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Unable to “log & capture” to an external drive via firewire cable
I’m using Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 and I’m unable to “log & capture” to an external drive via firewire cable. My EMac just goes into “spinning lollypop” mode. Is it me, my hardware, the software? Thanks – GV
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8 Replies
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what is the drive formatted to?
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Thanks for the response. I’m sorry, but I must plead ignorance: “formatted to” – what exactly do you mean by that? It’s a LaCie drive and I do not recall doing any formatting when I attached it but I could be mistaken.
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He was referring to the file system on your drive. A Mac will read and write to a LaCie drive out of the box, but I believe it’s pretty important to format them to Mac OS Extended (HFS+ right?) with Disk Utility before actually using them. If the drive is new and has nothing on it then you should do this and try again to capture.
What format are you capturing? When you say it won’t capture, does it go through all of the motions and then finish but still shows the footage as offline? Does it tell you it can’t “see” your camera? eMacs aren’t built to handle this stuff too well, so the more information you could give the better someone might be able to shed some light on your situation.
Zak
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hhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm? Good feedback –
“important to format them to Mac OS Extended (HFS+ right?) with Disk Utility before actually using them” – I’m certainly not confident that I ever did that!?!?!
It appears to “see” the camera but the screen that normally displays the video during log and capture is black. Only the spinning lollypop is going.
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Sounds like FCP is trying to connect to either your hard drive or the camera and can’t.
You need to let us know how everything is connected. You obviously have the FW drive connected to the e-mac. Do you also have a camera/deck connected to the FW drive or is it connected to the e-mac via a second FW port?
What type of LaCie FW drive do you have? If it’s new then you first of all need to format it to Mac OS Extended using Apple’s Disc Utility program. Make sure everything is connected to the e-mac using FW 400 or 800, including the camera. You can daisy chain the camera to the LaCie and then the LaCie to the e-mac but this is not generally recommended for reliable video capturing. The camera and the FW drive should actually be on seperate FW connections, but the setup described above will do in a pinch, as long as you’re using FW and not USB.
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”
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The format of mt external drive shows listed under “Info” states the for fomat is “MS-DOS File System (FAT 32)”. If your feebback is correct it may not be formatted properly to use with FCP?!?!?
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That’s what I was afraid of. Before you go any further you need to reformat your FW drive in Mac OS Extended using Apple’s Disc Utility. The path is: Macintosh HD>Applications>Utilities>Disc Utility. Start the program, select your FW drive from the list and choose to erase it with the formatting: Mac OS Extended – journaling off.
FAT32 is for Windows machines. Your computer can read a FAT32 disc but can only write files to it that are 4 GBytes or less. Always format any new hard drive before you start using it. If you want to keep any files from the FW drive before you do the formatting, transfer them to another dirve because they’re going to get erased during the formatting process.
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”
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Don – Great info. Thanks for responding!
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