FCP Timecode Breaks on Import - Batch Capture
 

I was really frustrated for the last week while tryig to batch capture using FCP HD. I have recently upgraded and was unfamiliar with my problem.
I am capturing footage to an external firewire drive and am being alerted by FCP that I am experiencing time code break. Turns out my system was having trouble writing to the drive fast enough. I captured to my internal and all was fine.
I looked and looked for this answer and found it recently by referencing number of places. I thougt I'd just put it out there.

I assume this is a firewire drive? (since you are on a Mac). I'm not
sure how all of this works on a Mac, but on the PC I've had similar
problems in the past when capturing to a firewire drive. The problem
seems to appear since both the drive and camera are on the same
bus. Switching to USB2 (which my drive also supports) fixed the
problem on my end.

What is the speed of the firewire drive? It needs to be 7200 RPM with an 8MB buffer, minimum. How is the drive formatted? Did you just start capturing to it right out of the box, or format it first? It should be formatted with the HFS+ format...journalling OFF.

Also, what sort of deck/camera were you using? Evidently FCP doesn't always play nice with Canon camcorders. I capture to several different external firewire drives from my VX-2000 without problem. They are connected to separate firewire 400 ports on my G4 tower however.

Shane- It's a 7200rpm and, yes, I actually DID start using it out of the box. I never thought to format it. In fact, neither of my externals are formatted (they are the first ext's I've ever had -so, lay off, I'm new at this, huh).

Boyd - You guessed it, buddy. I'm using an XL2. I understand that Mac and Canon are at odds lately.

Botha you fellas - I notice two different shaped plugs for firewire. One is a square and the other is a long, thin pentagonal shape. What's the difference?

I'd like to use the excuse that I'm an old man and don't know much about computer stuff, but the fact is, I'm 28 and have been using computers for over half of my life.

You need to format the drive...then you can capture to it. And you need to find a deck (I know...another expense) if you can help it.

The two differently shaped plugs are two different types of firewire. The one that kind of curves at one end (pentagon shaped) is FW 400. The square one is FW800.

Thanks, Shane. I knew the difference was 4 or 8 hundred, I just didn't know which was doing which.
I'm thinking about getting a cheap DV camcorder instead of a deck (as mentioned in a post 'round these parts).
What is the effect of a formatted drive? Just better performance?

The format of the drive means that it can actually perform how you want it to with Final Cut. If it is the format that came out of the box (generic PC format), then the mac can see it, but it isn't formatted to deal with the high data rate of DV footage...so it will drop frames. You need to format it so that it can deal with DV data rates, and have journalling off, as it causes drop frames as well.

The cheap camera route is one way...but mind you with all the fast forwarding and rewinding and capturing the wear and tear will kill the thing, fast. The mechanism isn't designed to be a deck.

But I understand budget constraints...so you gotta do what you gotta do.

Before formatting anything take a quick look. Many drives are PC formatted "out of the box" but there are also Mac versions. Click on the icon for your external drive then choose "get info" from the Finder's File menu. Look at the Format item. If properly formatted it will say "Mac OS Extended." If it says that then you're fine. If it says something else then you need to format using the Disk Utility in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder on your boot drive.

Wow. Thanks, fellas. I put this post on here so that anyone having the problem that I just solved will have to go no further than the DVIN search. But it ended up being pretty helpful to your truly. I appreciate it, guys.

I got these drives at the local Apple Store (the helpful employee even sold me a FW cable despite there being on in the box. My regards to Mr. Jobs).
Formatting involves losing all information, I assume.

See my post above before formatting; if you got at the Apple store it may very well be properly pre-formatted. Yes, you will lose everything by formatting if you use the Apple utility. I think there may be 3rd party software that can avoid this but not really sure and it probably isn't worth the trouble. You said "drives" (plural). Do you have more than one? If so you could copy everything to one drive, format the other one, then copy back over.

I'm sure you can return the firewire cable to the store if you don't need it.