capture keeps crapping out at five minutes…please help

[13]

What is the format of the drive you are capturing to?

[Micah Ginn]

I’ve discovered the reason that capture is freezing up…it’s because the .mov being created during capture is HUGE. a five minute clip is almost 300 gigs. This is SD footage i’m capturing, and i haven’t changed my settings for anything in months if not years.

I haven’t done anything different, yet suddenly my capture is creating some weird .mov-AV file or some such nonsense that is so large it eats up all my storage and then freezes the computer so bad that i have to hard reboot.

[Micah Ginn]

it’s an internal drive that I put in the b-bay of my G5. It’s a 500 gig seagate, and it was formated by the Mac it is inside of.

[Walter Biscardi]

[micah Ginn] “I haven’t done anything different, yet suddenly my capture is creating some weird .mov-AV file or some such nonsense that is so large it eats up all my storage and then freezes the computer so bad that i have to hard reboot.”

Final Cut Pro does not capture AVI’s. What Easy Setup are you using to capture?

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Tom Brooks]

That sounds familiar Micah. I have seen that file you mention on occasion when an export messed up. It is some sort of temp file that is used by the sytem (?).

One time I sent what I thought was a Quicktime self contained movie to someone off site and it would not play. Said it needed “movie.av-1” — that mysterious file. On my hard drive it played–because the mystery file was available. The export had been sent to a network drive. I re-exported to the local drive and all was well. How it relates to your capture trouble, I’m not sure.

In answer to your problem, please double-check your easy setup and your scratch disk setting. If you’re capturing DV, the whole 90 minutes should be only about 15GB. If your tapes are not 90 minutes long, try setting Cap Now limit to a shorter length.

Anybody else have an explanation for this “temp” file thing?

[Rafael Amador]

Yes, when the AVs files appear there is something going wrong. What I would do is to strart looking at the system and make some cleaning: maintenance and diskwarrior. When capturing, keep an eye to the “Activiti monitor”-“Disk activity”
– Data writen: Must be close to the data-rate of the footage you are downloading.
– FC CPU% usage (shouldn

[Micah Ginn]

i’m at work now, but when i get home I’ll take a look at those areas you’ve suggested. Thanks for the consult!

micah

[Micah Ginn]

thanks…this is a headscratcher!

i appreciate your advice, though! thanks

micah

[Micah Ginn]

it’s not trying to create an AVI, it’s just a .mov with a funky av extension…

i have my settings on NTSC DV, very basic.

[Walter Biscardi]

[micah Ginn] “it’s not trying to create an AVI, it’s just a .mov with a funky av extension…

i have my settings on NTSC DV, very basic.”

Are you splitting your video and audio captures? Final Cut Pro will often add a designation to files that are video only and audio only.

Ensure that you are capture audio and video as one file.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
The new Color Training DVD now available from the Creative Cow!

Read my Blog!