Tips T0016

Problems Sending DV Movies to Camcorder
When you try to send the DV movie back to the camcorder, sometimes the picture breaks up and there is an entirely blue picture instead. In some situations, no picture is present at all. There are several possible causes for this, but the problem is more likely to do with your system configuration. Try to implement the following steps in order to help find the cause of the problem.

Disclaimer: Some of these steps involve making significant changes to your PC system. Only perform them if you are confident in what you are doing. Failure to reconfigure your PC correctly could result in a loss of data or failure for your PC to boot entirely. You are making these changes at your own risk and we are not liable for any damage or loss of data caused by following these instructions.

Install the latest DirectX 9.0c
To ensure that you are using the latest version of all the DirectX components you should download the latest version of DirectX i.e. DirectX 9.0c from:
www.microsoft.com/directx

Although you may have already installed this, other programs may have reconfigured or changed the DirectX system so a re-install in the best way of ensuring that you have a complete set of correctly configured DirectX components.

You can Download and install this update for your Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, or Windows XP-based system.
If you are using Windows XP, this comes with DirectX 8.1 so you should only try and install later versions of DirectX.

Test your disk data transfer speed
Data must be transferred to the FireWire card at a steady 3.6 MB/s, so you PC must be able to sustain this data rate without interruptions. You should be looking of for a minimum data transfer rate of 6 MB/s and Hard disk speed of 7200rpm, although many modern systems are capable of much faster than this.

Check your PC's processor speed
We recommend a 2GHz processor as the minimum for reliable DV data transfer. You can also transfer DV data with 450MHZ processor if you are using our Snazzi* 111 series of products.

Quit all background programs
Background programs like virus checkers, firewalls and especially "system optimization" programs can all interfere with large data transfers. Quit them all when attempting DV data transfer.

Disconnect all USB devices
Some USB devices (card readers and modems seem to cause the most problems) periodically interrupt the PC and this can cause problems when sending DV data.

Move the FireWire card
It may be that the resources that Windows has allocated to the FireWire card are causing a conflict with another card or even the PC's motherboard. Try moving the FireWire card to another free PCI slot within the PC to see if this fixes any resource conflict.

Remove all other PCI cards
This is a major step, but will ensure that there isn't a conflict between the FireWire card and another card in the PC. Of course, you should leave your graphics card in the PC so that you can see what you're doing!

Look for motherboard chipset upgrades
We have seen that users had problems with both VIA and ALi motherboard chipsets and you should look for chipset upgrades from the motherboard manufacturer's web site. For example, the VIA chipset has a "4-in-1" package that updates many aspects of the chipset's behavior. A motherboard chipset upgrade is a major task and should only be tackled if you are 100% confident of what you're doing.