The fire wire connecting video camera and Mac mini is not being detected

I connect my video camera with my Mac mini and I use a fire wire for this connection. I try capturing the video in FCP and iMovie but my firewire is not detected. When I open iMovie and try importing it into my PC, it shows a message saying ‘Camera is not detected’. I need to import these videos to my PC and edit some videos urgently as a part of my project and my grades are at stake.

If anyone can think of any troubleshooting media, please come forward to help me out of this. This is damn urgent and I need help on urgent basis.
Awaiting a quick, reliable fix very impatiently, I am expecting a non-hit-trial, permanent solution.

I totally understand the intensity of mess you are already in and what I am doing here is that I am not going to ask you to try one troubleshooting method and wait for you to reply to it so that I can suggest another solution. Instead, I am giving you all the troubleshooting techniques I am aware of. Try all of these and some of these are sure to help

1. Shut the camera down and restart it properly
2. Try disconnecting the FireWire cable from the computer and reconnect it, repeat this with the camera too
3. I don’t know if this is valid, but try connecting the camera directly without FireWire as the mediator
4. Ensure that the tape inserted in the camera is the one you’ve tested before. Try removing it and reinserting.
5. Try changing the tape if you have any in spare. Try this with multiple tapes if possible
6. Check and confirm that the recorded video is in Hi-8 format since there are certain cameras giving output in Hi-8 format but iMovie and above do not work with it
7. End the iMovie process and follow the starting, importing steps all over again
8. Just to make sure and confirm that the issue is not with the computer, try restarting it with the camera still connected
9. If the tape is damaged or the playheads are dirty or if there is a mixed format of video/ image files in it, the camera might stop responding
10. Incase iDVD is open, end the iDVD process and also iMovie HD, then re-open iMovie.

I really appreciate that genuine attempt to help me. I call it genuine because of the fact that considering my urgency, you actually sat to rack your brains and find the best possible solutions for me all together. I don’t want to sound ungrateful but it is very unfortunate that I tried all that you said but nothing actually worked. I feel the problem is a bit complicated and more technical or complicated troublehooting methods should be helping. Can you think of something? And the urgency is still alive.

Ok! I understand, I am still unaware of the issue that you are facing so I will assume and consider all possible issues and again provide you with a list of solutions and fixes.

1. In case the problem is that you can see the FireWire drive in the sidebar and not on desktop, then go to Finder preferences and move to General and select “CDs, DVDs and iPods”
2. Keep the FireWire connected and turn it on before the Mac boots and make sure it remains on throughout the booting process
3. You will need to Reset your Primary RAM (PRAM) and Non Volatile RAM (NVRAM).
4. Try resetting the power management chip of your Mac, be careful when you do this
5. If the problem has started after installation of a Mac OS Update and even CD, DVD is not getting mounted then you should be following the following steps:

a. Go to run and type in applications to move to Utilities followed by disk utility
b. Go to the leftmost corner out there and click on ‘Macintosh HD’ after which you need to press on the ‘Repair Disk Permission’ button
c. Once the process is over, you will need to delete the file /System/Library/Extension.kextcache
d. Once you are done with this deletion, go to System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernalcaches/ and delete this folder
e. Now restart the PC so that the changes can be applied as expected

6. Even though the solution technically revolves around a particular update but this has proven record of solving some major FireWire issues
7. Check and confirm with the manufacturer of your FireWire in order to confirm if there is any new patch or firmware update available as such
8. The partition might have got corrupted If you have not Ejected a FireWire drive before it was either disconnected or powered off
9. This can lead drive to failing to mount. In case of a power failure also, the FireWire drive which uses mains power, can have the same effect as powering off the drive without first ejection
10. Disconnection of storage devices without properly ehecting it or closing it, might corrupt the entire device. Always, disconnect it by:

a. You can do that by simply dragging the icon of the device to Trash
b. You can also Control-click the drive’s icon and select the eject in the Disk utility toolbar
c. Go to the disk utility, select the device you wish to eject and select eject in there

11. It can definitely be corrected using repartition and reformat technique on the drive giving issue
12. If you want you can recover the data that is already in there using recovery tools or simply recovery methods

No! none of these helped either. Finally i was left with no option but to opt for a change of my FireWire.

It works simply perfect now. So the issue was with my FireWire.
My project submission is approaching, so i will get back to you later and thanks a tonn for all the time and effort you invested for my issue!!! :)