How to enable FireWire-In on (almost) ANY DV and D8 cam!!!!

[VIKINGMAN]

Hello all.

A danish PC-magazine has DV editingboards on the testbench. But more interesting is the little gadget called a DV-widget, which can open FireWire IN, on cam's that are normally blocked. This is also possible on D8 cam's. They're showing a list of 59 Cam's, whereas the 37 can be opened by DV-Widget.

The product is produced by: http://www.datavision.co.uk

Well, very GOOD news for all us Europeans with DV-cams that only has FireWire OUT, or so we thought!

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ASUS P2B-S, PII-350 (o/c to 412MHz), 128MB RAM, Cheetah 9.1 GB, Matrox Mill. G200SG, SB 64AWE, Plextor 32x CD-Rom, PlexWriter PX-R820T CD-R, Canon BJC-7000 InkJet, OkiPage 4W Laser and Canon CanoScan 300 Scanner.

[Pertti]

As far as the (Sony) D8 cams are concerned, enabling DV-IN costs about the same as a cup of coffee at your local gas station

[Patrick]

Vikingman, it's good to see you at the forum again.

Here's another link that'll provide all kinds of information about this subject:

http://lea.hamradio.si/~s51kq/DV-IN.HTM

Of course, enabling DV-in on a MiniDV or Digital8 camcorder has not been a problem here in North America where they come already enabled from the factory.

Has anybody reading this done the "hack" to a Sony TRV900 camcorder which would allow "real time" signal conversion from analog to digital? I would love to be able to have this "pass-through" ability so that I could play back my analog Hi8 tapes on my Hi8 deck and have the signal converted to digital for use with a DV capture board. The newest generation of Sony MiniDV and Digital8 camcorders will do this but the TRV900 will not. I believe this subject may be touched upon in the link I provided above, but that site deals basically with PAL camcorders and I don't know how much (if any) of that information could be applied to NTSC camcorders. Here's another link that definitely deals with this particular conversion:

http://www.bealecorner.com/trv900/rm95.html

I'd just like to be able to ask a couple of questions from someone who's done it.

[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 30 August 2000).]

[jeff b]

Hi Patrick!

That's an interesting link; I had no idea that the TRV-900 was capable of doing that, so I DID end up shelling out $300 for the DVMC-DA2.

Jeff B

[Patrick]

Jeff, sorry to hear that you were unaware of the "hack". From what I understand, every Sony MiniDV and Digital8 camcorder is capable of doing this analog to digital pass-through conversion. Sony, in their infinite wisdom (and greed), simply "dumbed down" this ability on their older digital camcorders. Frustrating, eh? Sony's newest generation of digital camcorders all have this ability enabled right out of the box.

I might get a chance to try out this TRV900 at the Indy race here this weekend. So Jeff, you'll possibly be getting an email from me soon asking a couple of questions about this camcorder. Thank gawd I know a lot more about camcorders and video than I know about computers, therefore my questions shouldn't be too numerous or silly.