Sony Mini-DV HandyCam DCR-HC28

[dtulloh]

I am using the Sony DCR-HC28 with fire wire connected to my Windows XP SP3 computer. I'm doing video capture via Adobe Premiere CS4. Once in a while the camera will exhibit odd behavior. For no apparent reason during a capture, it will cycle what seems like video effects. Sepia tone, Black and White, Pixilation, and finally fade to black (which also cuts out the sound). Any one have any ideas what might cause something like this?

[Jerry_R]

Realize that the computer sends commands to the camera via 1394. If you are using USB the problems are worse and more likely.
Could be one of 3 things in order of increasing likely hood:
Software glitch (usually a badly written IRQ) causes the program to loose track and send garbage to the camera. This only happens when wireless networking is being used (is turned on) disable wireless!. (I have never heard of it with C4 but with edius and movie maker.)

Intermittent bad cable. Can cause computer to camera communications to get scrambled. Not as uncommon as the above but very uncommon still.

Most likely the camera is loosing its mind and needs to be replaced.

[dtulloh]

Sorry I didn't back to this earlier. I found the problem and thought that I should post this solution to help other people as well. This camera apparently has a standby mode that it goes into that causes it to cycle through various effects and such. I believe it is used as a demo in the stores. The reason I didn't see it was because I wasn't viewing the video on the cameras screen but instead via firewire. Once I viewed the video on the cameras actually LCD screen I saw the message that it was going into standby mode.

Originally Posted by Jerry_R

Realize that the computer sends commands to the camera via 1394. If you are using USB the problems are worse and more likely.
Could be one of 3 things in order of increasing likely hood:
Software glitch (usually a badly written IRQ) causes the program to loose track and send garbage to the camera. This only happens when wireless networking is being used (is turned on) disable wireless!. (I have never heard of it with C4 but with edius and movie maker.)

Intermittent bad cable. Can cause computer to camera communications to get scrambled. Not as uncommon as the above but very uncommon still.

Most likely the camera is loosing its mind and needs to be replaced.