System is a Dell 435 (renamed 9000). Purchased in September 09. i7 920 2.66MHz, 6MB, 1.5 SATA RAID, nVidia 240, window vista 64. Camcorder is a Sony HDR-HC3. This issue happened with S10.8 patched for Vista and then updated to S14 hoping it would fix this problem.

Problem: Audio is working, but no Video in capture window in HDV mode. The name of the camcorder is displayed in the window correctly. When I switch to HV output by setting i.link conf: on (camera converts to low res HV on the fly) then window detects the camera when it is plugged in and video works just fine.

 I assume it is the 1395 driver not detecting the camcorder in HDV mode issue. I have looked at the posts back to April and do not see a real solution for video capture issue, but I did notice the the Pinnacle support team did say that they had purchased a Dell 435 because there are some issues with it. I hope the solution is known by now. In the read me file it said to go into the device manager and change the properties to look for other devices. I could not find a properties window to change this setting in. 

 The camera shows up in device manager under sound video and game controllers in HDV mode.

 P.S. I also have the know issue of a Blue Screen crash when picking output media. I see that someone read the mini-dump file and found that it was a conflict with the realtek driver. Is there a workaround i.e. step by step procedue or patch for this yet?

A few more facts:

When in HV mode, the camcorder shows up in Device manager under Imaging devices with drivers:

ksthunk.sys

msdv.sys

When in HDV mode, the camcorder shows up in Device manager under Sound, video and game controllers with drivers:

avcstrm.sys

ksthunk.sys

mstape.sys

The HDR-HC3 is a tape vs. Hard Drive based recoder, but is seems odd that mstape.sys is part of the driver. Is this the right driver configuration?

P.S. I uninstalled the driver in HDV mode and rebooted the PC. It locked up on reboot until I disabled/turned off the camcorder. After rebooting it reinstalled the driver when the camera came back on but still will not work. When it is working it is seen as "Sony HV device", when it is not working (HDV mode) it is seen as HDR-HC3.

See my response in this thread, I hope it gives a bit of light on the subject.

Thanks for your input. I went to the windows compatibility site and the HDR-HC3 (HDR-HC1 also) is not supported in Vista (64). That may be my problem. The good news is that the Windows 7 (64) compatibility site shows support for HDR-HC3. So in about 2 weeks when Dell send out the upgrade disks for Windows 7, I will see if it works.

I also went to the Windows Develpers site and looked up the drivers for HDV and the correct drivers are being loaded.

 Link to Windows 7 compatibility site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/Search.aspx?type=Hardware&s=hdr-hc3&os=64-bit

List

Thanks for sharing this with us. I'm glad Dell provides Windows 7 upgrades. (Off-topic) Are they free?

Yes the update is free (update Windows 7) of you purchased a Dell PC within a certain time frame, around June-Dec 09 if I remember correctlly. The estimated ship date for my update Win7 is 11/4/07. So in about two weeks I will see if it works with my Sony HDR-HC3. 

frankroth:

Yes the update is free (update Windows 7) of you purchased a Dell PC within a certain time frame, around June-Dec 09 if I remember correctlly. The estimated ship date for my update Win7 is 11/4/07. So in about two weeks I will see if it works with my Sony HDR-HC3. 

What a bargain! Keep us posted.

Well Windows 7 (64) did not fix my capture problem in HDV mode. It is a real bummer. The Camcorder drivers seem to be the same as in Vista 64. In HV mode( that works) the drivers install under Imaging devices (device Manager) and in HDV mode the drivers install under Sound, video and game controllers. The drives are dated from 2006 from microsoft and this seems odd. Like I said before, the Camcoder works fine with S10.8 on Vista (32).

 I need help or Pinnacle is worthless to me. I will pound on the Sony fourm and Microsoft fourm also. If anyone has a fix for this issue, it would really make me happy!!!

 

P.S. Win7 did fix the BSOD when picking media type...

Sorry to hear about the the lack of developments after migrating to Windows 7. How about trying to capture HDV in AMCap? See if the camera is functional in HDV in this new OS.