Fairly easy going Friday. Was online submitting my clients (yep, I have principal talent too!) on LA Casting. Did some work around the house while M&R were out and about. Been working on the 'puter a lot today. On LAC as I said and on myspace too. Getting more into that as each day passes. More info about Getty came in today and I sat down and worked out my calendar until March 1. Blimey, I'm gonna be busy.
I truly, seriously and sincerely hate Windows XP. When it's great, it vvgood, when it's bad, it SUCKS! I'm fairly handy when it comes to computers. I built my desktop from a 'barebones' machine (most techies will know that it isn't a major challenge!). I've had it a couple of years and just recently wanted to start grabbing DV via firewire and adding a large hard drive via USB2. The MSI board is supposed to be equipped with both. Is it? Even after 2 BIOS upgrades and the latest SP2 service pack. Bollocks is it! I have WASTED so much time on that machine, tweaking settings, researching online, just tearing my hair out. I finally gave in and bought a new USB2 card (which was ULTRA cheap - checkout tigerdirect.com - they are absolutely brilliant for everything - no sales tax either). The hard drive worked brilliantly for a couple of weeks... more on that in a moment. As I mentioned before, the motherboard was supposed to be firewire too. In fact it had a four and a six pin slot. Great, looks promising. Can I get it to function as anything other than a network connection. Nope. Please don't try and give me advice here. I have read every Microsoft bulletin, updated and triple checked that I have the latest version of XPSP2, read every DV camera site, read every FAQ page, every blog, everything with even the briefest mention of 'Microsoft DV and Camera' or MSDV.inf you can possibly find on this Earth. I have tried everything. Every cooky suggestion, every uninstall and reinstall, every method of getting that thing to see a DV camera. Nothing, absolutely nothing. I gave up. I don't generally give up but in this instance, I did.
If you have reached this page by searching for 'MSDV' or anything to do with XP & DV camera capture then I strongly suggest you use that old analogue capture card you have lying in a drawer somewhere (you know, the one with the three plugs rather than the shiny new DV plug). Believe me, you will save yourself so much trouble, you won't believe it. Unless you're working in HD with Premiere (if you're working with Final Cut Pro, you're on a Mac anyway so you're fine - you don't even have to deal woth Windows... why do you care about all of this), the results are gonna be pretty useable anyway.
Oh, back to the USB2 card. Yep, worked fine for a few weeks. Now XP decides to ignore the fact that it even exists, physically connected to the motherboard (I'm looking at it right now). Several 'System restores' later, I'm still trying to persuade XP not to freeze up or decide arbitrarily that it's not going to 'see' parts of the hardware if it doesn't feel like it.
So, that's what I'm doing right now.... waiting for Windows to start up AGAIN (for the eleventh time - yes, 11th) in the hope that it will play ball this time thru....
Rant over....
Hum, let's see if I have any piccies to post on my lappie for you....