[John Halford]

Tom – still no success. I’ve emptied the trash and connected direct from camera deck to computer (admittedly with the original firewire lead, but this lead works when connected to another computer). The internal disk is set as scratch disk. When I click on the play button in the Capture window the tape plays, but then the beachball appears and I have to force quit.

Any other ideas?

[John Halford]

Tom, thanks for responding. I don’t think I can daisychain through the external drive as it has only one FW400 port (into which, at the moment, is plugged the firewire lead from the camera (mini-firewire plug that end)). The external drive, LaCie d2, has 1 x USB2.0; 1 x FW400 and 2 x FW800 ports. Can one get a lead which will go from mini-firewire to FW800 plug, or, alternatively, FW800 to FW400 (so I can connect drive to computer (2 x FW400 ports + USBs))?

Even if I could daisychain the devices I’m not sure it would help, as I’ve tried eliminating the external drive altogether by setting the computer’s internal drive as the scratch disk – this has given the same problem (crashing when attempting to control tape via the buttons on the capture window). And, yes, I have tried trashing the preferences by dragging the last in this chain to trash: users> (name)> library> preferences> final cut express user data> final cut express HD 3.0 prefs. Is there anything else which should be trashed? And should I also empty the trash?