New User: Hi everyone!
 

I'm a new user and I wanted to say Hi to everyone before I start getting useful info from everyone. I need help out of frustration. I'm having dificulty transferring video from fcp 4 to my optura xi. I currently have them connected via fire wire. I'm using print to video option to start the recording. My trouble is when I press play on fcp 4 it doesn't playback on my camera. How can I solve this problem. I hope someone is kind enough to help me. Thanks in advance!

Hi Eric,

Can you see the footage in your timeline on your video camera when you are in normal edit mode?

Thanks for the quick response.
 

No, I'm unable to see the timeline through my camera in normal mode.

Eric,

Since no one else seems to be offering you help, I will give it a shot. The only limitation is that I work with a German version of FCP. So I can't tell you the exact commands in English.

You need to activate your external video viewing. You can do that under the "view" (I think)(fourth command from the left on the command bar at the top of the screen). near the bottom of that fold-out menu there is a command, something like "view external video" with a triangle next to it. Go to that and select "all Frames" from the slide out menu.

If that works, you should be able to see what happens when you play your timeline on the camera monitor or in its viewfinder. If that's the case, then shift your entire seq. so that you have a little black at the beginning. Jump to the sequence beginning, push Rec. and play on your camera, let a little black record, and then hit play on your timeline. This is the most direct way to dump to tape.

I hope that this solves your problem.

Thanks so much Daniel Kohl
 

It worked perfect. Now I can duplicate DV's wooohoooo. I appreciate your help. I love the internet. Is there any way to get a better picture when capturing through FCP4. I noticed when I play back what I captured, it is not as clear as the actual DV. Thanks again Daniel.

Eric Eugenio

I have no idea what is causing that. The image quality should be the same going out as it was coming in. Did you have to render it at any point?

No.
 

I haven't rendered anything. I'm very new to editing and fcp4.

If you just want to duplicate your tapes, you could try borrowing another DV camcorder and hooking them up directly with an i-link (Firewire) cable. That is the way to get the best (theoretically speaking) transfer quality.

But I can't say what is degrading your image quality coming out of FCP, if you haven't applied any filters or effects.

Thanks again.
 

Thank you for all your help. For a sec I though I was by myself on this board. I appreciate your time and effort. Back to work!

Eric Eugenio

Hey Eric,

Welcome...I had a problem printing to video also (to a Canon camera).
For future reference everyone, I had multiple sequences open
and the print to video wouldn't work. When I closed all but one sequence,
I could then see the output to the DV camcorder when playing the sequence with the camera on. I then had no problems printing to video.

Joe

When you say the image is "degraded," are you talking about the image on the canvas/viewer shown on your computer monitor, or the image your camera displays on an external NTSC monitor? The canvas and viewer only show an approximation of the actual image at lower resolution and will always look worse. You can set the rendering quality level for these which might help, but that setting does not effect the data going out over firewire which is always at full quality.

Always make sure that your sequence settings match your capture settings. If they don't match then that could require rendering, and you might be looking at a lower quality preview.

Re: Thanks again.
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Eric Eugenio : For a sec I though I was by myself on this board. -->>>

Eric: that's probably because you entitled your post "Hi everyone" which wouldn't give people a hint that you're having problems and need some help. You'll get a little faster response if you use descriptive thread titles like "Having problems connecting camera over firewire" and also be sure to post in the proper forum.

Welcome to DVinfo, glad to have you with us!