First Contact!

In a belated climactic evolution of this journal entry, as my Dad and little sister Annabel called me yesterday afternoon (was like 1am for them!) to wish me a happy birthday, I finally convinced them to actually make use of iChat. I initiated a one-way video chat and they were very happy to see me. I couldn't hear them because Dad hadn't plugged the microphone to his G5, but he did mention he had a Sony DV Handycam with a firewire cable! So I made him plug it in, get on stand-by mode. But for some reason neither iChat or iMovie seemed to "pick-up" the camera. Dad's camera is a Sony DCR HC30E. One thing I had to do my Panasonic PV-GS120 was to explicitly tell it to always send DV stream thru the DV port. It didn't seem to do that by default. I'm wondering if it's the same situation for the Sony. I had them scour the menus but it was being too painful so they'll try to RTFM (Read The F**king Manual). Argh! we were so close.

I had Dad set this blog as his Safari start-up page, so now I gotta be careful about what I write huhuhu.

update: After some googling I got my hands on the PDF version of the manual for the Sony DCR HC30E. There are a few things to try out:

1. Find the "Easy" button to toggle-OFF the "easy" mode.
2. Remove the tape from the camera
3. "Slide the POWER switch until the CAMERA-TAPE lamp lights up, and your camcorder is set to the standby mode" (Page 26 of the manual)