Restart the FireWire DV driver to cure FCP issues

May 14, '02 12:05:32AM

Contributed by: wfolta

I've occasionally had a problem with Final Cut Pro where Firewire would get screwed up and my DV VTR would stop seeing any DV video from FCP.

A cool geeky trick that works for me is to cause the Firewire DV driver to be stopped and unloaded from the kernel, then reloaded and restarted

Read the rest of the article for the quick how-to.

Here's the procedure:

  1. Turn off all Firewire DV devices attached. Wait 10 seconds or so.

  2. In the Terminal:
     sudo kmodunload -v -n com.apple.driver.IOFireWireDV
  3. Enter your password for sudo, and you should see something like:
     kmodunload: found kmod com.apple.driver.IOFireWireDV, id 62.
    kmodunload: kmod id 62 successfully stopped.
    kmodunload: kmod id 62 successfully unloaded.
    If you see something like this:
     kmodunload: found kmod com.apple.driver.IOFireWireDV, id 91.
    kmodunload: kmod_control(stop) failed: (null)
    then the VTR isn't turned off, or another attached DV device isn't turned off, or the system's really hosed and needs a reboot.

  4. Turn the Firewire DV devices back on, which should reload and restart the driver. You can check with:
      sudo kmodstat | grep FireWireDV
    where you should see an entry for the Firewire DV device.
[Editor's note: I have not tested this myself.]

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