Specific Question: capture HDV in FCP using USB 2 drive?
 

Pardon if this has been covered before, but I was wondering if anyone had any specific experiences that matched what a client is asking me:

He ONLY has a MacBook, and wants to capture a great many HDV tapes to an external drive. Since the FireWire bus will be tied up with HDV transfer, that really only leaves the USB 2.0 port available on his laptop. Yes yes yes, I know MacBook isn't officially supported, but it works fine for FCP stuff for what he needs.

So has anybody done exactly THIS, or has yes/no experience with it?
-on a MacBook
-using FCP 5.1.x
-capturing HDV footage
-using a USB 2 drive for capture scratch

Anyone? Tried it?

-mike

C'mon Mike...you of all people should know this. USB 2.0 doesn't work for capturing video. It is plenty fast transfer wise, but it sends data in packets...bursts of information. Video requires a steady throughput of data.

There are PCI express firewire adapter cards out there, so what they need to do is get one of these and then they will have a second firewire bus.

Now, do I get a piece of that consulting fee?

(lol)

Ahhhh.....
 

Did NOT know that - this client only has a MacBook, so it is their only choice, they have no expansion capabilities.

So I guess their best answer would be to capture to the internal SATA drive and then copy the files over if it doesn't work in practice.

-mike

And I failed to notice that the MacBook doesn't have a PCIexpress slot. Sheesh.

Yeah, they can try to capture to the internal drive, then transfer. I haven't had a problem capturing to my internal drive on my G4 Powerbook, nor have I had an issue daisy chaining my camera to a drive to my computer and capturing. Have them try both and see what works best.

Or is this YOU? Because you have the MacBook as well...

I know the old "I have this friend see..."

Ahh2...or Ah Choo?
 

Nope, not me, though I do have one!

: )

I had heard BITD that you shouldn't daisy chain to capture as it pulled the whole chain down to FW100 speeds. But if that works, hey, I'll have him try it.

The main thing - what is a MacBook owner to do?

-mike

My very first setup was an iBook G3, Final Cur Pro 3, an external 80GB firewire drive and a Canon GL1 (still have the drive and the camera). I daisy chained the camera to the drive and captured DV all day long. Even used that setup for work I did on a feature film(SPARTAN), on the set making last minute changes and feeding a monitor on the set.

So this SHOULD work for a MacBook. But since I don't have one, I cannot tell for sure. Test test test.