-
Camera not importing footage into 4.5
Hi!
When I try to capture now footage from my Canon camera daisy chained through my external firewire to my Powerbook g4 1.25 1 of 3 things happen. 1) FCP 4.5 just straight up does not recognize the camera and thinks no device is attached 2) FCP does not load past the opening white rectangle logo screen until I turn the camera off 3)FCP loads fine, recognizes the camera but when I try to import, it stalls and drops frames within the 1st second. By the 5th second, the importing stops.I have tried different cameras, different external drives, different firewire cables and going stright from the camera to the internal drive and then dumping the footage files later. None of this works.
When I first set up my system, it all worked fine. Then something happened and it stopped. But I don’t know what. I’ve had some limited success borrowing a deck and importing into the internal. And I used to be able to import from my camera straight to my internal with 50/50 success but now that has stopped working. I’m not sure why.
I was told it could be corrupted software so I deleted FCP and reinstalled it. No success. At this point I’m not sure what it could be. Any ideas? thanks.
-
7 Replies
-
Sometimes daisy chained devices work OK, sometimes they don’t. I’m able to capture decent sized clips with a home built FW drive and an old Canon ZR-10 daisy chained attached to my TiBook 800, so in my case, it’s not a problem.
Note that I am not trying to capture an entire tape.
If you have trouble with your setup, may I suggest you get a FireWire CardBus to stick in the side of the PowerBook. That way, you can give the drive and the deck a separate bus. These cards are very cheap at your computer/electronics store. A good investment.
Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Seminar!
fcpworld.com -
Your drives just may not be fast enough. I’ve always had trouble capturing from a Sony PD170 to an external drive when I used by powerbook (17″G4 1.5Ghz, 1.5G Ram). My solution was to capture directly to my PB internal drive, then I would copy the media to my external drive (not ideal).
No experience with a FW cardbus, but I think it’s a good accessory for a powerbook.
Boyd
“Go slow to go fast” -
>When I first set up my system, it all worked fine. Then something happened and it stopped
HAve you upgraded any software lately, like Quicktime?
-
yes. i have upgraded/installed quite a bit of software. Including QT7, and OSX 10.4.3
But when I set up my system over a year ago, it all worked fine. After maybe about 5 months, I started experieincing problems. The problems I mentioned. At first only capturing straight to the internal, without a daisy chain worked spuratically. But that stopped working after a month or so.
I don’t think it’s a matter of my drives being too slow because they did work for several months, before they stopped. I’ve also tested different cameras and different drives.
As to getting a firewire card, I’ve tried running my camera into the firewire 400 and the external HD into the firewire 800 port, and without success. This solution should, in theory work better than a port card.
And as to the software install, I have installed new software. But that shouldn’t effect it. At some point I deleted my FCP and reinstalled it from scratch hoping that maybe the FCP software had become corrupted. But that did not solve it either. If you think it may be a reaction to other installed software, what can I do? thanks for all the help so far.
-
yes. i have upgraded/installed quite a bit of software. Including QT7, and OSX 10.4.3
But when I set up my system over a year ago, it all worked fine. After maybe about 5 months, I started experieincing problems. The problems I mentioned. At first only capturing straight to the internal, without a daisy chain worked spuratically. But that stopped working after a month or so.
I don’t think it’s a matter of my drives being too slow because they did work for several months, before they stopped. I’ve also tested different cameras and different drives.
As to getting a firewire card, I’ve tried running my camera into the firewire 400 and the external HD into the firewire 800 port, and without success. This solution should, in theory work better than a port card.
And as to the software install, I have installed new software. But that shouldn’t effect it. At some point I deleted my FCP and reinstalled it from scratch hoping that maybe the FCP software had become corrupted. But that did not solve it either. If you think it may be a reaction to other installed software, what can I do? thanks for all the help so far.
-
>As to getting a firewire card, I’ve tried running my camera into the firewire 400 and the external HD into the firewire 800 port, and >without success. This solution should, in theory work better than a port card.
No it shouldn’t! Both the 400 and 800 ports share the same firewire bus so they are fighting for the bandwidth. If you add a PCMCIA card you are creating another bus. However I think your problem is more related to the software upgrades. Go to this link.
https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301852
-
Frank. That was great. Thank you so much! You were 100% right (so far) that upgrading QT and then DUMPING the old Receipt files worked. I ran the camera straight to the 400 and daisy chained through the external into the 800 and both worked fine. Hopefully it will stay that way.
It’s funny because I’ve been asking about this problem for several months and no one could help me or has even heard of it. And it seems like a compatability with QT, would be fairly widespread and common.
anyways, thanks a lot.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up