I have recently purchased a Sony Mini DV camera which came with software (MGI Photosuite 1.1) and USB drivers. However I cannot seem to get any stills downloaded from the camera for My Mac G4 doesn't recognise the camera, although downloading movies form the camera with firewire is no problem. It seems a driver problem and I have only found the same problem mentioned on a website, but no solutions. Has anyone got any ideas? Maybe a URL of where I can download the latest USB driver? Thanks.

-- Taree Vriesman (evriesman@yahoo.com), February 26, 2002

Answers

SONY DCR-TRV30E

Sorry to respond to your note with a problem of my own but... I have the same camcorder but my Imac (G3) can see it via the firewire.... I get 'camera disconnected' from Imovie and it's not seen in System Profiler. Did you get any such problems ?

-- daveB (bauchde@chevrontexaco.com), April 04, 2002.

Unfortunately I can just say I have the same problem with a Sony DCR-PC110E and Imac. Firewire works fine, usb download of pics is an endless loop though directories without anything to download. It is obviously a usb driver problem , but for the moment I did not find a new one. By the way on Windows '98 it works fine. If I'll find a solution I'll post it here.

-- Marilena Tugnoli (lena52@libero.it), May 04, 2002.

It seems that you guys have the same problem with your Macs. I tried to connect it through USB with my Toshiba Satellite 1640CDT with Windows ME and I have an "unknown device" most of the times. It is strange but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. You won't be able to find any driver updates, at least for the camera, since I've searched a lot on the internet. The camera can be connected with most of the PC's I've tried and also with Mac 9. It certainly is a problem with the drivers of the camera. I can give you a couple of clues for this. First try the optional read/writer MSAC- US1 and you will see that you can download your memorystick pictures. That read/writer worked on my computer from the first time, while the camera itself didn't. That is weird, isn't it? Both of them are reader/writer hardware for the memorystick. One works fine the other has compatibility problems. Then try www.usbman.com and a site referred as "computing" of something like that. (The best thing to do is search with GOOGLE) Since I 've managed to connect the camera a few times I came to the conclusion that probably it should be a bug from Sony's drivers. The best thing to do is post these answers to SONY and see if we can get a solution. If any of you finds a solution for this problem please let me know. I also have the same problem!

-- Petros Biris (petrosbiris@hotmail.com), May 05, 2002.

Hi there,

One of my friends asked me if I can find the drivers for TRV30E. He lost his CD and after installing WindowsME on his laptop he is no longer able to transfer images into the laptop. Do you know where I can find the USB driver of it?

Thanks in advance.

-- Kerwin Lu (kerwinlu@hotmail.com), May 16, 2002.

you can try this link :-

http://registration.sonystyle-europe.com/DimeSupport/

-- steven teh (teh-k@rocketmail.com), October 11, 2002.

I have recently purchased a Sony TRV340E D8 camera w/ Pixela Image Mixer Ver 1.0 and drivers. Only thing is that my pc wont recognise the driver installation, or usb connection at all? I removed the existing usb drivers, and followed all the instructions to install the druvers as such, but no results. Has anyone else come across this problem before? Maybe there are some better drivers out there?

Thnx

-- Joseph Garvey (pasta1@optushome.com.au), October 18, 2002.

I recently bought a DCR-TRV25

The camera works great - but a frustrating experience with the USB interface installation - we can send men to the moon and digitize the planet's landscape yet we can't send a digital serial stream from one item to another without a 3 hour installation nightmare only to find our the product "chooses" not to support Windows 98. (Why?) I know there is no good reason for this because I am an electronics product engineer myself.

I'm going back to my film camera and scanner for photos until these folks figure out how to make a product that does not take up as much of my time to install as the product is worth to begin with - I have in essence paid for it twice with my time and it still does not work. Windows is nothing but a "yearly subscription" to those gullible enough to follow it. Unfortunately there are product suppliers that seem to support this unwanted obsolecence.

If anyone has a Windoes 98 USB driver for this camera with photo editing s/w please let me know.

-- Jim Mitchell (jpmitch@infi.net), November 30, 2002.

Sorry, I have no answer and no solution for you. But alloiw me to add my own frustrating experiences. Once each I succeeded to download via the USB-connection (drivers from MGI Photosuite) using WINDOWS 98, then WINDOWS XP and then windows 2000. A second and further tries to download failed in all window versions mentioned above. It is impossible to get co-operation from SONY. Eventually I got on a floppy from the service department of sony uk a driver and thought I was on a winner. But no!. After 15 % installation time the installation failed., this obviously confirming, that there is a driver problem. I had a SONY Trinitron TV for 20 years, before it eventually gave up. Naturally I went for SONY again and have a beutiful new 34" set with wide picture. The service provided by SONY is unbelievably bad. The dcr trv30e camcorder is an excellent piece of machinery, but to get pictures via email to my friends is a heartbreaking and timewasting failure. Is a cardreader from HAMA the solution? If anybody can help me, please email. Thank you. Willi Stockhaus

-- Willi Stockhaus (willistockhaus@eircom.net), December 15, 2002.

