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,

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Copying video files from one external drive to another

Hello! I am very new to Apple and FCP, so please forgive my ignorance. I have looked through the other topics and have not found one that addresses my question, so please forgive me if this has been addressed in the past.
I am working on a project and have all of my video clips saved to a G-Tech G-Raid 320 GB extenal hard drive. I captured much of my footage using "capture now" instead of logging individual clips for various reasons (i.e.: some tape sources did not have timecode), so if I ever have a problem, simply recapturing the footage does not appear to me to be a valid option.
With this weighing heavily on my mind, I thought it would be best to copy the poject to a second G-RAID external hard drive.
However, the G-RAID uses an 800 firewire and my G5 computer only has one such port.
What would be the best way to copy from the one external drive to the other? Will I have to copy the files to my internal hard drive first? And if so, how do I do that? Thanks!!

Crystal,
Please reply to a specific post, not to your orignial one. This keeps the threaded discussion in order.
To see the format for a drive. Open Disk Utility. It is located in your /Applications/Utilities folder.
You should see all your connected drives on the left side of the window. Click on the icon of the drive you want information on. Select the Volume icon, not the Drive icon ( the volume icon is the one under and slightly indented to the right of the drive icon)
Look at the bottom of the window. You'll see an item FORMAT: it should say Mac OS Extended. If it says MS-DOS, you'll need to ERASE the disk. When you do that, you'll have the option of changing the format.
Do not right click and COPY. Simply drag the icon of the folder containing your media files from one disk to the other. It will copy by default.
good luck.
x

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

HT1338 I am trying to setup my external drive, but when I do, I get a box that pops up that says You can't open the application "LaCie Setup Assistant" because PowerPC applications are no longer supported".

When trying to setup my external hard drive, I get this box that pops up and says this:
You can’t open the application “LaCie Setup Assistant” because PowerPC applications are no longer supported.

PowerPC was a type of processor used in Mac systems before Apple switched to Intel-based processors. These older chips required applications to be coded differently, to the extent that they will not run on the Intel processors in newer Macs. Apple used to include a translator that allowed these programs to at least run, but this translator is no longer available so if you run into an older PowerPC-based program then OS X will give you this error.

Can't find any of my HD Video on a PC external drive

Just got my new MacBook aluminum ten days ago as my first Mac. I have a Maxtor Onetouch 300G external hard drive that has hours upon hours of HD video shot with a Sony handicam and imported and saved to the Maxtor through my old PC laptop.
I plugged in the Maxtor to my new Mac... "Do you want to install?" from the preloaded Maxtor software on the drive.
"yes"
At NO point did it say anything at all about formatting the disk. It installs and TimeMachine instantly clicks on and starts backing up my system. Ok, no problem. It finally finishes it's thing and I click on the Maxtor icon for the drive and all of my video is gone. OR I should say I can't see it.
I plug the Maxtor back into my PC "This drives needs to be formatted. Would you like to format it now? If you do, all of the contents will be erased." NO! I DON'T!
So I unplug the drive and cal Apple Care...
"You need DiskWarrior 4. Here is the website"
Ok... $108 later DiskWarrior "rebuilds the directory" on the external drive... nothing... it is the exact same files that I was seeing before so I just took $108 and lit it on fire.
When I originally called Apple Care I somehow managed to get into the enterprise support area and the guy I spoke to there very briefly said that it sounded like all of the files were there by my MAc simply couldn't see them. He asked if they were in Fat-32 or N... something format. I have no idea what format they're in.
Anyone have any ideas??? Sorry to sound pathetic but this is every hour of video we have taken of our kids since they were born... first steps, first b-days, etc etc. And yes... I know... I'm an IDIOT for not having that stuff somewhere else backed up.

Uhhhhh... Thank GOD... Got all of my files.
Spent some time on the phone with Apple Care... who was great to deal with but actually... not as helpful as I was hoping. It was suggested that I try DiskWarrior 4 to try to recover the files. $108 later, I had no files.
More calls with Apple Care and they were pretty sure that everything was gone since once the External drive was installed, like a moron, I let TimeMachine go ahead and back up my new MacBook... so it overwrote who knows how many gig that was my entire MacBook.
I wasn't giving up so I called Maxtor, the manufacturer of the external drive itself. They suggested file recovery software from I365... which is also a Seagate company (the makers of the drive). The suggested I simply use their demo because the demo version would find the files. If it found them, I could buy the software to restore them.
It found them! Another $129 after and I was able to restore all of them back to my old PC laptop.
NOW, I just need to figure out how to get the 50gig of HD video files off of my old laptop now and into my Mac and IMovie so I can actually make some DVDs out of them!
I get that Macs and PCs are different formats but I think it is ridiculous that formatting still means basically just wiping out or at least treating massive lots of old data as if it isn't there. There's gotta be a better way to do that.

