How to DV in

[Walter Biscardi]

Make sure there is no other Video device connected to Firewire on the machine. Only one A/V device can be connected.

Are you not seeing anything in the Log and Capture Window? Ensure the machine was turned on before you launched FCP.

If you’re not seeing anything to your external monitor / speakers, go into Audio Video Settings. Change the Video out to your Kona so you can monitor the video / audio.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Jeff Carpenter]

The first thing I do in these situations is to shut down Final Cut and open iMovie.

There is a little switch on the program that switches you from “edit” to “capture” mode. Mess around with iMovie until you see an image on the screen from the tape. Once you do, go back to Final Cut.

I do this because iMovie is such a simple program that it quickly lets you establish that:

1) The deck is working and all its switches and menus are properly set
2) The firewire cable is good
3) The firewire port on the Mac is good
4) OSX isn’t having any sort of firewire conflict between devices or something

If I can’t get it to work in iMovie I’d mess around with those 4 issues first. If it DOES work in iMovie you can feel pretty safe that poking around in Final Cut setting-menus is worth your time. It’s a good way narrow down your options.

Oh, and before you do any of this, turn off the computer, make sure the deck is on, and turn the computer back on. That SHOULDN’T fix anything, but sometimes it does. Worth a shot.

[Winston A. cely]

Awesome tips! Never would have crossed my mind to use iMovie.

“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”

Machine Model: Power Mac G5
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 4.5 GB
Final Cut Studio (Not Universal, yet)

[Bob Vick]

I have used both suggestions and see nothing. I have the deck plugged into the back port of the G5. Restarted the computer with deck on and plugged in. Started both IMovie and FCP and nothing. FCP is set to DV NTSC 48 IMovie is in camera mode which I believe is capture mode. Nothing says capture. I do have a cable feeding a monitor directly so I know there is video.

any \other suggestions? The cable came from one of our engineers, he says it’s good.

bob

Bob Vick sr promo guy @ ch3 wwmt tv, kalamazoo, mi

[Ben Oliver]

trash preferences??

hmm….it could be the deck….you could always capture it analog, teh same way you capture footage for betasp work if u cant get the firewire to work.

make sure the deck is set to DV, i know on my dsr20 deck, if you switch it t video, it won’t pickup the firewire..perhaps there is something similar with your deck. check out the internal settings.

-ben

[Bob Vick]

The deck is a loner. The company I got it from is pretty reliable and they use it a lot. I fed the vid out off the panasonic to my sony 2800 and switched to composite, I can get vid but audio is an issue. Only XLR to the beta.

b

Bob Vick sr promo guy @ ch3 wwmt tv, kalamazoo, mi

[Ed Dooley]

LOL!!
Ed

[Bob Vick] “The deck is a loner.”

[Lawrence Lim]

Try this. Go to view> refreash A/V devices. Then go back to View> External Video> All frames. Usually works for most thing fire wire.

[Bob Vick]

I have decided that the problem is with the DECK. HAs to be. There is a tag on the front that reads NO INPUT! So maybe that would affect the output. So I used the S out to the S in on the Beta and went that way. Thanks for all the advice

b

Bob Vick sr promo guy @ ch3 wwmt tv, kalamazoo, mi

[Justin Toops]

This may be to late, but check the deck’s manual. I’ve seen at least with some of the Sony decks that you can’t send some formats over firewire (DVCPRO25 for example). The manual would say, “muted over firewire”… this would make sense because you can still send the signal S-Video.

-Justin