Capture on an external drive

I want to digitize some material on an external drive then take this drive and go working on an another FCP. But, when i configure FCP to use only the external drive for capture, doesn't work. Capture stop after few seconds...
Is there someone who have more experience about that?
Thanks to all.
Bernard

Is the 800 and 400 the same path? I have the camera hooked up to the 400 in the fron of the tower and the HD in the 800.
If you are asking are they on the same bus, then yes, they are. Time to spring the $30 for a firewire PCI card.
And capture using the FW800 connection...MUCH faster.
And what is up with the Canon cameras? I have a GL1 and have NEVER had a problem...yet most people have problems with them. Bizarre.
Shane

Similar Messages

Video capture setup to external drive

hi guys, I'm a new FCP user, my Canon XL2 is about to arrive any day and I understand I'll need an external drive to prevent screwing up my internal drive. Maxtor has been recommended and has been reliable I see so I'm looking at one of those, but I'm just a little confused about how to capture to an external drive if I only have one FW400 port. I'll use the FW400 to capture video from the camera. But to get it to the external drive, does that mean I have to purchase a USB 2.0 external drive for my MBP 15"? What are my options to have an optimized performing system? Anybody with a MBP15 out there with the ideal setup for running FCP with an external drive (corporate video work, 2GHZ, 2G RAM) and how best to optimize it?
Thanks.

quick clarification please? After some research I've netted it down to this...
For optimum speed when video editing, I'll can utilize FW800 support using my ExpressCard/34 slot:
Get an eSATA drive(Seagate 500mb? however no FW connect ports on it? some have FW400 and FW800 ports I understand?)
Purchase Express/34 FW800 adapter. This gives me optimum external drive transfer speed into my MBP.
Connect eSATA drive to adapter and I have FW800 external drive capability.
My camera is limited to FW400 for output so I can use my FW400 port to capture through to the faster external drive. Caputuring will always be limited to FW400 anyway (by camera default), however I will take advantage of FW800 external connection when editing the digitized captured material.
I think I got it! Any compatibility problems I should be aware of specifically? Brands? Sounds like a good reliable setup. However, no EC/34 dealers up in here in Canada yet. Any internet recommendations?
Thanks for your help.
macbook pro intel Mac OS X (10.4.7) 2gig ram, 2GHZ, MBP15", FW400, 2 USB ports,

RE: Capture Problems on External Drive/Audio drift over time

Greetings FCP gurus -
I posted earlier on the LAFCPUG board and now seek worldwide assistance with a problem I can't seem to resolve.
Been working in FCP since 1.5. Been successfully capturing on external FW devices for over 4 years with an old 500 MHz Powerbook - no problems.
I recently upgraded to FCP 5 Studio on a PowerBook 1.5 GHZ 512 RAM FW 4/8 machine. Prior to upgrade, I was running Panther (OS X 10.3X) and FCP 4.5 HD. This configuration allowed me to flawlessly capture to external FW drives from Panasonic AJ-D250 DVCPRO deck using a standard DVNTSC codec. Prior to that I was also able to do the same from a Sony DSR-11 deck. No longer.
I now get a constant audio "drift" every time I capture. I've tried shortening the clips to under 10 minutes - even as small as 5 minutes - but the audio progressively drifts as the clip plays on. This is true in both FCP and QT. I completely reformatted the laptop/wiped the drive prior to install (Unjournaled) and it currently has 25 gig available disk space on the 80 gig internal drive. Additionally, I'm using LaCie 7200 RPM Oxford 911 chip-set external drives. I've tried with clean D2 FW 800 and Porsche FW 400 drives to no avail - even reformatted one and still no luck.
Current configurations attempted:
FW 800 PB port to FW 800 drive port/DVCPRO deck to FW 400 PB port
FW 800 PB port to FW 800 drive port/DVCPRO deck to FW 400 drive port
FW 400 PB port to FW 400 drive port/DVCPRO deck to FW 400 drive port
..and so on.
I'm at wit's end and appreciate any insight. Is anyone else having issues capturing to External FW media via FCP 5 Studio/OSX 10.4.x? I don't currently have the option of internal drives to capture as I'm working at a client site. Additionally, I sold my FCP 4.X upgrade software so going backwards is not an option either... Even took the deck home and tried this same trick on my home machine (Dual 500 G4 Sawtooth) to the internal ATA drive with the same result -...drifting audio. Since upgrade this is my first capture and needless to say it's not going well.
Help, information and insight are greatly appreciated. Thanks

