Lost External Video on FCP4
 

I'm using FCP4 and my external video has been in and out, recently it went out and I haven't got it back yet. I have my mac connected to a JVC mini DV player via firewire with a 13" video monitor connected. Are there any settings I need to tweak to get playback...back on my video monitor?

Hi Jerrod and welcome to DVinfo. Have you seen this thread?

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=49838

FCP 4 is getting really old and there are a number of issues with new versions of QuickTime and MacOSX. Did you recently upgrade any other software on your machine? It's also possible that software update did this automatically depending on your settings.

Also, are you really on FCP 4? You should update to FCP 4.5, it's free and you should be able to find it somewhere on Apple's website in the downloads area. There were a variety of patches to it for compatibility with MacOSX 10.4 before Apple moved on to FCP 5.

Thanks Boyd,
I read that thread and will try the steps later tonight.

I also plan on updating to FCP 4.5HD this weekend.

Well, I tried the steps posted in the sticky topic but still no playback from my deck to monitor.

Is my next step to try a firewire card? I can't find my serial number for FCP4 at the moment to upgrade to 4.5HD.

I think the serial number is displayed on the startup splash screen, isn't it? Probably also available in the "About..." window.

What kind of Mac are you using? There are inexpensive firewire PC cards for powerbooks and PCI cards for G4/G5 Power Macs, but nothing for iBooks or iMacs.

Also you mentioned using FCP 4 on an Intel Mac in another thread. That isn't going to work since it's a Power PC program which isn't supported in emulation mode.

I have a G4 Tower, 768mhz with an ATI AGP card that I'm doing all my production on at the moment, so a PCI Firewire card is an available option.

Heh, I used to have that exact same machine. Gave it to a friend 3 years ago to replace her Windows 98 machine for web surfing :-)