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Can’t capture HD footage please help
Apologies in advance as I’ve duplicated this post in the FS-100 forum, but felt it relevant to post here as well.
I am trying to capture footage from my firestore 100 into Final Cut ready to edit, but Final Cut isn’t seeing my deck. My workflow is as follows:
Connect FS-100 to Cam > Connect FS-100 to Mac > Turn on FS-100 > Turn on Camera > Start up FCP > Start New Project > Easy setup > Format: HD Rate: all rates Use: HDV 720p25 > setup
after this I get an ERROR MSG:
“Unable to locate the following external devices: HDV (1280 x 720) 25p your system config may have changed or your deck/camera may be disconnected or turned off. Please check your connections and click “Check Again” or click “continue” to set external devices to none.”
It seems that this is the same message as when I fire up FCP so I just click ‘continue’
Then I try CMND 8 (capture) and the following error message comes up:
“Unable to initialize Capture Device. Device is not connected or the capture preset is not setup correctly. You may still log offline clips. This might also happen if you play DV footage in an HDV device.”
I have tried connecting the FS-100 directly to the Mac, but this doesn’t work either.
Ps I noticed when trying to set up the preferences that Apple ProRes wasn’t available as an option, I’ve only recently installed FCP, does this mean that I haven’t completed installation or is ProRes a plugin?
Thanks for your time.
System info
Mac Pro 2.8gb quad core
Hard drive 320 gb 7200
Hard drive 1Tb 7200
Geforce Nvdia 8800 512mbExternal Hardrive Seagate FreeAgent 1Tb (firewire 800)
Eqpmt
Panasonic HVX-200
Firestore FS-100 -
6 Replies
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the drive should just be plugged into the mac
and come up as a drive that you copy the files from.if its not coming up, try another cable or a different firewire port.
be sure the mac and the drive are OFF when connecting them.
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Hi Chris,
Thanks for your speedy answer, just to clarify when you say the drive should be plugged into the Mac, I’m guessing you mean my external? If so it is plugged into the Mac.
If you’re talking about the Firestore I’ve tried plugging it directly to the Mac to no avail.
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Well, to be blunt…you are doing EVERYTHING WRONG. Absolutely everything. You have this box you used to record your footage but you have no idea how it works. This is all stuff you should know BEFORE you even shoot.
There…that is your scolding.
Now….The firestore does one of two things. Records P2 files as Quicktimes, so you just copy those over to your media drive and immediately begin editing. OR…more commonly, it records as in the P2 file structure…sorta. First it records to it’s own structure, then you have to use the PREPARE FOR P2 option on the Firestore. Refer to your manual for how to do this.
THEN…you use the LOG and TRANSFER option in FCP, NOT Log and Capture. Log and Transfer is for TAPELESS formats, Log and Capture is for tape formats.
Please watch this tutorial for the P2 workflow. IT works for the Firestore as well…as long as you organized the files as P2.
Please…get to know your equipment and the workflow before you grab things and go shoot. Shooting without knowing is a good way to get yourself into a heap of trouble.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Your problem is this cannot be done. The firestore is not a Deck and you cannot hook up the camera to FS to COmputer at the same time.
The FS-100 is a hard drive and when you are done shooting you then hook it up to the computer (after discounting it from the camera) and then you have to go into the DD Drive selection on the HDD MODE screen. Then your computer sees it as a normal Hard Drive. If you shot in P2 mode you use log and transfer to get the files into FCP, if you shot in QT mode you copy the files to another hard drive just import the files into FCP bin.
The FS-100 requires specific settings on the camera and FS, I highly recommend you read the manual very carefully and go to the FAQ and read all of those before using this device.
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Once again, many thanks guys. You’re right Shane I was just trying to learn by doing but I should have stuck with the manual for longer; I am trying to get over my manualphobia and with the help of COW I’m sure it will happen soon :-).
Thanks very much for your time on this.
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I am not sure if anyone has ran into this but I thought I’d share my experience when I could not capture from the FS 100.
I was recording from the HVX 200 using 480i24PA DVCPRO – Drop frame – and jam syncing for a muti-clip edit in post for final cut pro.
The FS 100 received the external timecode, and it recorded the entire 2.5 hour show. When I went into FCP, I could not “Log and Transfer” the footage because the computer could not recognize the data as P2.
I COULD watch the footage from the camera, but not from the mac.
The settings on the FS 100 was set to: Record > Normal | HDD Mode > DVC Pro/DV | DV Formats > Quicktime.
The problem was that the FS 100 was set to Quicktime (hoping the I could just drag and drop the footage for Final Cut). This had worked previously for me, but for some reason the mac would not recognize the footage this time.
I spoke to the Focus Enhancement folks and their Tech told me I would have to transfer the footage from the FS 100 to mini DV and down convert (although I was technically shooting SD – not cool had I been shooting HD).
Before going through with this, I decided to hook up the FS 100 to the mac, but instead of going from the “Computer i/o” I hooked up from the “DV i/o” out.
I successfully captured using LOG AND CAPTURE, by doing a real time capture tricking the computer into thinking the FS 100 as a deck.
Although I do not recommend this to anyone, it worked for me and saved some footage that I thought would be lost forever.
Cheers.
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