Hi Expressofiend! Were you able to resolve this issue yet? We are having an IDENTICAL problem. We shoot on a Canon XL2, and thought that might be causing the audio drifting issue? We also have a Panasonic AD-J 250 deck, and when we capture, say an interview, the lip sync is perfect for a few minutes, then drifts as much as a second or two over 20 minutes of capture. It's making us crazy. Happens when we capture to an external LaCie or our internal drive. We're using Apple's 2.7 gig duel processor computer. 2 Gig of ram, all the latest versions of Tiger, Final Cut Pro 5, etc. If we look at the Quicktime movie - it shows the audio drift - you don't even need to view it through Final Cut!
Interestingly, if we use the Canon XL2 camera as the source player when we capture the 20 minute piece - there is NO audio drift or syncing problem. Only with the AJD 250! We've spoken with the senior engineer at Panasonic - he doesn't think it's the DVCPro unit. Says drifting audio isn't the kind of thing an out of adjustment or broken deck would do.
Anyway, any answers here yet?
Thanks,
Larry

Capturing to new external drive - problem

Hi,
I just got a new 500gb Seagate external drive to use as my capture scratch. I'm trying to capture to it and all of my footage is coming out really choppy. If I capture it to my internal drive, it works perfectly fine. Does anyone know what could be causing this problem, or what I could do about it? I'm using FCP 4 with OS 10.4.10. Any help would be appreciated.

Although it may not be a factor in your capture situation, I noticed that you said you are running FCP v. 4 with OSX 10.4.10. I believe FCP 4 was optimized for OSX 10.3. and Quicktime 6.
You might want to avoid future capture and edit problems by reverting back to the systems and apps versions proven to work best with your version of FCP.

"Dropped Frames" error when capturing to Drobo external drive

Hi, I am looking to buy another external hard drive for video editing with Final Cut (as my scratch disk). I had purchased a Drobo because of the data redundancy and ease of use, but it's definitely NOT an editing drive - way too slow, I can't even capture video to it without getting "dropped frames" errors (even w/Firewire 800). And after searching these forums, I've read that others have experienced the same problems and that in the end it turns out that the Drobo is not an editing drive. Jeez, that was an expensive learning experience.
Soooooo I'm not very knowledgeable on hard drives, RAID, etc... but I would like to buy something that has redundancy (would that be RAID??) but is absolutely HAS to be something I can capture video and edit on. I know some people have bought 2 drives, one for editing and one for backup, but I know I'd forget to back it up every time and it seems like a bit of a hassle. Just thinking there's got to be an easier way that's hopefully not too expensive.
Are there any editors here who can point me to specific hard drive models or tell me exactly what I need to look for in a drive? I believe OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/) probably has what I need, I just don't know what it is I need to get since I'm hard drive ********. Any advise would be appreciated!

Thank you Shane. Wow, didn't realize how expensive that would be. Not an option for me at the moment then.
That said, is there another hard drive (non-RAID) that is good for editing? For instance, could I use a Western Digital MyBook (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000VZCEU8/ref=ordcartshr?%5Fencoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance) to do my editing and then have another one for backup? Sorry for all the questions, I just want to make sure I understand and get this right!
Thanks

Captured to external drive, now iMovie won't work

I have a Mac formatted external drive and a friend (who is soon to become an ex-friend) talked me into capturing my movies on an external drive then editing from there (had been doing great up until then capturing to my internal drive). So I captured a 45 minute movie onto the external drive through the computer via iMovie. Used a Firewire 800 cable from the computer to the external HD and a 400 Firewire cable from the camera to the computer. It all went fine. Opened iMovie but instead of my normal event list, there were two folders marked "Event 1" and "Event 2". When I tried to clicked on the the first one, iMovie tried to "initialize" it but kept shutting down. I looked in the folder and the files were broken up into tiny 1 or 2 second movies which said "Q-DV". So I trashed those two folders then captured directly to the internal HD, but it did the same thing again! Made two folders which iMovie can't open. I looked in iMovie Preferences but don't see how to correct the problem. Have I ruined something?! I'm stuck. Can't do anything. Heeeeelllllp! (please)

Shame on me. I have to stop running to the forums every time some little thing goes wrong. Here's what happened: I tried to capture a project I had already rough cut on the PowerBook a few years back. The original was Super-8 footage which I'd had transferred professionally to a mini DV cassette. I had captured that on my PowerBook, done a rough cut, then transferred that to another brand new DV cassette. That's the one I tried transferring to the MacBook Pro. I'd done that before but with video originating from my DCR-PC100, so the source was DV. This morning I rooted around through my cassettes and found the original transfer cassette and tried capturing it directly to the internal drive of the MacBook Pro. It worked perfectly. So I guess the problem was the second generation capture of the Super-8 footage via the PowerBook (using iMovie2). However, I'm still dubious about capturing video through the MacBook (using the configuration I mentioned) to an external drive. Everything I've read so far about storing video on the external drive talks about moving it from the internal drive. I've yet to see anything about capturing to the external drive so I'm reluctant to ever try that again. Anyway, problem solved.