(Tried to submit and found that my text was too long - will try and split it up):

Hi, I have had some limited success with the USB driver, so I hope an account of it will help. My brother has a trv30e and asked me (as a computer person) to help him with the PC connection. Boy, it's amazing how much hassle these things can be! First off, for some reason the manual he is using is half English and half Russian. And I mean really half! Each page is split into two columns - 1 in english, 1 in Russian - You cannot believe how hard it is to read this manual! anyway, my brother runs Win XP and I run Win98SE. I first set it up on my PC, so I'll talk about Win98SE. And I really think that you will have a problem with Win98 (NOT Second Edition) as its support for USB is awful/non-existent (I hear). The setup was a real learning experience as I started with the belief that I could transfer movies up/down using USB. Soon realized that the USB on the trv30e only allows transfer of image files from the memory stick. OK - won't recount a few aborted attempts - but to get it to work, this was the sequence:

-- Rashad (rmohamed@bigpond.net.au), January 05, 2003.

(here's the second half): - I first installed the USB Driver from the Pixela ImgMixer CD - I then installed the Pixela s/w - Powered down PC - Plugged USB cable in, turned camera switch to "Memory" - screen now was blue with "USB MODE" showing - Booted up PC - as it came up, it said New Hardware found, etc and installed the Sony USB driver. - Now, this was a revelation: The 30e does not do USB streaming (please correct me if I'm wrong - this is all experience based and I can easily be wrong) - So Pixela never sees the camera using Pixela's "USB" mode - it's only when I clicked on the "Memory Stick" icon that I saw the stills on the camera - Also, the USB driver for the 30e only pretends to be a removable hard disk - so you actually don't even need the Pixela software - just fire up Windows Explorer, and if you plug the cable into the camera (I actually needed to unplug/plug it to see this - camera still in Memory mode) - you will see a new drive appear on the Explorer tree (I already have C:/D:/E: so it became F:) and in the folders on it you will see the stills that you have recorded on the stick (which you hopefully have already done - or the folders will be empty :-)) If you need any more info or I can help with the driver, let me know. The Sony Electronics site has a USB driver here: http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/support/dvimag/digital8/softupdates/ But I don't know if it works with the 30e as they say it is a streaming USB driver - maybe the 30e can stream? - OK that's my two cents worth. Hope it helps someone - email me if I can help. Cheers Rashad

-- Rashad (rmohamed@bigpond.net.au), January 05, 2003.

I had the same problem with my TRV340E when I was using the video streaming option and pixela software. I am running it on windows-XP. My problem was solved when I download the update from this site: http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/support/dvimag/digital8/softupdates

Thanks guys for your help Shahab

-- shahab (shahab@shirazu.ac.ir), February 11, 2003.

Yeah I got a TRV25E; Windows 98SE. When I first got the camera Everything worked fine first tiime Installed USB drivers and It was all good. Now I install USB drivers. And I can only stream video and audio from the damn camera. I cant access the memory stick at all. If I turn the camera on to Memory my PC crashes; untill I turn the camera off then the PC brings up the Removable Disk icon in Explorer but since the camera is off the icon disappears after a split second. This is really annoying. And SONY have been no help whatsoever. I asked them for a link to an updated driver and they sent me an email back with the text "http://www.sony.com/ - This is where you will find all the updated drivers". Or words to that effect. Anyways Check out

http://www.usb-drivers.com/companies/965.htm

You should find updated drivers for the MAC here. Good Luck

-- Craig Pearson (thepearson@hotmail.com), February 11, 2003.

Hi my dcrtrv30e worked fine for months with my hervulese video firewire card, and pinnacle software and XP. Now the firewire side of things doesnt recognise the cameras existance, and Im given an USB error message when starting my software. The USB wont recognise it, even though it works well with my Mavica, scanner etc.

Seems everyone's having problems.

peace

malcolm

-- malcolm haines (haines374@ozemail.com.au), March 05, 2003.

http://www.sony.ge/Style/Drivers/camcorder.htm

give it a go!!

-- Paul Kougi (pkougi@hotmail.com), March 15, 2003.

I have an sony trv25e and I got a problem with the camcoder. First, I didn't get the cd-rom (pixela imgmixer). Then win98 didn't detected my camcoder. If there anyone could help me to supplied a sony trv25e driver for win98. thanks

-- Arnov Bonny (kijang119@yahoo.com), April 12, 2003.

Hey I been haven no luck i have the regular windows 98 and so far it will not allow any voice or audio recording. Does anyone have any idea how what update might be of use or if i can update do windows 98 se on microsoft?????? HELP

-- drew dean (drwdn5480@aol.com), May 04, 2003.

Thanks!!

-- Maker (super_maker@yahoo.com), May 29, 2003.