[Benjaminpeter]

So I think I may be on to something. I tried changing my capture/input to ‘DV to OfflineRT NTSC (Photo JPEG)’ and the video captured with no problems at all.

The only problem is the screen is quite small and the quality is not great.

Why would this work without dropping frames when setting capture/input to ‘DV NTSC 48kHz’ has this problem?

Would there be any capture setting that could be a medium between the two… with better quality than the Photo JPEG and smoother capture than the dv ntsc setting?

[Benjaminpeter]

I tried trashing my preferences and the same problem occurs.

[Benjaminpeter]

ill try it.

thank you very much for your help

[Benjaminpeter]

how and why should I trash the preference files if the settings seem ok?

[Benjaminpeter]

One more piece of info..

Under capture settings I had to change the device control to ‘non controllable device’ because capture would not work at all otherwise.

Also, I have my capture/input settings still at ‘DV NTSC 48kHz’ – havent tweeked that one at all.

Does this sound like the right settings for capturing in this situation?

[Benjaminpeter]

I initially tried capturing to the internal drive (Ive never had any capturing problems with this setup before with regular dv tape)

Then I tried using a seagate external hard drive, connected by firewire to a separate firewire bus. Camera is then hooked straight into the built in firewire input in the computer.

same results..??

[Benjaminpeter]

maybe… but I connected the camera to the dvd recorder using the same firewire connection on the camera and everything recorded perfectly…

thanks for your suggestions…

[Benjaminpeter]

One more thought…

I read up on importing analog video to FCP and somewhere the manual mentioned the necessity to place a limit on the data transfer rate to avoid dropped frames?

I assume this is not the case in my situation because the video camera essentially is acting as a converter from analog to digital, so the signal being captured is actually digital – requiring no adjustment to the data rate limit?

Just cant figure this out…

[Benjaminpeter]

I thought maybe it could be, but I tried two separate cables (firewire 400 and firewire 800) and same result…

[Benjaminpeter]

Is it possible for the tape to have breaks in it even if on the camera screen it plays back perfectly smoothly?

I wonder if it is overload on my powerbook like David suggested, or if it is some kind of invisible break in the tape? When capturing video from DV tape, I never have this problem.

Does capturing analog video from an old digital 8 camera create more traffic somehow on the firewire? If not, then I must assume there are some kind of invisible breaks in the tape like you suggest. Nevertheless, I have purchased a cheap pcmcia card like David suggested.

Thanks for your suggestions… they are MUCH appreciated.