No In/Out over Firewire

N

NeptuneCowboy

New member
I've been using my DVX 100A for over a year now and never had a problem. This morning when I went to capture video from the camera it had disappeared from my system. Multiple attempts to get the computer to detect the camera have failed. Restarted camera and rebooted computer multiple times. Tried a different cable. Checked all my camera and computer settings.

Then to try to isolate the problem I took the camera to one of my other computers and encountered the same problem. No recognition of the camera being connected.

This leads me to believe the problem lies with the camera. Has anyone else encountered this and found a fix?

The only thing I did different last night was accidentally cut power to the camera while it was playing video. Could this have caused an internal in/out problem?

Any help is much appreciated. I'm going to buy a cheap Mini DV camera to use as my source deck from now on as I need to keep the DVX in pristine condition for my work.

By the way, I have 454 hours on the camera and this is the first problem I've encountered.
 
Okay thanks. At least I can stop wasting time trying to find other cause. There's an authorized service center just a few blocks from where I live so life goes on.

Any idea how I might have cooked it? I want to avoid this in the future obviously.
 
Are you using a third party firewire card? if so, you might want to check that out. It is easily possible that this is the culprit. I would personally just not use your DVX as a capture device, just to risky and uses the tape heads too much.
 
I've tested the camera on several different firewire cards, all of which previously worked to capture. This leads me to believe that PanasonicNZ is right and the in/out is fried. Probably caused by my inadvertant turning off the power while the camera was playing back video to the computer.

I just got back from the Electronic store where I purchased a Panasonic PV-GS35 to use for capturing from now on. The DVX will see no more duty in that area. Thanks for your advice.
 
I've NO evidence for it, but firewire I/Os should not be that sensitive...especially considering firewire is supposed to be "hot-swappable". So...here's a theory:

The 6-pin firewire port has voltage on pin 1 and gnd on pin 2.

The 4-pin firewire port (on the camera) has no power pins.

I wouldn't be surprised if some cables are crap, and can apply that DC power to one of the signal pins. I don't imagine the camera would appreciate it.

Dan
 
Well I thought I may have fried my firewire I/O as well but I don't think I did. The first time I plugged my DVX-100A into my PC; bam new device recognized--worked great. I come back 2 weeks later with a real project on hand that I need to dub video in quick--so I tried using my DVX as I don't yet have a DV deck. Anyway--plug it in nothing. I launch Premiere Pro 1.5 --nothing. So I picked up the camera and stood up--bam device detected. It was as if I held the camera at chest level and it worked--got me? I mean The camera is brand new as well as the firewire so nothing should be loose. Does anyone have an explanation for this, or is this a precursor to the I/O going bad? And after seeing so many problems like this with the DVX I am going to have to get a deck sooner than expected. Any thoughts or things I can check--especially since there isn't a local authorized dealer/repairer.
 
Sounds like a loose connection.

Cheap cable? Hopefully. Although firewire ports are pretty "positive"...not much wiggle room.

Dan
 
i had the port go on my dvx-100a when it was about 5 months old.

luckily there is an authorized repair shop just outside of boston.

the guy there is super knowledgable and apparently worked for panasonic for a long time.

he said that a lot of the repairs he does concern blown firewire ports on all levles of panasonic cameras from the dvx-100 and much more expensive models.

he said that the panasonic is pretty much the only camera brand he sees where they don't have any circuitry to prevent the firewire port from being fried.

he said that all the other brands that he repairs have a small circuit specifically to stop any stray current from frying the firewire port.

matthew
 
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