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  1. Hi All,

    Has anyone heard of or knows of a program to simulate the firewire comunications protocols of a Digital Camcorder (Panasonic or Sony)?

    My reason for asking is that I have a Panny DRME50 with DV input and am told that you can only connect it to the DV out on a camcorder because the Panny wants to take control of the camera.

    What I would like to do is connect a PC to this port to download to DVD video from the PC instead of playing the video over analogue and re-digitising it.

    Any thoughts out there?

    I'm thinking the DRME50 probably has the ability to do manual firewire input, but this has been removed from the manual at the behest of the mass media industry (similar to the removal of the page from old phillips video disk player manuals that tells you how to copy US video disks to UK video).
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    Do I understand you correctly, that you try to play a DVD movie (which is mpeg-2) without reecoding thru a DV port?This is impossible, because DV is a complete different format and you can only "play" DV avis thru a FW port.This is more or less just a file-transfer.
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  3. Not Quite,

    I have a Panasonic DMR E60 which has a DV input port so you can record from a DV camcorder to a DVD.

    Unfortunately the 'Smart' software in the Panny takes control of the camcorder for importing and so if you connect a PC with firewire to the Panny it will not recognise the connection.

    What I need is some software for the PC that will fool the DVD recorder into thinking it is connected to a live camcorder and then negotiate a download of MPEG files from the PC to the DVD.

    Is that any clearer?
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    Yes, you want the PC as DV source and the Panny (as you call it) will be the destination.
    BUT:first of all (as said before), there is no way to transfer mpeg files via DV connection, you need to convert any input to DV avi.If that's an option, then the next step will be a call for DV specs and an analysis of DVApp (which can transfer files to a FW port).
    In your case, I'd start with DVApp and debug what's happening on the DV port.
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    The easiest way would probaply be to send the video (DV) to your camera through firewire, tape it, then connect the camera to your dvd-recorder, run the tape and record it.
    Just because you aren't paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you!
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    That's quite feasible, but what if the movie is > 120 Min?
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    then you're out of luck
    Just because you aren't paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you!
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    All in all, IMHO it's quite cheaper to buy a DVD burner for the pc, than to try to program that.Even the specs fro DV cost more than a regular burner.
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    Hi Guys,
    I'm looking for the same thing, but for a different reason. I would like to output video through my laptop firewire port to a DVD recorder's firewire input. Not so much to record the video, but to use the DVD recorder as a transfer box to my TV.

    I tried going from analog RGB on my laptop directly through a converter to RCA jacks on my DVD recorder, but the picture was really bad. I thought if I could keep the signal digital (through firewire) maybe it would come out better on my TV screen.

    To make this work, I need to simulate the firewire protocols of a camcorder in the playback mode in order for the DVD recorder to recognize the laptop.

    I haven't found much info on the web about this. It appears that Firewire is going the way of the dinosaur and USB-2 has become the popular interface of choice.

    Any help out there?
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    This has been an on-and-off discussion here for some months now. I have a different Panny, the ES20, and was looking for a similar solution.

    Panasonic DVD recorders without hard disks do not play nice with others on the Firewire bus. If you can get a DV stream on the bus the Panny will see it and you can record it. The Panny has the ability to reach out to other Firewire devices (camcorder or deck) and initiate a connection. The opposite is not true because the Panny does not respond to requests from the outside to establish a connection.

    For most software you will find such as Enosoft DV Processor, Premiere Pro, Vegas, WinDV, MovieMaker, etc. what they do is query devices on the Firewire bus looking for units that report themselves as "tape subunits". Then they follow a communications protocol to set up a connection for control and the DV stream itself.

    The Panny does not present any subunit on the bus, therefore software can't see it or talk to it.

    In the PC world, Microsoft deserves a big share of the blame, too. There is a DV-over-firewire scenario called "broadcast" mode. In that mode, the DV stream goes out onto the bus without regard for any prior connections being set up. In theory, the DV gets broadcast on the bus and any listener node that's interested can receive the stream.

    The Panny sees such a stream and will record it from its "DV In" port. Unfortunately, Microsoft in their infinite wisdom chose to neuter broadcast mode in their drivers for XP. It is impossible to set up a broadcast DV stream on Windows without some very fancy trickery.

    There is further blame to be shared by the manufacturers of IEEE 1394 adapters and the film industry. Early Firewire cards had a "snoop" mode similar to the "promiscuous" mode of network adapters. Hollywood put pressure on the manufacturers of IEEE 1394 Firewire adapters to remove "snoop" mode from their hardware. The new spec is called OHCI and it does not have a "snoop" mode. All new Firewire cards follow this spec.

