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Can you Capture Video Through External Drive?
This might be an amateur question, but I’m using Final Cut Pro 7, and I’m trying to capture video from my camcorder directly onto my Lacie drive, and I’m having trouble getting it to work. I have the camcorder connected directly to the Lacie drive, and the Lacie drive connected to my MacBook Pro. Is that a workable setup?…
In the past I just connected my camcorder directly to the MacBook, and captured onto my internal hard drive, but for obvious reasons I want to capture onto an external hard drive. The problem is, I only have one firewire port on my MacBook, so I can’t connect both the Lacie and the camcorder to the MacBook at the same time. So, is it even possible to capture video the way I described? With the camcorder connected to the Lacie drive instead of the computer? If so, what settings might I need to change in FCP? If not, what is a solution, so I don’t have to capture video onto my internal hard drive?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
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10 Replies
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That should work fine. Is the camera a DV camera? If so, use the DV/NTSC Easy Setup and you should be good to go. Is it HDV? Then use the HDV easy setup.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Hmm, it’s still not working. I’m using mini DV, by the way. For some reason when I have the camera connected through the Lacie drive, FCP wants to freeze, like it can’t handle it. But the instant I disconnect the camera, FCP unfreezes.
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What do you mean wants to freeze? Is FCP unresponsive? I’ve done this many times. I’ve discovered that the camera has to be on, with the heads engaged, BEFORE I launch FCP though. It won’t recognize my camera if I turn it on on afterwards or after it’s been left to idle.
My specs: FCP 6.0.6, El Capitan, rMBP 15″ i7 2.6 GHz, 16 GB RAM
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I’ve done it that way too many times to count. My first computer I used for editing was a white iBook with one FW400 port. I looped my camera through the drive.
What OS are you running? Any adapters in this chain?
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
I’m running OS 10.8.5. And no, there are no adapters in the chain.
The problem is that when I turn on my camcorder (connected to the Lacie drive), it causes the whole drive to become unresponsive, in addition to FCP. But when I power down the camcorder, the drive becomes responsive again. So clearly, or ostensibly, there is an issue with power consumption. I should probably note that drive itself (a Lacie rugged drive) is not directly connected to a power supply. It is simply connected to the computer via a FW 800 cable. Is that adequate for power?
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Okay, I now have the external drive connected to my MacBook via a USB 3.0 cable, and I am no longer having the freezing issue. However, when I try to capture footage in FCP 7, it won’t capture video for some reason. Only audio. And I’m pretty sure I have the right capture setting. It says “DV NTSC 48 kHz,” so it’s set for video too, not just audio…
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Okay, now I’ve got both the drive and the camcorder connected directly to the computer (via USB 3.0 and FW 800, respectively), and I am able to capture directly onto the external hard drive.
BUT, now I seem to be encountering a new problem. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but the captured footage looks a little more pixelated than usual. And when I play it back in my VLC player (which is what I usually view footage with), there is some kind of interlacing effect. It’s not actually visible in the canvas window of FCP 7, but it concerns me nonetheless, because older footage from past projects do not show this interlacing when I play them back in VLC… The only explanation I can come up with is that I used a different shutter speed when recording the newer footage. But would this actually account for the interlacing effect, when my capture settings were exactly the same?
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Ah…smart! Camera to computer via FW, and then drive via USB 3. Good solution!
DV is interlaced, so there’s that. But if it looks different than other footage from the same camera captured much earlier…hmmm, wonder if it was shot differently. Not sure if different shudder would account for the interlaced look.
Sorry, stumped me.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Samuel Hays] ” the captured footage looks a little more pixelated than usual.”
your “usual” has shifted to hi-def !
and from memory, DV was pretty crunchy looking in the FCP canvas[Samuel Hays] “when I play it back in my VLC player (which is what I usually view footage with), there is some kind of interlacing effect. It’s not actually visible in the canvas window of FCP 7”
unlike VLC, FCP won’t show any interlacing, it only shows one field (unless you set the viewer of canvas to 100%)
nick
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Thanks for the help, guys! I’m all set. I exported the new captured footage, and it looks just fine, even in my VLC player.
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