Hi Wynn,
DeckLink 5.7 and newer drivers are Universal Binary drivers which were developed for use with Final Cut Pro 5.1.x. They are not tested with Final Cut Pro 5.0.x and so if you’re running the latest drivers, I do not know how well they would be working with your copy of Final Cut Pro 5.0.4.
My first suggestion to you would be to quit out of Final Cut Pro and launch Blackmagic Deck Control. Go to the preferences and choose an NTSC easy setup and set the location of your disk array for captures. Now use Blackmagic Deck Control to perform the 30 minute capture.
If this works fine without drop outs, then the issue may well be that you are running all the latest Mac OS X and DeckLink updates but an older version of Final Cut Pro and there is some incompatibility. If so, experiment with reverting to the DeckLink 5.6.2 drivers which were the last specific PowerPC drivers designed for use with Final Cut Pro 5.0.4. Do these older drivers help to provide compatibility with the older Final Cut Pro and so overcome the dropouts?
If the same problem occurs when capturing with Blackmagic Deck Control, then the issue is not specific to Final Cut Pro and we will need to examine this further to find the cause of the problem. Please let me know how you go with the Deck Control test and then we’ll take it from there.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design