My dad has an old Panasonic MiniDV camcorder and wanted to import old tapes into his cutting tool on Windows 10. After hooking up the camcorder via Firewire, the import dialog showed the time code of the running tape, but instead of the video, the preview was black and there was no audio.
To make sure it isn’t a problem of the software, we tried VirtualDub – with the same result.
After some googling, it seems as if Microsoft removed parts of the Firewire IEEE1394 driver. And those parts seem to be necessary for these old camcorders.
Luckily, they offer a “Legacy” driver for downloading:
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44218
This will download a 1394_OHCI_Legacy_Driver.msi. Double-click to install it. Afterwards, you’ll find a new folder C:\Program Files (x86)\1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy)\.
In there, depending on your PC, enter either the x86_driver or the x64_driver folder, right-click the Legacy1394.inf file and select Install.
After installation, open your Device Manager, find the section “IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers” and open it. Find your Firewire card, right-click it and select Update driver…. Select “Browse my computer for driver software”, then “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer” and find the driver for Generic 1394 OHCI compliant host controller (Legacy). Select that and click “Next” to install it.
That’s it – you should be able to import video now.
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