[Jerry Alto]

Alex- Your deck needs to be on a separate firewire bus. Install a firewire card in an open PCI slot to give your system another firewire bus. Their cheap… around $20.

Jerry

“Change is inevitable. Struggle is optional.”

G5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP Studio 6.02
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1
GV-HD700

[Jerry Alto]

Bob- Can I use it after you? Oh, my cars broke down would you mind bringing it by the house…. and hey, there is a Latte stand drive through just around the corner …. would you mind picking up a triple shot tall…. drive fast so it doesn’t get cold.

Thanks man… I’ve missed the levity!

Jerry

G5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP5 Studio
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1

[Jerry Alto]

Sri- Different connection does not mean different bus.

You can test it by closing out of FCP and disconnecting your external firewire drive then relaunch FCP and set your second internal drive (not system drive) as the scratch drive.

Another tip is to save your project file to a folder on your system drive so the project and media are not on the same drive.

Project files are small compared to media files and your system drive can handle them easily.

Jerry

G5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP5 Studio
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1

[Jerry Alto]

Sri- You haven’t given a lot of information on your system but because your issue is ‘urgent’ I’ll give you a list of things I would try that may help to get you going.

You may have a firewire conflict. Are you using a firewire scratch drive? Are your Z-1 and your scratch drive on the same firewire bus? You may need a second firewire bus via inexpensive PCI card.

Is your system drive also set as your scratch drive? Definite no-no.

Is your Z-1 iLink downconversion menu item set to ON?

Is your FCP Easy Setup an EXACT match of your iLink down converted signal?

HTH,
Jerry

G5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP5 Studio
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1

[Jerry Alto]

Andrew- HDV in FCP displays as 1920×1080 which is square pixel. Where the confusion sets in is when people look at the HDVs 1440×1080 subsample rate. Sony uses that rate to more efficiently record an HD signal on mini-dv tape. You can ignore that rate when working in FCP with native HDV footage because FCP automatically re-scales the footage to 1920×1080. I don’t know if you noticed but 1440 x 1080 is 4×3 not 16×9. HD is 16×9.

Jerry

G5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP5 Studio
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1

[Jerry Alto]

Johanna- One more thing. Check the sequence in the Browser. Is anamorphic checked there?

Jerry

G5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP5 Studio
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1

[Jerry Alto]

Johanna- It looks correct because HDV1080i ARE square pixels!

FCP automatically set my canvas window to correct for aspect ratio.

Don’t override FCP’s easy setups! As said previously FCP flags HDV footage as 16×9! You not need to change aspect ratios of your already flagged footage. It will be 16×9 in your viewer window and, if your sequence settings are correct, it will be 16×9 in the canvas window.

HTH,
Jerry

G5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP5 Studio
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1

[Jerry Alto]

Johanna- I think I found your problem. Put your browser and clips in list view. Add the ‘anamorphic’ column. Is there a check mark there? Uncheck it. I believe this may solve your problem. Somehow your already 16×9 clips became checked as anamorphic.

Hope this solves it.

Jerry

G5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP5 Studio
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1

[Jerry Alto]

Johanna- . I just looked at a Sony HDV file in quicktime.

It says:
Format: Apple HDV 1080i60, 1440 x 1080 (1888 x 1062), Millions
16-bit Integer (Big Endian), Stereo, 48.000 kHz

Normal Size: 1920 x 1080 pixels

The same file in an HDV sequence in FCP under the sequence settings reads:

HD (1440×1080) (16:9), Pixel Aspect Ratio: (1440×1080), Anamorphic: (unchecked)

It is important to understand that FCP flags native HDV footage so that it imports, edits and exports in the proper 16×9 aspect ratio. You don’t need to adjust the footage once it has been captured. Is there a possibility that the footage was shot with a Canon or JVC camera which has a different aspect ratio then you are attempting to import via a Sony deck?

HTH,
Jerry

G5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP5 Studio
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1

[Jerry Alto]

Bryan- Are you sure it was FCP saying that you,”removed media without ejecting it.” Or was it the Mac operating system? That looks like a Mac OS dialog box you get when you inadvertently shut down or disconnect a sata drive without ejecting it first (dragging it to the trash).

Have you used the Mac Disc Utility to check out your raid? It will tell you which drives and software raids are functioning properly and give you options on what to do. The first thing I do when I see that dialog box is quit out of FCP and shut down the computer and the raid. Then I reset all my SATA cable connections. Our raid card doesn’t care which cable is connected to which drive. I boot up the raid then the computer and hopefully the raid has returned to desktop.

Obviously, if you are raid 0 and a drive has died the prognosis is not good.

HTH,
Jerry

G5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP5 Studio
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1