[Samuel Hays]

Thanks for the help, guys! I’m all set. I exported the new captured footage, and it looks just fine, even in my VLC player.

[Samuel Hays]

Okay, now I’ve got both the drive and the camcorder connected directly to the computer (via USB 3.0 and FW 800, respectively), and I am able to capture directly onto the external hard drive.

BUT, now I seem to be encountering a new problem. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but the captured footage looks a little more pixelated than usual. And when I play it back in my VLC player (which is what I usually view footage with), there is some kind of interlacing effect. It’s not actually visible in the canvas window of FCP 7, but it concerns me nonetheless, because older footage from past projects do not show this interlacing when I play them back in VLC… The only explanation I can come up with is that I used a different shutter speed when recording the newer footage. But would this actually account for the interlacing effect, when my capture settings were exactly the same?

[Samuel Hays]

Okay, I now have the external drive connected to my MacBook via a USB 3.0 cable, and I am no longer having the freezing issue. However, when I try to capture footage in FCP 7, it won’t capture video for some reason. Only audio. And I’m pretty sure I have the right capture setting. It says “DV NTSC 48 kHz,” so it’s set for video too, not just audio…

[Samuel Hays]

I’m running OS 10.8.5. And no, there are no adapters in the chain.

The problem is that when I turn on my camcorder (connected to the Lacie drive), it causes the whole drive to become unresponsive, in addition to FCP. But when I power down the camcorder, the drive becomes responsive again. So clearly, or ostensibly, there is an issue with power consumption. I should probably note that drive itself (a Lacie rugged drive) is not directly connected to a power supply. It is simply connected to the computer via a FW 800 cable. Is that adequate for power?

[Samuel Hays]

Hmm, it’s still not working. I’m using mini DV, by the way. For some reason when I have the camera connected through the Lacie drive, FCP wants to freeze, like it can’t handle it. But the instant I disconnect the camera, FCP unfreezes.

[Samuel Hays]

Thanks for the info, guys. I got it to the point where the red is now tolerable.

[Samuel Hays]

Okay, I had a funny feeling it was maybe something like that. …Do you happen to know why that is exactly? Strange….

[Samuel Hays]

Thanks for the tip.

[Samuel Hays]

OK, it looks like I finally figured it out.

For some strange reason, FCP was automatically distorting the source video when I dragged it into the timeline. But I couldn’t detect it because the canvas window was set to “correct aspect ratio” and so it looked just fine to the eye. All I had to do was go ‘Viewer > Motion > Distort,” and change the aspect ratio from ‘-12.5’ (still have NO idea why it did that), to ‘0’. The exported video looks fine, so I guess that was it.

…Figures that it was a simple fix. Although now I will have to tediously alter the aspect ratio on 100+ shots!

[Samuel Hays]

Thanks for the reply. You may be right, I’ll have to try ‘square pixels’ tomorrow. Do I have to do that under ‘Export > QuickTime Movie’?

Also, if it helps to clarify my situation, here’s a screenshot. On top is a video exported with a ‘HD 1280 x 720 16:9’ setting, using QT conversion. On the bottom is the original video with the info box. It looks like the source video was 720p, but it says ‘actual size 688,’ so I don’t know….