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

Best setup for external drives and backup

I'm using Aperture to organize several thousand photos. I've gotten good advice her before about how to get started on this. I'm not a professional and I'm not an experienced user of Aperture, so don't assume a lot of knowledge when you answer. I'm wondering what the best way to set up the file storage would be. I use a MacBook Pro, so obviously that's out for storage, and financially, purchasing a more powerful desktop is out for the time being. I was thinking of purchasing a mirror drive system, like this: http://www.newertech.com/products/gmax.php
But then, there still remains the problem of backing up the photos in case of a fire or theft, etc. I have many of them on DVD, but not with all the metadata that I've added. Can I back the external drives up to a cloud-based storage system through the wireless on the MacBook?
Or, is the answer none of the above? What recommendations do you folks have for managing this?

more:
Paula-
Mirror drives are very much less than ideal for images backup. Mirroring occurs in real-time, so errors, breaks, etc. simply get copied. With images work (unlike fanancial work, for instance) we do not need real-time backup we just need regular accurate backup. Just have 2-3 external drives and rotate them regularly, always having one drive off-site (could be in your car or whatever). Back up manually rather than automatically so that you can be reasonably certain that the backup is not backing up something that just broke.
I suggest the below workflow. Note that most important is that original images from the camera card are copied to two locations before reformatting the card and before importing into Aperture or any other images management application.
Original images never change, so I prefer to manually copy them to two locations asap after capture: one location is the computer drive and the other is an external backup HD that itself gets backed up off site regularly. That assures me that "the pic is in the can." Until two digital files exist on different media I do not consider the pic in the can.
Then reformat the card in-camera, not before.
The Masters then get imported into Aperture from the Mac internal drive by reference (i.e. "Storing Files: in their current location" on the Mac internal drive). After editing is complete (may take weeks or months), from within Aperture I relocate the referenced Masters to an external hard drive for long-term storage.
I do use Time Machine routinely on the MBP, but for the daily-volatile activities going of the MBP. I prefer not to have TM be my backup-of-originals protocol. Instead TM backs up the Mac internal drive on the TM schedule and I back up original images asap based on my shooting schedule. Also the TM drive is a different drive than the drives used for long-term original image files archiving.
TM does back up my Library because the Library lives on the Mac internal drive but I do not assume that TM works for Library backup. I back the Library up to Vaults (on the same drives I put archives of Masters on) independent of TM. IMO one should back up image files and back up Vaults manually after verifying that what is being backed up is not broken, because automatic backup will just back up a broken Library or whatever.
Note that Masters need only be backed up once (but to multiple backup locations) and that backup should happen immediately after copying to the hard drive from the camera card, before involving Aperture or any other images management app.
Sorry for the redundant verbosity above but some was copied from previous posts. Also, I reinforce what Léonie said about DVDs. DVDs are way too slow, unreliable, etc. Instead rotate multiple hard drives to achieve redundancy.
HTH
-Allen

Working with video files on compatible external drive with imovie09

I have run out of room on my MacBook Pro hard drive, so I have moved all of my video files onto a compatible external hard drive. How do I work with these file in imovie09, do I need to import the files back onto the computer or can I work with them from the external hard drive, if so how. Also, is it possible to after completing editing to save just the project on the computer rather than the hard drive or will that cause a "source video" issue.
Ultimately, I would like to have all of the source video saved on the external hard drive and the projects saved on the computer
I had no problems working and saving the files when just using the computer, the external hard drive has complicated things for me. Thanks.

John Pichola wrote:
I have run out of room on my MacBook Pro hard drive, so I have moved all of my video files onto a compatible external hard drive. How do I work with these file in imovie09, do I need to import the files back onto the computer or can I work with them from the external hard drive, if so how. Also, is it possible to after completing editing to save just the project on the computer rather than the hard drive or will that cause a "source video" issue.
How did you move all of your video files? The best way in iMovie '09 is to do it in the Event Library. Make sure you're viewing hard drives (click the disk icon at the upper-right corner of the list of events). Then drag the events you want from your internal hard disk to the external one. That way iMovie keeps track of where the source files are located.
You can do the same with project files in the Project Library, too.
If you've already moved the files in the Finder, to do it cleanly, I'd recommend moving them back to the iMovie Projects and iMovie Events folders in your Movies folder. Then launch iMovie and move them as explained above.
Or, make sure the iMovie Projects and iMovie Events folders are at the top level of your external hard drive. When you launch iMovie, it looks in those places for footage and projects, and will make them available.

