[Piers Goodhew]

Well, you know Bob, I think we’re the only shop in this hemisphere using DVCPro 50, and one of only a handful using 25. And we haven’t bought a new VTR for 6 years or more, because, you know, tapeless is just around the corner.

And your original post is the only page on the net that Google’s found containing the actual error we’re getting. So I guess we are pretty rare, us 9-pin using Panasonic types.

I guess everyone else is either using firewire or has gone “up” to P2

PG

[Piers Goodhew]

Many thanks to Bob for his kind offer, I thought I should put it on the record that BlackMagic also sent me the file in pretty quick time (they beat Bob by a few hours).

For the public record, the issue is that FCP5 has changed the polling interval it uses to talk to VTRs. This causes issues with Panasonic decks. Adding a small text file to your FCP plugins folder tells FCP to revert to 4.5 behaviour.

The gory details:

Copy the following text (between the dashed lines, not including them):
———————snip————
// Enabler to disable alternate ETT polling mechanism

startuponly
FileVersion(60243, 41391, 68)
code

dictput(0,”kgDeviceControl”,”useAltETTPolling”, “value”);

——————/snip————————

Paste this into TextEdit and then save it into:

/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins

with the name:

DisableAltETTPolling.txt

(You’ll need to be an admin user, natch.). Seems to have fixed the problem here. If the above doesn’t work, maybe there’s also some recource fork voodoo going on. Contact your capture card vendor for the file!

PG

[Piers Goodhew]

Hi Bob,

Hope you’re still reading the thread! You wouldn’t care to elaborate on *what* it was that AJA sent you and what you did? I’ve just hit the same problem with FCP 5.1.2, Tiger, QT 7.1.3, Panasonic VTRs and Decklink here. I’ve contected DeckLink support, but I’d love to know more about what AJA gave you …

Regards,

PG

(and Hi to Mitch Ives if he’s still reading, too)