[Jon Novack]

Sorry, I realize I didn’t explain that very well, but yes the capture works fine back on Yosemite. In fact, when I was on El Capitan I tested the deck by using the DV cam and running the composite out to a flat screen (not the capture card of course), and it showed up on the TV. And again, now that I’m back on Yosemite it’s all working great again with the capture card.

So yea, the only question that’s lingering is…if my mac was seeing external hard drives via firewire, and sometimes seeing the deck, and if my deck was outputting via firewire the whole time, then why wouldn’t my mac consistently see the deck, via FCP 7 or quicktime? You think maybe a firewall issue or something like that?

Thanks all!
Jon

[Jon Novack]

I believe the deck settings are fine because I’ve outputted it via firewire to an old Mini DV camera with a firewire in…then outputted that camera to composite and into a television, and it all went fine. I actually had been plugging that same composite setup into an EasyCap capture card with Yosemite, and then put the capture card in my mac’s usb… but then I upgraded to El Capitan, which rendered the capture card useless for some reason. Thus the straight firewire to my mac – it was the only option at that point, from everything I could tell.

So, what I ended up doing was downgrading my mac back to Yosemite, and low and behold the capture card works again. However, this still leaves the question why the mac only sporadically saw the Sony deck when I did firewire into my mac. It worked fine with fire wire out when I did the DV cam to composite out setup.

Any ideas on what’s going with this?

Regardless, I’m going to finish digitizing these tapes, and then back to El Capitan….or perhaps just stick with Yosemite!

Thanks again all,
Jon

[Jon Novack]

Thanks for the response. Still not working though. The System Report on my mac shows there’s a firewire, but doesn’t show the device on there. It has before though, when it’s working of course.

I’ve trashed preferences for fcp and quicktime, I reset settings on the deck and then put it back into i.Link and 525 NTSC, and nada. I’ve reset the SMC twice and even gotten a new firewire cable, although I know the other cable was working when I used it for my external HD. I also tried daisy chaining through my fusion external hard drive using firewire, but my mac didn’t see it then.

I’m wondering if there’s a problem with my firewire bus on my mac? I dunno, I don’t know enough about that. I do know however, that it’s so strange that my mac finds the deck only on rare occasion.

Any other ideas?
Thanks again,
Jon