Tip: "DV-Recorder" not available when recording to QT-7...

Question

This ought to be obvious, I suppose, but it bit me over the weekend...
If you want to capture video from a FireWire-connected camera directly into QuickTime, then other applications may not be using the FireWire camera at the same time. Apparently this often means that the other application has to be shut down entirely, not merely not using the camera. For instance, if I have Avid Xpress Pro open, I can't capture into QuickTime even if I'm not using the Capture tool in Avid.
That's pretty obvious. Shut down Avid before running FrameThief, for instance; stuff like that. And it means that if you're trying to capture into QuickTime you can't be running iChat AV, FrameThief, Avid Xpress Pro, or iMovie.
Okay, so I've shut all that stuff down and QuickTime still tells me that my DV camera is not available. I know the connection is good because I get "DV-IN" on the display on my camera. So what's wrong?
iDVD.
iDVD, at least version 5 (which is what I have; never upgraded to '06 or '08) has the ability to import video directly from a DV device, so if iDVD is running, QuickTime won't capture from DV.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Answer 1

thanks for posting your problems. it's a good heads up for people who might be using software update. I'm sorry i don't have a solution for you, but I do have a workflow that can avoid these sorts of problems. When you have a stable OS/Application combo, clone your startup drive using something like carboncopy cloner (available on versiontracker.com) to a bootable drive (a second internal drive or an external firewire drive with the correct formatting). This way, you can update with impunity and if a problem occurs, you can restore your system to a working state very quickly.