video capturing problems

I get a prompt says no tape. I have the tape already in digital camera.
I am using a firewire directly to my laptop.

 

We don't have much to go on with information provided.
Is camera powered up - does it require to be on a special setting?
What is your OS, and make and model of camera.
For computer (firewire link) may require propriety software provided by camera to have computer / camera to recognize each other (hope not, camera supplied software / drivers can pose additional issues).
Keep in mind, at this process level, we just want to move the movie from the tape to computer hard drive. We want to keep this simply. Any processing / editing of movie can be done after we have file moved to drive.