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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.
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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

Recommended setup of External drives

Currently I have an iMac, MacBook Pro, MacMini and an AppleTV all networked using an AEBSn. The advice that I need is that I'm thinking of purchasing two external hard dives, one to use for time machine that will be connected to the AEBSn via USB so that all of the computers can be backed up. The other will be connected to the iMac which is the main computer (via firewire) and be used for my iTunes and iPhoto libraries which are getting rather large. Is this the best configuration or should I be doing something else? Cost is not a big issue, however I would like to keep it as low as possible.

The networked Time Machine backup drive, if it's backing up three Macs, would need to be fairly large. To work effectively, it should be at least twice as large as the data to be backed up. If that data includes the data on the iMac's new FireWire drive, it may be more cost effective to get a separate Time Machine drive and connect it to your main iMac. This will also allow the hourly Time Machine backup (as well as the initial complete backup) to complete much faster and provide a longer backup history for data recovery.
So that's one USB drive for general network storage and Time Machine backups (for the MacBook Pro and Mac mini); one USB or FireWire drive for Time Machine backup of the iMac (including data on the FireWire drive); and one FireWire drive for the iMac's additional storage.
For the FireWire drive(s), I think you should get one with both FireWire and USB 2.0. Apple took FireWire off the newest MacBook, so if that's a trend, having both interfaces will allow for the best long-term usefulness of the drive.

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.

How to put video files on external drive for Final Cut Pro?

Sorry for the stupid post, but I'm on day one of trying out final cut pro. (Tired of the very limiting imovie) I have a Sony HD video camera and a Go Pro HD camera. I want to store all my video on my 1TB external drive and edit from it. How do I set that up? I'm not up on the lingo that's used in the program, nor can I figure out how to do this so far.
Thanks in advance.

Hiya mate, first off no such thing as a stupid post. Better to ask if you're not sure!
There are a lot of variables to think about, what codec you want to edit in, i.e. HDV, IMX, ProRes then there's frame rate, 25, 29.97 etc. Best practice is to work native to with the codec you've shot. i.e. if the camera is HDV ingest at HDV. If you want work at a higher codec, ingest or transcode to that codec then work with it in FCP. FCP works best with all assets at the on the same timebase and codec.
You also have to think about disk speed and bandwidth from the external HD to Mac. FCP will only be able to handle 'x' amount of streams and layers depending on the codec.
Anyways...bsck to the question at hand. Im not sure what camera you have shot in but if its HDV you easy set up to set your project to HDV/PAL/NTSC/25/29.97, then set your scratch location to the external drive, and then save your project (make sure you have named it correctly as the scratch location aka capture scratch folder, will be named with the same name as the project). Connect up the camera over firewire then go to log and capture (cmd+8) and ingest.
Hope this helps!
Regards,
SJ

Firewire incompatibility w Video and external drive

I recently purchased an iMac G5 for video editing and wanted to use my external drive mainly to store my iMovie projects. Obviously the video camera and the external drive are disturbing each other that much, that the external drive stops working when I am capturing video on the internal drive. Capturing directly on the external drive did not work anyway; daisy-chaining camera and drive neither.
Following configuration: iMac G5 2 GHZ, 20 " screen, 2GB RAM, OS 10.4.1, LaCie 250GB external drive with FW 800 and 400 (done firmware upgrade on this drive); Canon MV 750i.
Any help would be really appreciated!

The external drive is formatted MacOS extended.
Of course I don't have to transfer large files simultaneously, but it would be nice not to have to capture everything to the internal drive first and then transfer it to the external drive.
Moreover, there are situations where it is not easy to disconnect the external drive each time the cam is connected and turned on. For example, I am working on an iMovie project located on the external hard drive, find a clip archived in FootTrack that I want to add. To import this clip I have to capture it from the camera. Now I have to close the project, disconnect the external drive, capture the clip (assuming the FootTrack archive is on the external drive I have to close FootTrack and can't control if I am really importing the right clip), disconnect the camera, reconnect the external disk transfer it and import it into iMovie...... done!
Better than nothing, but not exactly how one imagines to work.

Video capture setup to external drive

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