    If you could snoop the bus it would be possible to capture the communication between the Panasonic recorder and a camcorder to see what was going on. That conversation could be reverse-engineered and, in theory, you could write drivers and/or software to emulate a camcorder that would run on your PC. The Panny would think it was talking to a camcorder.

    Unfortunately, a card that uses the older Texas Instrument PCI-Lynx chipset (with snoop mode) costs well over $200 and that is prohibitive for most hackers' budgets.

    I know because I spent 6 months trying to get your scenario working without any success. Actually, I did have some success but what I had working mysteriously stopped working about a month ago and without a Firewire card that does snoop mode I didn't want to put any more time into it so I dropped the project.
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    I've got a Pioneer PRV-9000 DVD recorder at work, and it has Firewire In/Out where it can record from DV and will play back to DV (yes, it actually transcodes without going all the way to analog).
    So, yes, there ARE decks out there that do that.
    However, there are also some problems with controllability, though not as many as your Panny).
    And in your case, it probably would make more sense to just convert DV->MPEG2 and author and burn a DVD from a burner instead of recording.

    Scott
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    To nlec,

    Well! That's really sad!

    I remember seeing an Apple demo of Firewire when it was first introduced. WOW! They were able to transfer hugh applications and files at lightening speed. They hooked up one of those brand new "Digital Camcorders", and I was totally blown away by the digital performance!

    Now it seems Firewire is taking a back seat.

    Does anyone know how LINUX handles Firewire? Does that OS provide more control and options?
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    Back seat to what? USB2 I don't think so.

    Honestly, I think you're jumping the gun a little here.

    What about HDV? Only runs through Firewire.

    And it isn't the Firewire connection that's at fault here, it's the various (sometimes not-so-good) implementations of the DV transfer protocol/drivers. You want to pipe plain data at fast speeds via Firewire you can.

    @headscratcher: a better device for you would be something like the Canopus ADVC-100.

    Scott

    edit: you know, that might be a good device for the OP as well. It does DV pass through from "PC" side to "Deck" side.
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  14. This week at Best Buy, I got a Sony RDR-GX330 DVD recorder for $160.

    I was delighted to discover that when I connected its DV In to my PC, Windows merrily installed a bunch of drivers and it appeared as "Sony DV Tape Recorder/Player". I can send DV to it from Windows. I can even take DV in from a camcorder and send it out live to the DVD recorder.

    Plus, this recorder has a remarkable set of features, including one-touch DV dubbing. Connect your camcorder, press one button and the unit will control the camcorder, record the DV, detect scenes and create chapters for each scene (naming them with date/time of the scene), and once DV is done, stop recording and finalize the disc.
    John Miller
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    To JohnnyMalaria:

    Wow! That sounds great! It is exactly how I would have wanted my Daewoo DVR07 DVD recorder to behave.

    The Canopus ADVC-100 looks interesting, but sells for $239

    http://www.firewire-1394.com/canopus-advc-110.htm

    Headscratcher
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  16. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    You could get ADVC-100s on ebay for MUCH cheaper. But I think JohnnyMalaria's idea is better.

    Scott
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    Johnny, that's a great find. Some JVC recorders will do that, too, as well as some of the Pioneer units (as mentioned above). The Pannys will also let you do one-touch recording from a connected camcorder with scene detection, but only to DVD-RAM discs (at least on the ES20).

    I think the situation is a little better in the Mac world, but I've never done any programming for that platform. Even so, in the Mac OSX world there is a shortage of good software outside of some samples in their SDK. The situation is summed up pretty well in this post on the Apple Firewire mailing list. The points the poster (and it wasn't me!) brings up are true regardless of what platform you're on. And he doesn't even get into how stuff coming out of your cable box is more and more being encrypted and/or marked as "do not record". Personally, I think the lack of freely available specs has hurt. If they were available as they are for USB and TCP/IP you would have seen an explosion in all kinds of software utilities for controlling firewire devices and video.

    Linux, btw, is in even worse shape than Windows as far as I can tell. There, firewire support is active but consists of hacks upon hacks upon hacks. There are several layers of libraries that seem to get completely replaced every so often. Although, as on the Mac, if you've got a firewire card that will do snoop mode, there is software already written to snarf the packets on the bus. But like I said, it's not worth it IMO to spend hundreds of dollars on a piece of equipment you're only going to use for a couple of days. This post, also on the Apple firewire list, shows that cards for snooping the firewire bus were already getting scarce 5 years ago!
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    I did a little checking and it turns out that the PowerMac G3 B&W models from 1999 have the PCILynx IEEE 1394a chips in them. They can be had on ebay for less than $100 and that includes shipping.
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