined with USB 2.0 ports. To capture analog video, you will need a video card with analog video capture, like an ATI All In Wonder 9800 Pro, a PCI TV card with video capture, or an external capture device. You will need a capture/editing program to capture and edit your video, convert, or render, your captured video to different formats. You can find information on all of these things at DV Links.
USB or Firewire?
USB 1.1 - The original USB standard. Two data rates: 12 Mbps for devices such as disk drives that need high-speed throughput and 1.5 Mbps for devices that need lower bandwidth. Using USB 1.1 will limit the resolution of video captures. USB 2.0 or Hi-Speed USB 2.0 - Data rates from 12 Mbps to 480 Mbps. A USB 2.0 host will work with both USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 peripherals. Windows XP Service Pack SP1 or SP2 must be installed for USB 2.0 to work properly.
Firewire - IEEE 1394 is a digital interface. It is generally referred to as Firewire, the Apple trademarked name. Other companies may use different names, such as Sony's iLink to describe IEEE 1394. Firewire is a peer-to-peer interface making it possible to dub from one device to another without a computer. Firewire supports data rates of 100, 200, and 400 Mbps. Firewire supports isochronous, as well as asynchronous, data delivery, providing a guaranteed data rate without lags or slowdowns. There are two types of Firewire connectors: 6-pin and 4-pin. The 6-pin connector, usually found on computers, provides two pairs of wires for signals and one pair of wires to provide power to external equipment. The 4-pin Firewire connector is usually found on camcorders and VCRs. It provides four signal wires but no power wires. When using a device such as a camcorder with your PC, most of the time you'll need a 6-pin-to-4-pin Firewire cable.
Installation of PCI Firewire Cards
You will need an available PCI slot. This slot will need to have it's own IRQ, sharing with IRQ Holder for PCI Steering is OK. A higher level IRQ, like 9, 10 or 11 is preferable. After installing the PCI card, install the card drivers. When you power your computer back up, the Add Hardware Wizard should appear and ask for your Windows CD. Always try to use the Microsoft drivers. After installing the drivers, your card should show up in the Device Manager as a 1394 Bus Controller, OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller or something similar. If there is a yellow triangle with an exclamation point next to your IEEE 1394 card, you have a problem. Make sure your card is installed correctly and the drivers are installed from the installation CD. If you still have problems, try uninstalling and reinstalling the software, including the drivers. Try the card in another PCI slot. In some cases, the Microsoft drivers will not work and the drivers provided with the firewire card may be needed. Check with the firewire card's manufacturer to make sure your digital camcorder is compatible with the card and supplied software.
Connecting a Camcorder
Plug the camcorder into your computer with the firewire(IEEE 1394) cable. To power the camera, use the AC adaptor, not a battery. Switch the camera to "VTR" or "VCR". Your DV camcorder should appear as "Microsoft DV cam and VCR" or "GenericDV Camera" in your Device Manager. If there is a problem, make sure the camera driver is installed correctly. You may need to insert your Windows CD to update the driver. You should also download the latest DirectX from Microsoft. Before you install any video editing software, check the Device Manager to make sure your camcorder is recognized by the computer. The Microsoft camera drivers seem to work better than drivers supplied with firewire cards. If Texas Instruments and Microsoft DV drivers are installed at the same time, you may have problems. Remove the Texas Instruments(TI) drivers. If your camcorder shows up under "Sound, video and game controllers" in the Device Manager, you may not be using the Microsoft camera driver. Adobe Premiere 6.0 will only capture digital video if you are using the Microsoft drivers. Check the Device Manager to make sure there are no conflicts with other digital devices like connections for digital still cameras.
Capture Problems
Defrag your hard drive. Close other applications while using your video capture software. Enable DMA for your hard drive in the Device Manager. You may want to change the "Typical Role" settings for your computer to "Network Server". Check your software settings to make sure it is configured correctly. Usually, you will find these settings under the "Options" or "Preferences" menu. Select the correct capture drivers. Digital video(DV) and analog video use different capture drivers. Make sure you have the correct Device Control setting selected for your capture hardware. Uninstalling and reinstalling the video capture and editing software, including capture drivers, may remedy capture problems. If you are having problems capturing audio, you may want to go to the Multimedia icon in the Control Panel and designate the video capture card as the device for Audio Recording and the computer's sound card as the Audio Playback device. If you have money to burn, a seperate hard drive for video capture would be nice. If you have an ATA33 or ATA66 motherboard, the investment in an ATA100 controller card will give you more hard drive options and cut down on those lost frames. Microsoft operating systems using FAT32 file systems have a 2GB file size limit. This is about five to ten minutes worth of DV format video.
Installing ATI video cards
You must uninstall all video drivers before installing new ATI software. Use the latest drivers from the ATI website. Follow the installation instructions EXACTLY. Check Rage 3d for detailed information about all ATI video cards.
Problems With Canopus ADVC 100 - Get Dell-ADVC 100 drivers HERE
Dell computers have problems with the ADVC capture device because of Dell's system drivers. Here's a fix that may help:
1) Create a new folder in your C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers folder. Rename the new folder.
2) Locate these 4 files inside C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers folder and copy and paste them into the new folder: 1394bus.sys, sysarp1394.sys, sysenum1394.sys and sysnic1394.sys.
3) Unzip the Dell-ADVC100.zip attachment. You should have four new files 1394bus.sys, arp1394.sys, enum1394.sys and nic1394.sys.
4) Copy these new files into your C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers folder. Reboot the PC. The ADVC 100 should appear in the Device Manager.
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Keep in mind these are general troubleshooting tips that will take care of most DV problems. For specific problems, check the manufacturer's website or try the Dell Talk Forum.
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