Hey all,
New to the forum. Got a nagging problem, a workaround, and a resulting (smaller/annoying) problem:
For me capturing minidv into FCP 5(0.4.) usually results in 20% success rate. The end result is usually a portion of the tape captured (as in 3 seconds or 30 mins) or nothing at all or if I'm lucky, the day is nice and the wind is just right, I might get a full hour's capture with no probs. For whatever reason FCP is extremely picky in capture and more times than not I don't end up with an hour's worth of tape captured.
I know this could be perhaps attributed to pefs, ram, etc, etc etc. Besides the fact that I've tried dumping the prefs (have a PM G5 2.3, have 3.5GB or RAM, over 1TB in HD) I've just decided to give up on FCP for capturing. Life is too short.
So what I've resorted to doing is capturing in iMove 6(0.1). For all its simplicity its 100% bullet-proof. Never had a dropped frame or wasted my time at all. Every capture is successful. I can then take the .dv file from the container and import it to FCP.
The only problem I have is that when I add the file to the timeline FCP wants me to render the audio. I don't really get why that is, the audio from the cam is 48k, the imovie captured audio is 48k and FCP is set to 48k so all should be fine but its not.
So the question is, how do I get it to NOT want to render the audio? Any clues?
Hi
iMovie captures .dv 'dv stream' movies, where the audio is interleaved into the video data - called a multiplexed or 'muxed' stream.
QuickTime files have the audio extracted into a seperate data stream, and this is what FCP is doing when it renders the .dv files you are placing on your timeline. There is no way round this, except using QuickTime Player Pro to resave all your iMovie captured clips as .mov DV movies before importing them into FCP.
But you shouldn't need to use iMovie, as FCP's capture is very reliable once you have sorted out your problems. ;)
Are you using FireWire external drives? Or how is your 1TB of hard drive capacity made up?
What player deck or camcorder are you capturing from?
Is anything else attached to your computer's FireWire port?
Hi Paul, thanks for the reply.
I have 3 SATA 250gb drives inside my G5 (1 boot, 2 in a mirror raid)
I also have an external HD Tower that can support 8 drives connected via firewire400.
I permanently have 4x250gb drives in there (making two more mirror raids)
Then I also have drives for the video projects I'm working on at the moment. As of today, a 300GB and a 200GB, with another 300GB coming tomorrow.
As it's a tower, I have 1 fw cable connecting it to the mac and then the drives are daisy chained. There are 4 fw controllers in the tower. Of the 4 permanent drives, only 2 (because of the raid) are in constant use (albeit very little activity - light torrenting 60kb/s in/out). So I don't really think there's any possibility of the fw stream being saturated.
Anyways, if it were saturated, I'd get the same problem with iMovie (if not the same, at least some sort of problem). I get the same FCP capture problems with Premiere 6.5.
I have a Panasonic MX500 that I usually do the capturing with. I shoot with rented PD170s and try to capture the most possible with it before I have to return the cams.
Besides the cam and fw tower, there's nothing else connected via fw.
But I'm interested in what you say with QT Pro. What settings do you use?
a 1hr .dv capture is around 14GB. If I do a Save As self contained movie in QT its 26GB. Doing an export to Quicktime movie with PAL DV compression set to best (I'm assuming this isn't lossless) takes some time, I'm trying it out now, looks like it'll take 30-60 mins and I have no idea what the size will be but let's see.
Anyways, if it were saturated, I'd get the same problem with iMovie (if not the same, at least some sort of problem). I get the same FCP capture problems with Premiere 6.5.
Hi
iMovie will be capturing to an internal SATA drive, which is why it is working OK...
Your external drive setup is too complicated to troubleshoot ;)
FCP will work happily with 4 internal and up to 4 or more external FW 400 drives, my G4 tower has done this for years, but at the first sign of trouble you have to reduce things to a simpler setup, and then try and work out what is causing the holdup.
How is the mirror raiding managed - with software?
Hi
iMovie will be capturing to an internal SATA drive, which is why it is working OK...
Actually it captures to wherever you save the movie project, in my case, the same HD FCP, Premiere uses.
How is the mirror raiding managed - with software?
Yep with SoftRaid 3.3.
But the problems with FCP are so numerous and frustrating that really makes iMovie look awesome in comparison when it comes to capturing. I've had some tapes that were unfortunately recorded on a PD170 with a dirty head. So obviously there are some artifacts at random parts of the tape. FCP errors out (timecode break/error) at each and every occurrence. iMovie plows right through from beginning to end. Other times, like now, the tape is just fine but FCP simply stops capturing at the 28min mark (the capture window stays with the same frozen frame) but the cam continues to play which makes no sense (usually if there's some timecode problem it stops the cam as well). I've tried 3 different cams with FCP and they all stop at the same 28min mark. iMove has no probs.
So I dunno, but at the moment I just don't want to lose any more time to FCP. All the audio is captured via separate lapel mics so all I need the cam audio for is the initial sync. But I know the time will come when I'll have to use cam audio and that's when it's going to be a major pain!
What versions of OSX, QT and ProApplication Support?
And it was FCP Prefs you deleted?
OS X 10.4.6, QT 7.0.4, I don't know where to find ProApplication support version.
I deleted com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist but that didn't make much a dif.
I could trash/unisntall all of FCP and try again, but trouble is I've only had FCP installed on this machine for a few weeks. In fact I installed it and began to capture something like the next day or so. My first 4 tapes were fine but after that, random/infuriating/time wasting problems :(
Hi
Use FCP Rescue to automate preference-trashing, there are versions for FCP 4 and FCP 5:
pistolerapost2.com/fcprescue
Here's the page for downloading the latest Pro Application Support version:
apple.com/support/downloads/proapplicationsupport31macosx104.html
Thanks for the links. I've trashed the prefs with fcprescue and installed the latest pro app support.
hopefully this will sort things out, fingers crossed :)
Wow! Whatever it was, prefs, app support or both, I don't know, but it certainly did the trick! Logged all the tapes and off FCP went. Not one hickup!
Thanks guys! You've restored my faith in FCP capture! :)
Glad to hear that! :D Do look in again from time to time!