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Sony J30 deck and FCP – driving me nuts!
Hi there all,
For the Life of me I can’t figure out how to get Final Cut Pro 7 to see my Sony J30 deck. I’m trying to capture via the DV, firewire straight to my macbook pro 2010. It’s worked before, but then suddenly FCP, as well as Quicktime and Quicktime Pro players, stopped seeing the deck. I went back and adjusted settings in the deck again, 525 NTSC and turning i.Link to “On”, hoping that the Mac would see the deck again. This worked once, but then FCP forgot the deck again, and now I can’t get it working like I did before.Is there an order to plugging in the deck (i.e. first turn power on, then plug in cable, etc.) that I’m missing. Or is there an important setting on the deck or Final Cut Pro that perhaps I adjusted before but didn’t realize?
For FCP I’ve tried the easy setup, using NTSC,but it doesn’t see the deck…when I start FCP it gives me the error message, “Unable to locate the following external devices: Apple NTSC Fire Wire (729×480). Your system configuration may have changed…select continue to set your external devices to none.”
I’ve trashed the settings on FCP and Quicktime when this has happened, but to no avail. What am I missing here? Any help is appreciated, I’ve spent hours on end searching for a solution.
Thanks,
Jon -
6 Replies
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FCP grabs the firewire port on the computer as soon as it launches and doesn’t like being disturbed. The computer can be on but FCP not running. Connect the Firewire cable then power the deck. Then launch FCP. In that order. Now FCP will see any device connected by Firewire.
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Thanks for the response. Still not working though. The System Report on my mac shows there’s a firewire, but doesn’t show the device on there. It has before though, when it’s working of course.
I’ve trashed preferences for fcp and quicktime, I reset settings on the deck and then put it back into i.Link and 525 NTSC, and nada. I’ve reset the SMC twice and even gotten a new firewire cable, although I know the other cable was working when I used it for my external HD. I also tried daisy chaining through my fusion external hard drive using firewire, but my mac didn’t see it then.
I’m wondering if there’s a problem with my firewire bus on my mac? I dunno, I don’t know enough about that. I do know however, that it’s so strange that my mac finds the deck only on rare occasion.
Any other ideas?
Thanks again,
Jon -
If you are seeing an external hard disk via firewire then it looks like your computer and cable are functioning ok in that respect. Are you sure that you have set video output on the deck to iLink? If so then it sounds like you have a problem with the deck because that port is not active if your Mac doesn’t see it at system level.
It’s very easy to dig yourself into a hole when things like this happen, but I think you need to be looking at the deck rather than the computer. I’ve never had a J series deck connected via firewire and always used a control cable. Have you tried setting your capture settings to “non controllable device” then pressing play on the deck?
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I believe the deck settings are fine because I’ve outputted it via firewire to an old Mini DV camera with a firewire in…then outputted that camera to composite and into a television, and it all went fine. I actually had been plugging that same composite setup into an EasyCap capture card with Yosemite, and then put the capture card in my mac’s usb… but then I upgraded to El Capitan, which rendered the capture card useless for some reason. Thus the straight firewire to my mac – it was the only option at that point, from everything I could tell.
So, what I ended up doing was downgrading my mac back to Yosemite, and low and behold the capture card works again. However, this still leaves the question why the mac only sporadically saw the Sony deck when I did firewire into my mac. It worked fine with fire wire out when I did the DV cam to composite out setup.
Any ideas on what’s going with this?
Regardless, I’m going to finish digitizing these tapes, and then back to El Capitan….or perhaps just stick with Yosemite!
Thanks again all,
Jon -
Oh dear… Can you capture from the mini DV camera? As you have upgraded to a later OS, then downgraded I would imagine your computer firmware is still that which was modified by El Cap. Check your system info – EFI Boot ROM version, make a note of it then look it up to see if it correct for your current OS. Anyway, first the mini DV capture test. :o/
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Sorry, I realize I didn’t explain that very well, but yes the capture works fine back on Yosemite. In fact, when I was on El Capitan I tested the deck by using the DV cam and running the composite out to a flat screen (not the capture card of course), and it showed up on the TV. And again, now that I’m back on Yosemite it’s all working great again with the capture card.
So yea, the only question that’s lingering is…if my mac was seeing external hard drives via firewire, and sometimes seeing the deck, and if my deck was outputting via firewire the whole time, then why wouldn’t my mac consistently see the deck, via FCP 7 or quicktime? You think maybe a firewall issue or something like that?
Thanks all!
Jon
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