Best 1394B PCIE Card That Still Works with DV Camcorders

[Alwyn]

Oh, that's a bummer x 2. Did you try both Firewire drivers with each card, the Legacy driver and the internal driver?

Another option is looking for a Pinnacle 510- or 710-USB to do this (it sends DV over USB).

And last but not least, do an analogue capture of your footage from the cam's S-Video output. You'll need a digitiser such as the GV-USB2 or the USB-Live2. Through the GV, the quality is similar to DV; I can't tell the difference (my YT).

Or, of course, use your old banger.

[jwillis84]

The ADVC-55 has a DIP switch, position 1 is for NTSC or PAL.

If position 1 is flipped down it is in the PAL position, flipped up its in the NTSC position.

The DVio chip won't start encoding or turn the ADVC-55 LED Green until it detects a Color Video signal on the Composite or S-Video Input.

Until a Color Video signal of the correct type according to the DIP switch, position 1 is detected, the LED will remain Red and not work.

Color Video signals are needed for DV capture, unless a fake Color Burst signal is provided to trigger the correct sync.. B&W capture injectors are long gone.. but if your trying to capture B&W signals (kind of rare) they also won't start the DVio chip capturing. Any kind of pass thru device will usually add it for you, it assumes all pass-thru video should have a color burst signal.

Off topic, but old firewire OHCI interfaces were designed from the ground up as DV (Digital Video) serial connections. The PCIE cards for OHCI are kind of rare, but old ones still exist and some modern legacy cards purport to support the old standard.

Windows abandons stuff and never really tested drivers or hardware together well.

Old Apple OSX tended to test stuff to the n'th degree and made sure it worked before allowing it to be supported by OSX.

The old Apple Firewire to Thunderbolt 2 adapters are still available and a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 (USB-c) adapter can daisy chain it into a modern Thunderbolt USB-c port.

I have an ADVC-55 connected right now to an Apple Firewire to Thunderbolt 2 adapter, then to an Apple Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter and straight into an Asrock Supercarrier motherboard. Windows 7 detects the adapter and labels it;

1394 OHCI Compliant Host Adapter (Legacy)
Imaging devices
- Generic 1394 Desktop camera

I can also run it as

1394 OHCI Compliant Host Adapter (Legacy)
Imaging devices
- AVC Compliant DV Tape Recorder/Player

The difference is a Desktop camera has no remote control tape deck features, so it doesn't wait for me to start the video flow into a capture program.

The "AVC Compliant DV Tape Recorder/Player" is assumed to be in "ready to play mode" and will wait for a signal before streaming video into a capture program. People often forget its "waiting for their signal" and assume the static picture or no picture means there is a problem. And if their capture program can't send the signal.. they're in trouble.

The ADVC-55 is not a DV Tape recorder/Player, as soon as it sees a valid video signal that matches its DIP switch settings it starts streaming video.. which just removes an extra step that some capture programs can or cannot cope with. But the capture program also may spool (or "wait") as well.. so on both ends coordinating the start of capture can be a headache.

I don't do DV video much any more, the 4:1:1 was good in its day, for progressive field to frame conversion and allowed frame accurate editing.. but not that important anymore.

The quality of MPEG-2 is generally the same or better depending on the source, and depending on the source pre-compressing the chroma before its broadcast or stored on tape, its 4:1:1 equivalent already, so even with SP speeds and S-video connections the difference between DV and MPEG-2 is basically storage space. MPEG-2 can store in field or frame format, so its more flexible than DV if your into archiving.. but you have to manage the conversion. MPEG-4 is more popular these days since it eliminated the legal entanglements of including a codec with an operating system for free, and it got rid of macroblocking artifacts with the golden spiral .. but i digress... and wonder far afield.

I guess I should explain (why?) promote using a Thunderbolt USB-c connection rather than PCIE. Thunderbolt USB-c ports aren't often found on cheaper motherboards and laptops.

Basically the Thunderbolt USB-c port is serviced by a Windows driver that knows that bus, its up to date and more likely to be supported in the future. The device driver for IEEE 1394 is also a Windows driver, as is the Camera or Tape driver.. so your eliminating third party driver reliance and any potential for bugs in that path way. All the capture program sees is an OHCI Camera or OHCI Tape device. There is also no bottleneck for speed since the port is modern and scales upwards into the Gigabit range. I wouldn't say its "future proof" but its close. PCI slots have gone the way of the dinosaur, PCIE ports could do so as well. USB Type-A ports are disappearing, but USB-c seem to be proliferating. Thunderbolt is an add-on feature for USB-c so make sure you have Thunderbolt ports.. but there are only one or two chip makers anyway, so the quality is pretty good.

The Pinnacle 710 or 500 have nice Tape emulation for the USB 2.0 bus.. but are very old.. while the device drivers are 64 bit.. their signatures can be deprecated or rejected by Microsoft security at any time.. and running Windows with device driver signing turned off is no fun.. and unlikely to work at all with Win10 or Win11... again.. not promising future proof.. but if all the device drivers your using to get the video into the capture program were written by Microsoft.. they are less likely to be written off and desupported.

[Drainpipe]

Oh, that's a bummer x 2. Did you try both Firewire drivers with each card, the Legacy driver and the internal driver?

Another option is looking for a Pinnacle 510- or 710-USB to do this (it sends DV over USB).

And last but not least, do an analogue capture of your footage from the cam's S-Video output. You'll need a digitiser such as the GV-USB2 or the USB-Live2. Through the GV, the quality is similar to DV; I can't tell the difference (my YT).

Or, of course, use your old banger.

Yes, I've tried various drivers, including the "Legacy" ones and other vendor ones from various web sites. For a while, I was blaming Directshow, and tried various registry "fixes" to try to get it working, but to no avail.

The operating system "sees" the connected device, and even the device control in an old version of Adobe Premiere and Pinnacle Studio works and I can control the tape transport from Windows and the timecode shows up on the computer during playback, but no actual video comes through (apart from in the case of the ADVC-55 as mentioned).

I am very sure the problem is not to do with software or the operating system, because I see exactly the same pattern of behaviour under Linux using dvgrab on the same machine. That leads me to the conclusion that the issue is hardware-related, and is unlikely to be the Firewire card itself as I've now tried 3 different designs of card and see exactly the same issues. I've even resorted to trying different Firewire cables!

The trouble is, I'm not sure which component is causing the problem, and how I could make sure any replacement I purchase would not exhibit the same problem, and I can't see any way to narrow the issue down without spending out even more money.

I've been capturing PAL and NTSC DV via Firewire from camcorders and Canopus devices (mainly ADVC-100 and ADVC-55) for ~20 years, so I'm pretty certain it's not me doing something wrong, and I can still capture perfectly well using the same software and the same DV devices on my old jalopy machine with a PCI firewire card.

I've pretty-much given up now, and will just keep using the old machine until it gives up the ghost.

[Alwyn]

Arr well, we can't criticise you for not trying.