Problem getting video from firewire camera

Question

I've written a small app that gets video from camera and
publishes it through FMS(2). It works well with any USB webcams I
could find, but I have problems with firewire cameras. I can select
the camera in Flash settings, and getCamera() returns the
appropriate Camera object (e.g. it has the correct name, "Microsoft
DV Camera", which is what's its name in Windows), but I get
no/blank video.
Code snippet:
var myCam:Camera = Camera.getCamera();
Alert.show("Using " + myCam.name);
videoDisplay.attachCamera(myCam);
The same code and the same camera seems to work on OS X. I've
tried out two different firewire cameras on two different Windows
(XP) machines, and they consistently didn't work. They do work in
Flash Media Encoder (I'm not sure if it was written in Flash
engine), or other programs that do capture in Windows; but my
problem is that I need to inject metadata (stream.send()) into the
stream so i can't just use FME :(
Any ideas why this doesn't work? Do firewire cameras have
issues with flash/flex (for the reference, I'm using Flex2/Flash9)
on Windows XP, or am I doing something wrong here?
Senko

Answer 1

HI -
MPEG Streamclip does not act as a connection device between your camera and Final Cut.
It is a stand-alone application that converts the files from your camera into files that are useable in Final Cut.
The reason Final Cut does not "see" your camera directly is that the files are not usable in Final Cut - as recorded by the camera. Those same files are seen and imported in iMovie because iMovie is designed to support a wide variety of consumer formats, and converts them automatically on import to a format the iMovie can use. FCE does not have this feature for .mpg movie files. But the format the iMovie converts to is one that is not optimal for FCE.
Once you have converted the files that you want to use in MPEG Streamclip, you can store those converted files on your disk drive in a folder. Then open FCE an go to the menu File > Import > Files and navigate to where you have stored your converted files. Select them and the will be imported into FCE.
It is preferable to import using the MPEG Streamclip method, because the files that iMovie makes, are borderline usable in FCE, and if possible, should be avoided.
Hope this helps.
MTD