Cannot capture to external drive

been said before, by myself and others, here we go again.
Canon XH-A1 , HDV 1080i footage.
way back 6 months ago..
i couldnt capture to external disk on PBG4.
then i got a MBPro , still couldnt cap to external disk.
then i got a mac Pro , still cant cap to external disk.
at least it now captures to system drive,
at first it had unknown error, then just crashed on initializing log n capture,
reinstalled QT, trashed prefs, repaired permissions and kicked the dog.
APPLE!!!! FIX IT!!!

in the PBG4 it was a PCM FW400 card in the slot.
BUT,
if it will capture to the system drive then how would some supposed timecode problem prevent it capturing to an external drive?
so you reckon i should add PCIe FW card to the Mac Pro?
blimey..!!
also,
before changing to the MacPro FCP on MBP went crook,
adding a basic transition caused a crash,
re-opening the main sequence was gone,
finally found an autosave file in the trash!!
while i am here, other questions not answered elsewhere,
if i were to capture the camera's HDV tape info via component out into a Blackmagic card would that give a better overall quality?
would this make editing easier?
is there any difference in doing this (via cap card) versus changing the HDV to ProRes or PhotoJPG in the sequence?
Or,
would capturing from HDMI out (my camera doesn't have it, but just imagine),
into capture card, give a better quality image?
also,
would a card help with rendering times?
also,
since compressor is so slow and bad,
what is the best program to compress an excellent looking QT output file for writing a SD DVD?
so far the basic Visual Hub program does a better job much faster,
but still doesn't look very good on DVD,
what other programs are there?

Capturing to external drive on laptop

does any of you guys capture dv to external drive on laptop? how do you connect? daisy chain? I tried to connect harddrive to laptop and camera to the second fw port on the ext hd and that did not work. Does anyone had any success connecting camera to the harddrive and hd to laptop and capture this way?

I have Sony mini dv TRV-17 camera and a few fw drives. G-Technology G-Drive, LaCie d2, Smartdisk FireLite 80 bus powered and Fantom Drive 120GB. I did try with LaCie and Fantom without luck.

Unable to capture to firewire external

I'm new to final cut express ( just got it 2 days ago) and also I bought a G-drive mini 250GB firewire 800 external. I can capture to my internal, but when I have my firewire external connected, final cut express tells me it can't find any firewire camera, and when I try to capture, it tells me there is no device found. however, if I first connect my camera, my camera shows up in final cut express but my external won't mount. anyone have an idea what's going on. btw. my camera is a Canon Elura 80 minidv camcorder, and I have a 2.2 GHz macbook pro.

It's odd that I was able to capture to an external drive under Tiger, but have absolutely no joy doing so under Leopard (in either FCE or iMovie HD ... and, yes, I am using Canon cameras ... sigh). Perhaps I'm misremembering, but I seem to recall using Firewire Basic as the profile had been working for me.

External Drive with HD

Hello,
I'm trying to find out what would be the best type of connection to use for editing HD video with an external hard drive? Gigabit ethernet?
Sorry, didn't really know what forum to post this on, but since it's for editing video with FCP, I thought this might do.
Lawrence

HDV runs at 3.6 MB/s which is roughly the same at Standard Definition NTSC DV or what you are used to.
You do not need a gigabit ethernet raid or anything similar
The A1U can capture either HDV or NTSC DV.
Assuming you are capturing to an external drive, a FW400 drive from macsales.com, g-tech, or wiebetech.com is more than sufficient.
SCSI is small computer system interface and decade old protocol requiring a card/controller and multiple HD drives that can be RAIDed together.
It is unnecessary for HDV.
The best is capturing to an internal dedicated media drive whether it be SATA at ATA. 7200 rpm is sufficient for ATA100, etc.

Leopard. Did a full restore from Time Machine. Now I can't access my other internal and external drives. I get the following error: The folder "Capture Video" can't be opened because you don't have permission to see its contents.

