FCP not seeing your camera? Try this
 

If you're having problems with FCP not recogniziing your camera over firewire and have recently upgraded to Tiger and/or Quicktime 7 then see the following tech note on Apple's site. Hopefully it will solve your problem:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301852

Another solution...
 

I had this problem with my XM2 (but not my Panasonic NV-DA1). It was iffy, would sometimes see it, other times not, sometimes control the camera, sometimes not. After a lot of searching, I found that capturing direct to my external LaCie 320G with a FW800 link was the problem.

I now capture direct to the internal hard drive, and drop over afterwards. I've had no problems since.

Cheers.

The FW 800 issue was discussed in this thread recently:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=49843

If your machine supports it, add either a firewire PCI card (G4 and G5 towers) or a firewire carbus card (powerbooks). That would give you a second independent firewire bus and should avoid these issues. The cards are not expensive (I paid $30 at Best Buy for my Powerbook FW400 PC card).

Unfortunately, if you have an iBook, iMac or Mini you're stuck with the single internal firewire port. From what I've read, even though Macs have more than one firewire outlet, internally they share the same bus (including FW400 and FW800).

In addition to helping with camera/capture problems, having two separate busses speeds up copies between two firewire drives.

Thanks
 

I'll look into that... it's much more convenient for me to keep video on the big drive.

My machine (a G4 mirror door) has two FW400 outlets and one FW800. I have the disc plugged into the FW800 and the camera to a FW400. The other slot is free. Would adding a card still help?

I have no way to verify this, but like I said I've read in several places that all Macs only have one firewire bus. So it doesn't matter which outlet you plug into - 400 or 800 - they are feed into the same bottleneck. I suspect the only way you'll know for sure will be to buy a PCI card. I think the FW400 cards are pretty cheap but I've never shopped for one before.

Unable to locate Apple Firewire NTSC(720*480)
 

Boyd,

I already have Mac OS X with quicktime 7pro. But still i'm not able to connect to my Sony NTSC camcorder. I guess it would be the same with DVX100a. But iMovie HD detects the camera and downloads the media.

FCP5 gives the error Unable to locat the following external devices
Apple Firewire NTSC (720x480).

Any idea.
Hari

I have the same thing with my XL2. I've done wat apple told me with that link of taking out the receipts and then reinstalling Quicktime 7. I still can't get FCP to see my XL2, can't even control it.

FCP not seeing camera
 

Mike,

Run the software updates without fail on a daily basis. Once i ran the software updates on FCP the problem got fixed. Apparently its a bug.

regards,
Hari

Interesting. Let us know if this fixes your problem Mike.

Only one caveat here.... I'd suggest disabling automatic software updates. Do it manually and be a little bit careful, especially if you're using old versions of applications. In the past I've seen people get burned by things like new versions of Quicktime which aren't compatible with old versions of FCP.

It was a pain
 

Yeah. Both the products are owned by Apple and i don't know why they are not providing backward compatibility. I guess its all about money.

Still not working guys...i'm goin to continue to try other ways. Will have to reinstall 10.4. Thanks for the help guys.

wish i could help
 

Mike, Sorry to hear about that man. I know how you feel it sucks. Reinstallation is the last option.

Let us know,
thanks,
Hari

Here's what worked for me
 

I pulled hair out trying to edit to tape and then a simple print to video via FCP 5.04. BTW: OSX 10.4.4 QT 7.04 Pro. I tried various cameras and decks. Control and DV into the computer worked. DV out to deck didn't. I had a DEADLINE. Apple's advice of deleting QT numbered recepits- No Good. Finally, I dl'd the uninstall QT 7.04 re-install 7.01. Worked, thank grid. Upping to 7.03 DID NOT. So for use of this particular function, I have to be running 7.01. Otherwise, 7.04 works beautifully for me. I'll be an early downloader of 7.05, and hope they are acting on the clamor that they are hearing. This sort of thing makes me feel like I'm trying to make things work on a Wintel machine. I hope they are more together on mactel machines by the time i have one.

BTW: Not being a mystical wizard of UNIX, I followed the advice of runnung permissions repair in disk utility twice after restart from install. What's it hurt?

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/

I got frustrated with dropped frames when printing to video, and finally narrowed the problem down to my internal SATA media drive having been formatted with journaling enabled (which is the default). Suggest that you turn journaling off when you format any media storage drives, it seems to slow them down enough to cause problems.

If I buy Quiktime Pro will it make a difference? I just upraded from FCE to FCE HD and to do that I had to upgrade to the latest OSX (which was quite costly and I am wondering if it was worth it).

I had a guy who was going to pay me 150 bucks to edit a bachelor party film for him and couldn't do it because FCE HD couldn't locate any external capture device. (Oddly enough, imovie HD could although it took too long to letterbox each clip which it did automatically).

I tried the trick from the first link but I didn't have any Quicktime reciepts. I have already spent alot of money just to upgrade my editing to HD so i am not about to spend anymore unless I know that this works.

For the record, my internal dvd burner/player stopped working 1 year and 1 day after purchase, and I couldn't install the new OSX nor the FCE HD through my external DVD player and therefore had to do it through a friends mac via firewire.

I need help, I have a small little hobby company whose survival is at risk because of apples stupid little quirks!

thanks