HDR-FX1E incompatible with Firewire 800 and/or OSX 10.6?

[acgold7]

David, have you tried all the other supposed solutions posted on the other forums, i.e. finding the older driver, trying a FW 400 card, downgrading OS, trashing preferences and all that other stuff? Do you have Apple stores with a Genius Bar where you could just bring your gear and tell them to make it work?

Not saying who's right here, but it's unlikely you will get anything useful from Sony. Maybe now is a good time to upgrade to a used Z1, or a Z5 for an even better picture.

[DavidFreedomRose]

I live in the country-side, I am not aware of any Genius Bars in my nearest city, Melbourne, Australia. But I could have a look.

I am not in a position to buy anything.

As for trashing preferences. I'd try that. Can you post a link please.

I do not think I would be willing to downgrade my system in general. But I was wondering if I could have more than one system running on the iMac, maybe from an external HDD, so I could run it only when I was capturing video.

AN older driver??? DO you mean for the FireWire port? I am not that much of a geek. I would not feel very comfortable/confident fiddling with the Operating System.

[acgold7]

As I'm not a Mac guy, I'm not even sure what trashing preferences is, or whether it applies to the OS or FCP. But it was one of the possible solutions mentioned for others who have had similar problems with different equipment.

I believe I found all of these when I Googled "10.6.4 Firewire" and got about a million hits. I thought I recalled that some of the suggestions were in response to your posts about this on other forums, but I may be mistaken.

Hope this helps. Please keep us posted.

[DavidFreedomRose]

I plugged a Firewire 9 To 6 Pin IEEE 1394a-b 800-400 Adapter http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... K:MEWNX:IT into the back of the iMac and then used my old FireWire 400 cable to connect it to my camera.

The camera now appears in the System Profiler under FireWire and I have successfully captured HDV 1080i footage in FCP 6 !!!!

[Stephan]

Wow, a weird cable issue? To try & summarize the whole thread, are you saying that the Belkin 9-to-4-pin cable only works with some OS versions, whereas with 10.6.4 (and/or newer Mac models) it doesn't and you need that adapter instead?

PS: thanks a lot for sharing this.

[acgold7]

This seems to affirm the theory posted in other threads that it is the 9 to 4 pin conversion that may be the issue, as many report the problem going away when connecting the cam to standard 6 pin FW. Exactly where the problem lies and its nature may still be a mystery.

Good to know there's a fix, and pleased to hear you got it working.

[DavidFreedomRose]

The Belkin 9-to-4-pin cable worked with a Sony HVR-Z1E but not my HDR-FX1E.

The HDR-FX1E now works with the Firewire 9 To 6 Pin IEEE 1394a-b 800-400 Adapter plugged into the iMac FireWire port, and then a standard 6-to-4 pin FireWire 400 cable running between the adapter and the camera.

Thanks for all your support and encouragement.

[DavidFreedomRose]

The solution was to put a little FW 800 to 400 adapter in the iMac's FireWire port, and then using the old FW 400 cablke. Somehow this is different from a using a FireWire 800-400 cable.

Now everything works fine.

[acgold7]

Good to know. Thanks for closing the loop.