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can’t capture HDV in FCP with multiple FW devices connected
This is my problem. I just purchased a Canon HV30 camera and 2 LaCie big disk extreme triple drives. I have found that with multiple FW devices attached to my quad G5 I am unable to capture HD video from the camcorder in FCP. After 2-3 seconds of capture, the process stops and I get the message, “The end of the tape has been encountered”. If I remove all Firewire devices except for the camcorder in the FW port on the front of the G5 and one of the LaCie drives in the FW800 port everything works fine with realtime capture taking place. If I plug a single additional FW device in any port, then I get “The end of tape” message. I can’t daisy chain the 2 LaCie drives– same problem occurs. I tried to make a mirrored RAID of the two LaCie drives– same problem. My question is:
Is this due to a limitation of the FW buses in my quad G5?
Is this a hardware failure in my G5?
Is this due to a peculiarity of the LaCie drives? ( I don’t think this is the case since the same thing happens with my OWC double drive enclosure whether the drives are configured to mount as separate drives or as a mirrored RAID.)
Any idea how to fix this or is it “unfixable”?
Thanks.
John -
3 Replies
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[John Baughman] “Any idea how to fix this or is it “unfixable”? “
Get a PCIe fw card to separate your firewire devices.
Jeremy
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Jeremy,
Thanks for your prompt response to my problem. I assume from your answer that you are saying that the architecture of the quad G5 is such that the FW ports get overwhelmed by too many simultaneous connections? Is this also a problem with the newer Mac Pros which I am thinking of purchasing?Excuse my ignorance. But would a PCIe Firewire card allow me to connect a RAID set consisting of two striped drives in one enclosure mirrored to two identical striped drives in an identical enclosure? That is what I am ultimately trying to do. Or at the very least I would like to be able to daisy chain a couple of these striped drives and use one of them for capture.
Thanks in advance.
John -
[John Baughman] “Is this also a problem with the newer Mac Pros which I am thinking of purchasing? “
Yes. The Macpro firewire ports also all share the same bus, you will be in the same situation.
[John Baughman] “But would a PCIe Firewire card allow me to connect a RAID set consisting of two striped drives in one enclosure mirrored to two identical striped drives in an identical enclosure?”
Sure, if that’s what you need to do. FW cards usually have more than one port on them.
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