Fam XDCAM tool. Any update?
 

I'm looking for the Fam software for my Sony F350 for Snow Leopard and have found out Sony have no fix for this. I know I'm a bit late with this but I have just got a new Mac and Snow Leopard. I also have discovered that my new Mac Pro has no firewire port.

How do I get around capturing footage from my Sony F350?


I still have my MBP with Leopard on it so I'll go this route until Sony get their Fam tool up and running.

It should have a FW800 port on it, so you just need an adaptor. But that doesn't solve the problem of using FAM with Snow Leopard. They haven't updated it yet. Your situation is the main reason I am becoming impatient. Many have said to not upgrade to Snow Leopard, but for people who are buying new Macs this isn't an option.

The good news is that we are approaching the projected time for the FAM update to be released. Hopefully won't be long now.

I'm also impatiently waiting for this update too. Could this be it:Sony : Final Cut Pro/XDCAM Transfer V2.11.0 : Other ?

I'd like to write clips back to disks in my PDW-U1 recorder.

I have 2.11 and while it sorts out the thumbnails issue, the actual FAM drivers have yet to be updated AFAIK.

I read somewhere that the update should be around March, hope this comes true.

Hey Simon, I have a firewire to 800 cable and this should work when the software comes out.
I was about to update my MBP with SL and the new FCS, glad I have held off.

Cheers

I have tried that link from Luc De Wandel and I cant seem to get this update

Hi Simon,

I downloaded it from the page that opens when you follow the link and it works perfectly. But indeed not for the FAM-driver to record on XDCAM-disk, apparently.

I hate myself for installing SL: not only did it create this problem, but my Mac pro is also slower in some circumstances and I had to buy some extra updates for older applications. Lesson learnt, the hard way: next time I'll wait at least a year before upgrading the operating system.

You just need to install the FAM driver from an earlier release, works just fine in Snow Leopard for me. Grab the 2.7.1 installer or similar and do a custom install. Simples.

Hi Andy,
does this allow you to write back to XDCAM-disk also? It doesn't seem to work for me...

Will double check that for you tomorrow Luc, it's been a while since I had to write back to disc ... it certainly works just fine for import via FAM.

ok, just checked write back to disc (XDCAM HD 1080i50 exported to PDW-F70) and it worked perfectly (OS X 10.6.2, FCP 7.0.1, XDT 2.11.0, FAM driver from earlier XDT install)

Thanks very much for checking, Andy. When I try to export a sequence to an XDCAM disk in my PDW-U1, I get the message "Read only - check REC INHIBIT on front panel". The disk is not write protected and there's no such thing as a front panel on the U1, except for the eject-button. Is this a Snow-Leopard related problem or is there something else I'm overlooking? I hope it's the latter...

There's one other thing that puzzles me: on page 29 of the operation manual of the PDW-U1 it says "The results of editing (on a Mac) cannot be written back to the disc loaded in the PDW-U1 using the PDZK-P1 XDCAM Transfer". But you can, obviously.

The U1 Utility software has a record inhibit option under the Setup/User Options menu. Perhaps this is switched on in your case...

Hey Luc,

Way back when the PDW-U1 was introduced unfortunately the write back didn't work on the Mac side, but support was eventually in March 2009, so thats been fixed for nearly a year now ... then again, looking around it seems the Snow Leopard / FAM compatibility issue is specifically one with the U1 rather than the FAM driver per se (as evidenced above). Note that my test was using an F70.

I'd dearly love to have a U1 in the rack to test for you, but sadly not.

Best
Andy

Peter, I checked and the 'write inhibit' is not on in the setup menu.
Andy, thanks for clearing this up. I guess it's a U1-Snow-Leopard problem. I can just hope Sony will correct this asap. Not that I write back movies to disk every day, but it comes in handy when I want to archive an edited sequence on something more reliable than a hard disk...

Guess I'll have to write my archives to 'normal' blurays for the time being.