firewire card interference ?

[sdsumike619]

Not sure if this is the correct forum for this post but here goes:
I have a three port firewire card plugged into my computer. Into those ports I connect my external firewire hard drive, as well as my video camera.

I am using Vegas 6.0- captured the media to my firewire drive, dropped it onto the timeline in Vegas and am using that video camera as the video preview device (TV connected to it)

The problem seems to be that when I turn on the external preview in vegas, it starts to show that preview on the TV, but then flickers back to just the blue screen of the video camera, and it keeps changing every 2 seconds rougly. The audio however, plays fine (I guess because there is no audio signal sent through the firewire)

To me it seems like having both the hard drive with the media on it as well as the camera connected to the same firewire card is causing this.. Is there any way to avoid this?

Thanks,
Mike

[edDV]

Not sure if this is the correct forum for this post but here goes:
I have a three port firewire card plugged into my computer. Into those ports I connect my external firewire hard drive, as well as my video camera.

I am using Vegas 6.0- captured the media to my firewire drive, dropped it onto the timeline in Vegas and am using that video camera as the video preview device (TV connected to it)

The problem seems to be that when I turn on the external preview in vegas, it starts to show that preview on the TV, but then flickers back to just the blue screen of the video camera, and it keeps changing every 2 seconds rougly. The audio however, plays fine (I guess because there is no audio signal sent through the firewire)

To me it seems like having both the hard drive with the media on it as well as the camera connected to the same firewire card is causing this.. Is there any way to avoid this?

Thanks,
Mike

Some ideas/observations.

1. Does the monitor "interference" correspond to hard disk activity on the firewire drive? Does the interference go away if you preview a file from the internal drive?

2. You can set Vegas to send audio to the firewire preview or to your sound card. Forget which menu.

[sdsumike619]

yep, it sure does, that's what I observed..If I put the stuff on my internal drive, it doesn't flicker...the audio i'm not worries about, it's the video preview problem

[edDV]

yep, it sure does, that's what I observed..If I put the stuff on my internal drive, it doesn't flicker...the audio i'm not worries about, it's the video preview problem

I'd call the hard disk tech service and ask about HDD controller driver settings to avoid this. It would seem that the HDD controller is asserting full control of the IEEE-1394 card for periods of data burst to memory. It needs to let Vegas have some priority.

A second IEEE-1394 card may help.

[sdsumike619]

I wrote to western digital, so we'll see what they come back with regarding this....

[edDV]

Just to be clear, an IEEE-1394 or USB2 hard disk controller is a software driver unlike a hardware EIDE (PATA) or SATA hard disk controller.

[sdsumike619]

are you saying that I need to install a software driver for my firewire card? I didn't, I assumed that the windows xp plug and pray would work find and it appears to be except for this problem

[edDV]

are you saying that I need to install a software driver for my firewire card? I didn't, I assumed that the windows xp plug and pray would work find and it appears to be except for this problem

No, the disk controller is supplied with the Hard Drive.

PS: actually that is history. Today there is default HDD driver software in XP/DirectX and it should be plug and play. This makes it difficult to know which tech support to call, but I'd start with the HDD manufacturer. The external drive unit contains an EIDE hardware controller in the drive and bridge hardware to IEEE-1394.

[sdsumike619]

the external drive unit contains an EIDE hardware controller in the drive and bridge hardware to IEEE-1394.

"in the drive and bridge hardware.." ?? English? do you mean in the device manager in xp?

[edDV]

the external drive unit contains an EIDE hardware controller in the drive and bridge hardware to IEEE-1394.

"in the drive and bridge hardware.." ?? English? do you mean in the device manager in xp?

No that would be the hardware contained in the external hard drive. XP has a default driver for software control of a hard disk through the IEEE-1394 interface.

If the external drive was made by Western Digital, I'd call their tech support first for advice.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/bus/1394/1394tech.mspx

[sdsumike619]

i read the microsoft link but it didn't have any info regarding my problem ?

[edDV]

I could only find this one for Win 2000. Maybe they never fixed it.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;281695

[sdsumike619]

"maybe they never fixed it"

this should be microsoft's new trademark!!!

but yes this article you pointed me to is pretty much what is going on with my issue.. =( How did you find it?

[edDV]

Google

Just call Western Digital Support. They should know what is going on and it it their product.