I have a Samsung D372 Mini-DV video camera that I am trying to get to work on my PC. It connects via Firewire. Windows XP sees it but does not seem to know what to do with it. There is no driver. Repeated for emphasis, there is no driver. There is no possibility of a driver as one does not exist and a Firewire-connected camera does not require one. However I did check Samsung’s website just in case. But there is no driver, despite Windows thinking it needs one.
The error in Device Manager is a yellow exclamation next to “61883 Device Class” which is the camera. So Windows can see it but doesn’t know what to do with it because it thinks it needs the non-existent driver. I have no idea how to make the two devices talk to one another. Any suggestions are welcome.
Things I have tried:
Updating the driver- does not work as it does not exist. Letting Windows search for a driver results in Windows telling me it already has the best one.
Samsung’s website- no help whatsoever. I found a codec but that would only come into play after the PC and the camera are talking to one another.
Google- apparently many people have had this same problem with a variety of cameras that they have tried to hook up to PCs. No one out there seems to be ready with any useful answers, just endless posts of “61883 Device Class error, how do I fix?”
Vista- I am dual booting Vista and Vista has the exact same problem- it can see the camera and doesn’t know what to do with it.
I have a feeling someone is going to tell me to do this on a Mac and I will say now that that is not an option. I do not have access to any Mac computers. Nor does my camera plug in by USB. Nor can I convert the DV tape any other way.
If anyone has any ideas or has encountered this issue themselves, please advise!
Searching around for such things as unicorns and generic firewire drivers, I came across a post on another board where someone was having a problem which sounds similar to yours. Some of the respondents said that they had similar issues when they connected their cameras in the switched-on state, but if they switched off the camera, connected it, then switched it on, it worked.
You may have already tried it that way, of course.
Thanks but the yellow exclamation point persists. Windows just doesn’t want to talk to this camera.
I found this:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/142384-35-61883-device-failure
-Which suggests it might be a clash with firewire networking - you could try going into the network connections and disabling the 1394 network connection, if there is one.
Thanks, I never would have found that on my own! I should have known, my old SoundBlaster had a Firewire port on it that always showed up in Network. I’ve disabled the 1394 network and I’ll try the camera again.
Nope, even after a reboot with the Firewire networking disabled, the camera still has the same problem. Great idea though. I’ll try the same thing in Vista and see if that works.
Well, I don’t have your exact model of camera or know much about it, but here’s my wild stab (forgive me for asking something basic): do you have to change anything on the camera to put it in “PC mode”? I have a camera that connects via USB, and there’s a switch to flip on the camera that tells it to listen to the PC. There’s also a menu setting that you need to set to either “webcam” or “video DL”, depending on the reason you’re connecting the camera to the PC.
Failing that, since there’s no way to get a Mac, have you considered finding someone else with a miniDV camera, putting the tape in their camera, and connecting it to your PC? If your camera’s being difficult, that may be the way to go.
I’ve seen several references to a PC mode in regards to other cameras but I haven’t found anything similar in mine. I’ll take a careful look at the manual and menus in case I’m missing it though.
I emailed Samsung and they told me the camera didn’t support Firewire and I should be using USB instead. So they aren’t much help. This camera doesn’t have a USB port on it and I know the Firewire works because I used it on a Mac at the college and it worked just fine. Sigh.