Was : Capturing video via firewire

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

some time ago i posted this
"i have a JVC mini-DV video camera. I am attempting to capture video
via a firewire cable.
However all 3 pieces of software I have available to me which claim to
perform the task, don't.

These are :-

Windows Moviemaker
Pixela Imagemixer (came with the camera)
Sonic MyDVD (came with the PC)

They all fail to display the video preview on capture.

My DVD appears to start capturing then stops after a few seconds.
Imagemixer appears to capture but nothing is there (the disk space
doesn't clock down)
Windows moviemaker also appears to capture but nothing is there. In
fact when i stop the capture it says the video was not captured
correctly.

I realise all 3 of these pieces of software are basic, but they should
perform the simple action of capturing to my hard drive. At this stage
I'm not worried about formats or burning to DVD.

I am technical, but Firewire is completely new to me, and I have no
guarantee the card is working properly (though XP sees the camera as
soon as i connect it, and the PC can control the camera tape
perfectly).

Any help would be really appreciated. Is there some sort of simple way
to test out that the firewire card is working ? I have bought two
cables just in case the first was faulty....but the fault remained.

Thanks in advance Ken"

And promised to post the solution.

Which is

"I bought another (very very cheap) firewire card from an online
store, replaced the Dell Adaptec one, and it worked first time. Glad I
didn't bother trying to re-install XP !!

I have asked dell to re-imburse me the cost of the original card, and
also compensate me by covering the cost of the working replacement.

So in short - if you have a firewire card that should work (no irq
conflicts in XP etc), but you just cannot capture video with it, then
perhaps you should look at buying another card. I think this is
especially true if you have a Dell machine with a Dell fitted firewire
card."