Drop Frames While Capturing On Fcp

[Prashanna Jayaseelan]

BEFORE I START I JUST WANTED TO SAY WARM HELLO TO EVERYONE ON THIS SITE - ITS AWESOME AND I'VE BEEN WATCHING AND LEARNING FROM EVERYONE HERE, I JUST SUBSCRIBED TWO DAYS AGO.

MY PROBLEM: Im trying to capture my footage from my XL2 via firewire which is connected to a external 500GB Seagate Barracuda drive and that drive is connected to my MAC - I try capturing and I receive messages of dropped frames.

SOLUTIONS THAT I'VE TRIED:A)I got another external and hooked it up the same way and I get the same problem
B)I hooked it up straight to my MAC and it worked perfectly, only I don't enough space [so that eliminated my DV cable from not working, and my settings for capturing was eliminated, the camera was eliminated, my MAC firewire slot was eliminated]

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS: A) external enclosure (I tried a second enclosure and it still gave me that same problem)
B)hard drive (this was a second drive I replaced but still gave me a problem)


Can someone please help me out with this....Maybe I am doing something wrong...

Thank you

[Todd Giglio]

Hi Prashanna,

Are you using a laptop or desktop? I'm assuming it's a laptop since you only seem to have 1 firewire port. Let us know what Mac you are using and we might be able to point out the problem. I know on my G5, one of my firewire ports doesn't work with the camera (it does with other firewire devices...). Switching to a different firewire port fixed the problem.

Todd

ps. welcome to the forum. I love this site.

[Prashanna Jayaseelan]

Hey Todd
thanks for your reply - I am currently using a G4 (not the one with the intel chip) and yes it is a laptop. I connected my camera straight to the firewire port and worked fine but when i connected the external it didn't - so would it still be the firewire port that has a problem?


thank you

[Todd Giglio]

Prashanna,

It could be that since you are daisy chaining the firewire port (going from the firewire port to the hard drive to the camera) that it's having problems doing the 'dual' task. I would suggest trying out a USB external hard drive. Some units are pretty fast and can keep up with the task (USB 2?). I also have a G4 powerbook and I'm able to use an external USB drive for multiple audio captures without a hitch (video obviously needs more, but at least it would help you trouble shoot the problem).

Let me know if that helps.

Todd

[Boyd Ostroff]

You aren't specific enough about your laptop.... is it a powerbook G4? If so then you have a PC card slot. You can buy a cheap firewire card for that slot (I got one for about $30 at Best Buy a couple years ago). This will give you a second completely independent firewire port and should solve the problem. But if you have an iBook there isn't any slot, so that approach doesn't work.

I just typed "powerbook cardbus firewire" into Google and got lots of results. Here's one at Best Buy, looks similar to mine but I guess the price has gone up :-)

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1074787928197

It's interesting, but it seems that people with Canon camcorders have a lot of firewire issues on Macs. I have 3 different Sony cameras and have never seen these problems on my old Powerbook G4. Is there perhaps another camera or deck which you can use for capturing?

[Prashanna Jayaseelan]

Thank you both for your suggestions - I will first try using the USB connector if not I will go to BestBuy canada and grab a firewire PCI card:

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/prodde...44&catid=20387

I will let you guys how it turns out.

[Prashanna Jayaseelan]

The PCI card unfortunately is not compatible with a MAC unfortunately - I will have to look somewhere else.

And yes I am using a powerbook G4 which has a slot.

Thanks

[Todd Giglio]

Check out this link:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firew...i-pcmcia-cards

This company is very good (I've bought a lot of stuff from them in the past). They have a firewire 400 card for $19.99 and it works with your G4 Powerbook. They also have a firewire 800 card. Check them out.

Todd

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Prashanna Jayaseelan

The PCI card unfortunately is not compatible with a MAC unfortunately

The card you need for the mac is the one in my link. If your local Best Buy doesn't carry then you can probably mail order. Here's the page from the manufacturer's website:

http://www.dynexproducts.com/pc-507-...mcia-card.aspx

Or try some other stores, there are a variety of companies who make these cards. You can try USB, but it is really not recommended for editing video on the Mac. The real-world throughput is worse than firewire 400 and it has trouble with sustained high speed transfers since other peripherals also use it.

[Prashanna Jayaseelan]

Hey guys I really appreciate all your help.
I tried capturing using the USB which did not happen at all, then I just plugged in the firewire see if I can capture again and all of a sudden it started capturing without the dropped frames..."ghost in the machine"

I am not quite sure what happened or how it happened but I am able to capture now without the dropped frames.

Thank you - I am gonna try and locate the problem after I finish capturing all 15 tapes of the event that I shot.

[Harry Bromley-Davenport]

It is often a source of problems to capture to external drives.

I went through this too.

When I captured exclusively to my internal drive all went well. I then transferred stuff to external.

Best

harry

[Jonathan Jones]

Since you are on a Mac G4 laptop, here are a few concepts to keep in mind in context of your dilemma;

- It seems that you have already verfied that your drive works well, and your firewire port is properly functioning.

- I don't know the specifics of your Seagate drive, but I assume it is running at least 7200 rpm. Anything slower could cause dropped frames.

- If you are running a stock configuration of your G4 laptop, then you are probably sitting on no more than 512 MB of RAM. If that is the case, you will want to add more RAM. Your model maxxes out at 2 GIGS, but you don't necessarily have to max it out. Getting it up to a Gig should do just fine.

- Keep in mind that just because the cord works with one device, doesn't mean that it isn't causing a problem when trying to capture. Capturing is more intensive than standard file transfer or simple OS navigation. It is good to make sure you are using secure connections with good quality cables.

- If you are running on OS X Tiger (10.4.x) than you probably want to make sure you aren't running any Dashboard widgets in the background. (especially if you are already pushing the limits of your RAM as the Tiger OS alone really likes to have at least 512 MB just to breathe.) Having your widgets activated once and then deactivated can still keep some of them quietly running under the wire, and therefore causing resource drain, especially if you have alot of active widgets installed. You can turn them off using Activity Monitor, or simply re-boot the Mac prior to capture. Then, no widgets will be running until after you activated Dashboard, which I don't recommend doing until after your capturing is finished.

Hope this helps.
-Jon

[Prashanna Jayaseelan]

Well I've tried capturing with another consumer DV camera and I have no problem at all - so it must be the setting of the XL2. Does someone know what the settings are supposed to be if I am capturing with my XL2?

Thank you

[Jonathan Jones]

As long as your heads are clean and properly aligned, you shouldn't have to worry about capture settings on the cam itself....other than VTR (VCR) mode. The camera settings are for laying down the tape in the first place, but once your content is on the tape, capture from the cam into your NLE is going to be exactly the same whether it is being from the XL2 or a lower grade consumer dv cam.

Continued dropped frames for your XL2 capture could mean dirty heads.

-Jon

[Rik Sanchez]

Prashanna,
Make sure in your User Preferences the "Abort capture on dropped frames" box is unchecked. Put the pulldown menu under it to "Warn After Capture"

Also uncheck the "Report dropped frames during playback" box and
the "Abort ETT/PTV on dropped frames".

Maybe that will help. Good luck.