PPRO 1.5 or Firewire 1394?

Andrew Brinkhaus

Andrew Brinkhaus

Veteran
Today, I hooked up my DVX via firewire, in attempt to export some footage back to tape. I've never done this before, so I might be missing something simple. When I hook up my cam, the video outputs into the LCD, but when I play the footage from the timeline, the signal goes in and out, cutting back and forth between the footage and the blue "VCR" screen...I wasnt sure about my PPRO settings so I checked those and they all seem to be set accordingly, I mean after all, I am getting a signal, it just wont stay consistent! Could this be a faulty firewire cable? Maybe my computer is a unable to handle the streaming? I have no clue! Any help?
 
I used to have similar problem when I loaded service pack 2 on my main editing system. Newer updates solved the problem but I was running sp1 for a long time. Has it ever worked?
 
Hi Andrew,
What's the hardware config on your PC? CPU, memory, etc. Is the firewire port on the motherboard or some other interface? If you render the timeline first, does that improve the playback? On your playback settings, do you have it set to send audio out the firewire port along with the video? If you change the setting to send the playback audio to the PC sound system, does that make a difference?
-Dan
 
TeleDan, I'm running a 1.5Ghz AMD Athlon Processor, 2400, 1G of RAM. Not sure if my firewire card is configured through the motherboard... I have the settings in PPRO configured to send audio only to the desktop, not the DV interface, which means its just a video signal. It doesnt change when rendered or if not rendered, I still lose the signal every few seconds. Its what would happen if you were constantly plugging and unplugging the firewire from the camera...signal, no signal, signal, no signal, etc.
 
I'm assuming that you're not hearing the sound that WinXP makes when it discovers or looses connection to a device. If so, then I would say you have a cable problem. If not then I believe I had the same problem when I was running an Athlon XP1800. Although for me it was during normal timeline playback using the passthru on a handicam hooked to a TV, I think it's the same basic issue.

I wish I could give you a simply fix but I think it's basically means that your system can't sustain the firewire data stream for some reason. I don't think it's necessarily just CPU horsepower. You might try turning off video display on your desktop during playback. If no change, I suggest you start looking at your firewire interface. Take a look at the IRQ usage on your system. Is the firewire port sharing an IRQ with one or more other busy devices? If you're using a firewire port that's on your motherboard, you usually don't have much choice but if it's on a PCI card, moving the card to another PCI slot will change the IRQ it uses. I would even look at how fragmented your disks are.

-Dan
 
Yeah, my firewire is on a PCI card. Today I will try changing it to another slot and see if that helps at all. I'll also check my disk fragmentation. Thanks TeleDan. By the way, where are you in Colorado?
 
Hey Andrew,
I hope it helps. You may already know about it but there's a useful program called 'System Information' in the 'System Tools' folder under 'Accessories' on the start window. It will tell you about IRQ usage among other things.
I'm located Colorado Springs.
-Dan
 
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