RedTomato said:
Many cameras will auto-powerdown. It's a pain in the neck.
My miniDV cameras will auto-stream to firewire at anytime that they are turned on, whether reccording or not. But when not reccording, they will power down after about 10 mins.
I've tried to turn it off in the options but didn't work.
Putting a tape in didn't work either.
Only option was to be actually reccording to tape - which runs the battery down faster. (was firewire to laptop - laptop battery lasted longer than the camera's)
One suggestion was to put it on Demo mode, which works for many camera apparently but not mine, chiz curses...
..RedTomato..
Sorry to double post, but I really wanted to address this issue separately.
I have experienced this problem numerous times with my Canon miniDV camera, and have only recently found a really good solution.
In my menu, I have a option to turn on that I think is called "Demo" or "Demo mode" or something like that...
What it does it, it shows on the camera's LCD the camera specs and like it's good points and such. A person putting this on display or in a display window would use this.
However, if you have it connected to the computer with a firewire cable and put it on Demo mode, it doesn't send the things it's putting on the screen as inputs. Meaning, if I use it with iChat or QT/iMovie to record, those things don't show up, only a nice picture of whatever I'm recording does.
I've video chatted over iChat for more than 4 hours, and recorded for more than 12+ with my camera in this mode and it works great.
See if yours has something similar!