Digital Focus: Troubleshooting USB Camera Connections

How to fix port problems and watch movies on a PDA, plus a great bird photo.

Dave Johnson

Feature: Troubleshooting USB Camera Connections

I had really hoped that computer configuration issues would be a thing of the past by now. A few years back, cutting-edge gadgets like digital cameras, MP3 players, and PDAs had to connect to the PC through the ancient and inconvenient serial port. Now that the serial port mode of connecting to digital cameras and most other devices is all but gone and USB has taken center stage--and you don't have to reboot every time you connect a new gadget--I was hoping that arcane glitches would be as rare as movies about giant, killer insects. (If you didn't grow up watching Saturday morning movies, you should know that they were actually kind of popular for a while--trust me.)

Nonetheless, I still get e-mail from readers who run into trouble getting their digital cameras to talk to Windows. If you're in that category, read along--let's see if we can get you up and running.

Make Sure There's Power

This may sound silly, but make sure the digital camera's batteries are working. If the batteries are dead--or even very low on charge--the USB port won't recognize the device, and you won't be able to connect.

Check the Settings

Likewise, make sure your digital camera is in the proper mode to communicate with Windows. Some cameras have a special PC setting. Others need to be in Camera or Playback mode. Some don't care. If you're having trouble, check to see if your camera is in the right mode to find Windows. If in doubt, check your camera's user guide.

The Trouble With Hubs

Ah, hubs. USB is a wonderful standard because it theoretically allows up to 127 devices to be connected to the same PC. That many devices would take an awful lot of USB hubs, though, and I'm willing to bet that Windows would literally jump out of your PC, run screaming to the kitchen, and throw itself into the oven before you got even halfway there.

Yes, hubs are tricky little gadgets. There are some things you need to keep in mind when using them.

For starters, unpowered hubs can cause erratic behavior. If you use a USB hub to attach a bunch of devices to your PC, make sure it's a powered hub (it'll come with its own AC adapter), and plug it into the wall.

If you have so many devices that you need to add a hub or two to your PC, your computer's USB port may not have enough bandwidth to support them all. Remember: All of your USB devices must share a limited amount of bandwidth. Devices at the front of the line take what they need, potentially leaving the others high and dry. That means gadgets at the end of the USB chain may not work properly--or at all.

If you run into this situation, you can remove devices to free up bandwidth or add a new USB port to your PC via an empty PCI expansion slot. Now that USB 2.0 is out, it's a good time to upgrade. But keep in mind that USB 2.0 offers much faster performance when used with a USB 2.0-compatible device. Alas, no digital cameras are yet built for USB 2.0, so they run at the slower USB 1.1 speed, even over a USB 2.0 port.

Some devices, bless their little souls, freak out on a hub and demand to be plugged directly into a PC's USB port--even if the hub has power and there's nothing else plugged into it. I've seen this happen with a few digital cameras and several Pocket PCs. If you can't solve a connection problem, try going directly into the PC's port instead of using a hub.

When in Doubt, Reboot

If I've learned anything in a decade of working with Microsoft operating systems, it's that rebooting your PC can frequently solve a world of troubles. Often, I will find that my camera or some other USB device will lose the ability to chat with Windows for no good reason. Rather than tearing my hair out looking for a weird glitch, I just reboot. Ninety percent of the time, everything will work just fine when the computer restarts. Bottom line: Don't be afraid to shut everything down and try again after getting a nice, hot cup of tea.

Dave's Favorites: Movies on Your PDA With Kinoma

Watch a movie on your PDA? You're joking, right?

That's the reaction I get when I talk about copying home movies and TV shows to my Palm powered PDA. But as soon as I actually show folks what I'm talking about, I often make converts out of the uninitiated.

Last week I wrote about AcidImage 2.0, an image viewer that's optimized for the Sony Clie NR70. This week I've got more Clie software for you, Kinoma's Producer and Player. (The player is free, and the desktop Producer software costs $29.99.) Sure, Kinoma's software works with any Palm OS PDA, but since it can "collapse" the Clie's virtual Graffiti area and show a 320-by-480-pixel movie on the screen, this program is essential for Clie NR70 owners looking for programs that take advantage of their PDA's unique, hi-res display.

If you haven't already guessed, I'm utterly in love with my NR70, and I'm really jazzed about Kinoma because the company is single-handedly ushering in the future of handheld multimedia. With Kinoma Player, you can view a movie as large as many streaming videos that you watch on a desktop PC--right in the palm of your hand, free of stutters and jitters.

Making a movie with Kinoma Producer is a drag-and-drop affair. The program accepts video in a wide variety of formats, including QuickTime, MPEG, and AVI, and it lets you tweak the movie's specs, including frame rate and audio format.

I used Kinoma to copy a bunch of music videos from the Internet onto my Clie. Then I moved on to home movies transferred from my digital video camcorder, and I even put some complete episodes of Seinfeld and The Simpsons onto my Clie as well. The next time you travel by plane, bring along a Kinoma video. It's bound to be better than the in-flight movie.

Q&A: Will HDTV Make Me Buy a New Camcorder?

As I understand it, TV is moving toward a noninterlaced (progressive) scan standard. As an amateur video hobbyist, I am wondering how and when the amateur field will be affected. I assume progressive scan camcorders will be needed. What will be the effect on video editing software?

--Milt Russell, Denver, Colorado

It sounds like you're referring to high-definition television, which has both interlace and progressive scan modes. A common HDTV format is 720p, which broadcasts 720 lines in progressive mode. Another common HDTV format is 1280i, which sends 1280 interlaced lines to your TV.

But what the heck is progressive and interlace? Today's televisions use an interlaced system, where half of the lines in the video signal are drawn on your TV each second, then the other half of the picture is inserted afterwards, between the first set. That adds up to about 30 frames of video each second. Progressive scan, on the other hand, draws all the lines of video in a single pass.

Don't worry about progressive scan, though. For starters, any video mode on your TV that uses progressive scan is, first and foremost, HDTV. HDTV is a completely different video standard than NTSC (the system used to broadcast TV today), and your NTSC camcorder doesn't record or play HDTV. This situation is no different than the fact that your camcorder won't work with PAL televisions in Europe or SECAM sets in Australia. To record, edit, and play HDTV-compatible video, you'll need to buy an HDTV camcorder--and those won't be sold for many years. HDTV is an obscenely expensive video format, which is why television stations are so slow to adopt it.

On the other hand, all HDTV sets also accept good old NTSC signals. I have an HDTV set myself, and it plays a wide variety of formats: video from my camcorder, DVDs, and full-bore HDTV signals. The short answer (after a long explanation) is that you'll continue to make video the usual way for many years, even after HDTV is watched in every living room in the United States.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $10 and $100.

A gentle reminder, folks: We disqualify some really wonderful pictures every week because the submissions don't follow the rules. Be sure to include everything we ask for in your e-mail message, including a description of your picture and your complete contact information, or your entry is wasted!

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering please read the full description of the contest rules and regs.

This week's Hot Pic: "Want a Nest," by Mary Haynes, Spring City, Tennessee

Mary says, "We went to the Knoxville Zoo and I found myself watching this bird. He was intent on something in the water. He dove in and came back up with this stick, and I was ready with the camera."

We want your feedback! Send your comments, questions, and suggestions about the newsletter itself to comments@bydavejohnson.com. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered in the weekly Q&A, send it to question@bydavejohnson.com.

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