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HDV FW capture, digital hits, aborts every time!!
This is sortof a continuation of a post I made earlier today, but I have a bunch of new info to share and I wanted my problem to show up as in case my original post is overlooked. I can’t capture any of my footage. My media is 24F (shot on a Canon XH-G1), and I’ve been capturing from a Canon HV10 via firewire to my Mac tower. My capture settings are the same ones I’ve used for the past year:
Capture Preset: HDV
Device Control Preset: HDV FireWire BasicFollowing a huge lag after I click on ‘Capture Now’, I get an error message that says “Capture incomplete due to dropped frames.” I’ve also tried batch capturing newly logged offline clips, which I’ve never accomplished successfully until one clip today, but I haven’t been able to replicate it since.
I’ve also tried capturing using my XH-G1, and the same thing happens. I’ve noticed in the Log and Capture window that whenever I begin playing a tape there’s a couple huge digital hits before it plays smoothly, but the hits aren’t present on either camera’s LCD screen as it’s being controlled through FCP. I’ve never had a problem like this, and wonder if it’s Final Cut or possibly my Firewire cable (mini HDV/DV firewire to Firewire 800 on the tower). It’s a Belkin cable and I’ve only had it for a year. I even tried capturing my media using iMove HD, and that worked fine, although it was capturing the media as 29.97 and not 24p. That makes me think it’s not the cable. I don’t have a spare cable to test right now anyway. I’ve tried multiple tapes, old and new projects, trashing preferences and switching capture settings in FCP without any improvement.
Help!!
Thanks,
Cathy Runge
Mary Productions -
16 Replies
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When you say “digital hits”, do you mean that the picture sort-of freezes and gets all digital mosaic-like for a fraction of a second, and intermittently while trying to capture? If so, then I’ve been having the same problem on both my G5 as well as my MacBook Pro! It’s been doing this since the upgrade to 6.0.3. I’ve tried everything to stop this from happening. I’ve trashed prefs many many times, run Disk Warrior, erased and reinstalled the OS, all to no avail.
My workaround (and I’m lucky to have one), is to capture the material using my old iMac (the old one with the round base that looks like a lamp) running FCP 5.1.4.
I’m close to the end of my tether with this problem. Angry with Apple… angrier with Sony for the horror of HDV.
If you find a solution, you’re a goddess in my book!
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Simon,
Yes! That’s exactly what I mean. How frustrating! Have you spoken to Apple tech support? (from my personal experience with calling Apple for earlier troubleshooting problems, sounds like you have, haha). Have you tried using different FireWire cables? Someone suggested that to me. I only have one cable right now simply because I only have one editing suite, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to buy a spare and see if maybe the problem is cable-related. If not I’m at loss, as I don’t have a back-up machine as you do. If I resolve the problem in another way I’ll definitely let you know, and I hope you’ll do the same if you beat me to it! 🙂
Cathy Runge
Mary Productions -
No problems here.
What type of media drive are you using?
How is it connected?
How full is the drive?There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity! -
Cathy,
I’ve tried everything. Different cables, a different deck, an empty drive (with no other drives connected), everything! Thinking that the problem might be with the batch of HDV tapes themselves, I even did a test where I captured from some previously captured tapes that had no problems, but… well, you can guess the result.
I’m as frustrated as a great big frustrated thing.
If I find a solution I’ll let you know what it is (as soon as the hangover lifts from my night of celebration).
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Again what conniption is the hard drive?
I want to make sure you are using a drive that can handle editing video. No offense but it never ceases to amaze me how many people try to edit video from a USB drive.
There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity! -
I’ve tried capturing to a 500 GB LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Drive, as well as one of those Western Digital My Book 1 TB drives – connecting through FireWire. Capturing works fine using an old iMac running 5.1.4, but is impossible using the dual 2.7 GHz G5 with 4.5 GB RAM and the 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro running 6.0.3.
I tell ya, it’s one of them there hazy mysteries.
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Hi Zane,
When you say “No problems here,” I’m assuming you mean you’re successfully capturing HDV via FireWire using 6.0.3? I’m using a 1 TB Fantom G-Force MegaDisk external drive, and there’s approx. 750 gigs of free space. I’ve already captured a large amount of HDV media (Canon HDV 24F, shot on Sony mini HDV, 63-min tapes…essentially 1080p24) in April and early May via FireWire 800 from a Canon HV10 to the Mac tower (Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz Dual Core). My external hard drive is connected to the tower via FW 400. This appears to be a moot point since I also tried switching scratch disks to an internal drive with plenty of space and I had the same problem. Prior to yesterday, I hadn’t tried capturing anything for a few weeks — I used Color for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and at that time I did a software update that included a Pro App update, from the list of updates available through my Mac.
I’m basically of the same mind as Simon — there’s got to be a bug in this new version. However, I will gladly stand corrected if you or someone else has another explanation!
Cathy Runge
Mary Productions -
Hi Simon,
I’m about to resort to calling Apple, even if it’s just to bug the heck out of them so someone fixes this problem. I have one question though — have you been able to capture anything, even with the digital hiccups? I can’t even do that.
Cathy Runge
Mary Productions -
Can you capture to an internal hard drive? It sounds like you are using FireWire for both the camera hookup and the external disk, which could cause problems.
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Catherine,
When you did the update, did you a) repair permissions before and after and b) make sure you ran the updater till no more new software came up? Sometimes Apple’s updates require 2 or 3 passes before all the available software has been updated. AFAIK the last update was one of those…
Jason
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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