Computer help please: Device recognition in Win7

[john70t]

Have a family memorial coming up and need to transfer video from a MiniDV cassette camera system to digital using free editing software. It looks promising and I'm waiting to try it out. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/edit.

In the meantime I ran into a couple issues:

1). Bought and installed a couple new hard drives, but My Computer won't add the new drive icons.
(I swapped SATA cables to double check and it's all connected ok)
-Went into startup BIOS and all the hard drives are recognized there.
-Went into Control Panel/Device Manager/Disk Drives and they are all "working properly".
-Restart galore.
-However I went into PrimoCache software (memory spoof software for slow drives) and the new drives do not appear there at all.

2). I tried to do a test run for the video. Plugged the running camera into the "working properly" Texas Instrument IEEE1394 card in back but nothing happened again. No Windows recognition of that device. The firewire cable is the only output option for that ancient camera so I think I'm stuck unfortunately unless going to an expensive video store.


The computer is offline so I can't just let updater solve everything automatically.
Any ideas on where I should start?

[John Rogers]

I took a look at the PrimoCache Software and it appears it is for solid state drives only? I would suggest getting rid of it as add-ons like that make things harder to operate.

When looking at the new drives in device manager did you assign a letter to each one and assign the type of partition they will have? That has to be done so the main OS can see them.

For the Texas Instrument IEEE1394 card what inputs do those input jacks want to have or are they output jacks? It should say on the area next to the opening. Is the output of the camera by firewire the same as the input on that card? Sounds like it is not and I would connect it with the camera off then turn it on after connecting. Look in the Windows 7 Device Manager to see what it says about the card and also if the computer sees the camera. There might be some software that has to be loaded before the camera will work? That was the case with both of mine.

[svandamme]

if they are in device manager, then windows recognized them.
But did you create a partition and disk volume on them??

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309170.aspx

[stomachmonkey]

For the camera.

Windows won’t really do anything with the camera simply by plugging it in.

What software are you using to import the footage and does it support FireWire.

Typically the camera will be put into playback mode, not PC mode.

Run your capture / import software and look for the camera as a source.

Check the manufacturers site for a download of whatever software the camera originally shipped with.

[john70t]

Thank you, gentlemen! I've got some learning to do (steep curve here).

There are mixed results for the 1394 card.
Some on the MS forums are saying to use the XP driver in comparability mode.

I will try the drive letter assignment.
Also will check if plug-n-play is enabled.

[John Rogers]

A quick check on the new drives is to start Windows "File Explorer" and if the drives do not show there then they need the partition created and letter assigned as I noted above.

You can also buy an adapter I.E. firewire to USB so you can bypass that card all together which mike help. As noted above, make sure the camera is set to set it's signal out the connection and not to internal screen. The instruction manual should explain that. If no manual then search on line for it as most old ones have been scanned.

[stomachmonkey]

Just read you are using BlackMagics DaVinci.

BlackMagic is an industry leader for high end professional video.

Made their mark with capture cards and editing bays.

Two things, DaVinci is overkill for a novice but more importantly, it does not support FireWire, it won't see your camera.

Use WinDV to pull the footage then you can use DaVinci for editing if you want.

WinDV

What Camera, make and model.

Depending on the answer it may have a proprietary CO/DEC, not uncommon,.

A CO/DEC is a compression / decompression algorithm.

Without the correct CO/DEC your editing software can't decompress the compressed footage because it does not understand the math used to compress.

[john70t]

Ok went to right click Computer/Management and the drives are there but "unallocated" with a black stripe.
(sorry about the blurry pic)

Disk 0= 500GB SSD new. UNALLOCATED.
To be used empty with PrimoCache L2 virtual memory and Microsoft flight simulator photo scenery.

Disk 1= 1TB containing FSX backup and misc.
Almost full and I need more space for personal.

Disk 2= 4TB containing Windows 7 boot and programs.
800GB free space.
Containing mostly Microsoft Flight Simulator photo scenery. USA and Europe only. I'm a junky. In the future would like to get better quality Africa, India, China, Russia, Canada, Americas, etc, which will require a huge amount of space but those are not available yet.

Disk 3= 8TB drive new. UNALLOCATED.
To use solely for FSX scenery files. I'll run the program from the C drive.

Do I format the SSD as "Single" "Spanned" or "Striped"?
Same with the platter?

Trying to keep it simple so RAID or other connected strategies are out of the equation.

[john70t]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Two things, DaVinci is overkill for a novice but more importantly, it does not support FireWire, it won't see your camera.

Aha! (facepalm).
That's what I was afraid of.
I downloaded VirtualDub from https://sourceforge.net/directory/audio-video/video/vidcapture/os:windows/ and will try WinDV as well. Thank you!
No more free MS Moviemaker I guess..

Video camera is a Canon Elura 2MC.
Had to get MiniDV cassettes from the dusty bargain bin at MicroCenter (1.5hr drive each way)
It was pricey($1,100 i think) and top quality at the time a couple decades ago. lol.

[John Rogers]

I would suggest going to the following website: How to Use Unallocated Drive Space in Windows - dummies
and it explains how to gather your drives so you can use them. The term is "simple" and not "single" and while maybe not as fast or efficient as the other two simple is easier for a beginner.

I would make sure one of the SSD or solid state drives is the boot drive as your computer will run much faster since Windows reads/writes things to the boot drive while running.

In your screen shot disks "0" and "3" do not have a letter assigned so they can't easily be used by the Windows OS. The site above will tell how to fix things.

As noted you need different software to grab the videos off the camera.

[john70t]

A big thanks to you both again. It makes a lot more sense now.

Originally the C drive was only a 120GB SSD, due to budget and availability at the time.
That was not enough space for all the subsequent game data.
I didn't realize at the time that the program could be split with all the big scenery data being installed onto a separate drive.

The 1394 card issue still has not been fixed, but the camera did have an accessory base attachment with S-Video output.
I was able to export with this USB converter device which also has a basic editing software.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Adesso-Video-Capture-Express/23145700?wmlspartner=wmtlabs&adid=22222222222017232768&wmlspartner=wmtlabs&wl0=e&wl1=o&wl2=c&wl3=10361658493&wl4=pla-1105783594662&wl12=23145700_0&wl14=adesso%20video%20capture&veh=sem&msclkid=8e4ad76ea4bd1c30156f8d89d0ab4a9b



(It did require a restart to function, and was keen on phoning home by default just like everything else today)
Video is being captured as we speak, hopefully.
Thx again.

[John Rogers]

Remember that S-Video only has 480 resolution so if you make the videos larger they will seem "fuzzy" so it is best to watch them in small windows similar to what you get with FLV formatted videos.

You can try a couple ways to bump up the resolution: HandBrake which is free and can convert most anything to anything. Also I use the AVS software suite and their video editor or video converter allows you to string many small videos together and can actually bump up the resolution from 480 to at least 720. The drawback is it is about $40 for all the packages and when using it the CPU will get wound up to 100%!

[john70t]

Originally Posted by John Rogers

Remember that S-Video only has 480 resolution

Just finding that out now..
Very grainy results.
(Hey I thought that old camera was slightly better than that.)

Adesso's 'PowerDirector' editing software is far worse than good old mighty 'Studio7', which I was somehow unable to reinstall on this computer. There were looping crashes in changing capture settings, and most of the typical setup functions seem to be missing as well as export quality controls.

Oh well, something is better than nothing.
Thanks to this pelican braintrust I got a low baseline to work from now.