Leopard. Did a full restore from Time Machine. Now I can't access my other internal and external drives. I get the following error: The folder “Capture Video” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents. I have repaired permissions pn the main harddrive. When I try too click on a disk I get the previously stated error. I can't even open up information to see what permission/access there is. It simply will not let me see the content. It shows the content of my main hard drive when I have clicked the other harddrive's name.

Solved:
sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/"FCP Time Machine BU"
sudo chown 0:80 /Volumes/"FCP Time Machine BU"
sudo chmod 775 /Volumes/"FCP Time Machine BU"
sudo chmod -N /Volumes/"FCP Time Machine BU"

Are the FC Events and capture scratch the same thing? Also, how big of an external drive do you need if you plan on making lots of 3-5 min movies?

Are the FCP Events Folder and the capture scratch the same thing? If not, what is the difference?
I've set the events folder and the projects folder to an external drive (400 GB) but it's filling up quickly. What are appropriate external drive sizes?

FCP X Events folders are the same as the old FCE/FCP Capture Scratch folders.
There is no "appropriate" size as everyone is different.
I have a friend who finds the 80GB drive on his 2004 iMac more than sufficient!
Other people can use hundreds of gigabytes a day.
So it all sepends on your particular usage and the only answer is get one as big as you can.
The reason FCP X fills up HDs so quickly is because it usually converts footage to ProRes 422 which uses about 50GB per hour of video.
Whenever you render the footage it is done in ProRes 422 so the drive space is incredibly rapidly eaten away.

External drive for capturing tapes

I'm finally getting around to capturing a lot of miniDV tapes laying around, and making some DVD's out of them.
My Panasonic PV-GS150 camcorder is connected to my MBP via firewire 6 pin to 4 pin cable.
Since my MPB is down to ~60 GB free, I want to use an external drive to store all the raw data. I have a WD Passport drive for that purpose. It's connected via USB and it comes up cleanly in Finder.
Two questions --
1) should I reformat the drive, presently at FAT32? I'm guessing yes.
2) how can I configure iMovie to use this external drive? I didn't see anything in Preferences to do so.
Thanks!

G-drive from Apple = rip off if you ask me. Apple simply charges way to much for stuff like that. $260 for a normal sized (not pocket drive) 500GB external drive is too much.
Example, while not Firewire 800 compatible, for $10 less, Frys.com has a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 1 TERABYTE drive with eSATA, USB2, and Firewire 400 (free shipping as well) and it comes with a 5-year warranty. So twice the storage for less money.
Or you could get a 500GB external drive with FW400 ports for about $100+ less than Apple wants and use the savings to buy a Firewire hub and STILL save money.
But you can also find other FW-800 compatible external drives for less than Apple at many places and since you have FW800 ports, you probably should take advantage of them. Lacie has a number of FW800 compatible drives, are a known Apple friendly company, and you can buy direct from them or through many third party retailers. A quick check shows a 500GB model with FW800 for $190 direct from them. Other vendors might sell it cheaper.
Good luck,
Patrick

What to set when capturing to an external firewire drive?

When capturing to an external firewire drive that will also be used to edit the video, what do I need to set in the Scratch Disk window? Just the scratch disk? Do I need to also set the waveform cache? thumbnail cache? autosave vault?
Thanks.

Depends on your overall configuration/workflow...but I'll usually set my external for Video Capture/Video Render/Audio Render. Then both cache files to my system drive and my Autosave Vault to the external...unless I have an additional internal or second external. I keep my Project files on the system/startup drive.
When you click on the 'Set' button, it's best to simply select the root of whatever drive you want to use. This alleviates the possibility of uncontrolled heirarchy of 'scratch folders' cluttering up your system. If you select the root, then FCP creates a "Capture Scratch" folder at the root level, and each new project gets it's own folder within the main "Capture Scratch" folder.
Setting your autosave vault somewhere other than where your project file is located, can save your butt, if your system drive (or wherever your project file is located) decides to crash.
Others may do it differently, as I do on occasion...just depends on what drives/Mac I have available at the time.
Hope that helps.
K

Storage Captured DV footage in external drive not contained in Project file - How?

How do I store captured DV tape footage in an external drive without being in a Project file?

You could use another program, to do the Capture.
What is the material, that you wish to Capture?
What camera produced it?
What is your OS?
With that info, someone can likely give you a link to a program, that will work for you.
Good luck,
Hunt

Capture on an external drive

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