On Screen Recording w/ Canopus TwinPact 100

Question

Unable to get image of Screen while recording. The screen capture works fine and it creates a Quicktime movie, however it comes out as a blue screen. I've tried RGB connection and firewire. Has anyone successfully captured what is on their screen using a Mac?
Thanks

Answer 1

The scratch disk is where your captured media is stored. It's easy to switch. Select Final Cut Express>System Settings. Then click the <Set> button on the Scratch Disk tab and make your selection. Many people (myself included) use an external drive as their scratch disk, but that often doesn't work with Canon cameras because Canon's non-standard implementation of firewire doesn't permit them to play nice with other devices on the same fw bus.
If I'm imagining what you're doing correctly, my suggestion is this:
Connect analog outputs of the Canon to the inputs of the Canopus.
Connect the Canopus to the Mac via firewire.
Connect the Canopus outputs to your distribution system for broadcast to the TVs.
Then, to capture from Canon to Mac, go through the Canopus:
Launch FCE. Choose NTSC-DV Converter Easy Setup.
Use Capture Now. (Are you capturing live or from tape?)
Once you're done capturing and editing, output from FCE through the Canopus to your distribution system for broadcast to the TVs.
Seems like this workflow would eliminate connecting/disconnecting/reconnecting cables and changing your FCE setup.
Now that I ponder this a bit further, couldn't you eliminate the Canopus altogether?
Connect the Canon to the Mac via firewire.
Connect the analog outputs of the Canon to your distribution system.
Capture in FCE (DV-NTSC Firewire Basic in Easy Setup).
Output from FCE through the Canon to your distribution system.
On a semi-related matter, I'd be interested in your thoughts on working with the Firestore, as I recently bought one, but haven't put it into service yet. I assume the drive insists on being formatted FAT32 (that's the case with mine), and wonder if that has been a problem. Do you copy the files to a Mac-formatted drive before editing or work with them directly? Have you been pleased with the workflow and the results?