I cant seem to capture more then one file at the time. If I try I get the spinning ball of hell and I am forced to do a forced quit. I have a single processor 1.25 gigaherz processor two internal hard disks with sufficient space left. I run fcp 4.0. Capturing device is canon xl1. Need help urgently!!

Try:

1- Use firewire basic protocol instead of firewire. It's in the device control menus somewhere.
2- you cannot capture if there isn't sufficient pre-roll. FCP has to rewind before the clip starts, get the tape moving and then start capturing. You can change this setting under device control to 2 seconds. Next time remember to shoot room tone or ambience at the beginning of your tape.

I don't know why you're getting the beach ball, so maybe those things above won't help. You could always try capture now and then using DV start/stop detection on the clip.

David,
More information required. At what point does FCP freeze? After capturing one clip and before cueing for the second? Are you doing Batch Capture or Capture Now? (Your message suggests you are logging first, and then doing your capture.) Is this a phenomenon that has been ongoing since you've used the system or is it a new development? I assume that you have already checked to make sure that your preferences for scratch disk, etc. are correct for your system?

it freezes before completion of capture. So it runs for a while and then the spinning ball comes. Its on batch capture and on capture now. Before I could not capture more then one now even one is impossible. This problem was not here before. I have trashed all my settings and even reinstalled FCP again. It seems to be only related to capture, everthing else seems to work okay.

Did you trash all three FCP preference files? If not, do a search, I've posted on this many, many times.

yes I have and I have reinstalled the program, the only thing different seems to me to be the downgrading I did recently....Any more suggestions?

The downgrading could definitely be a problem. Are you using the correct version of QuickTime Pro and is it registered?

The funny thing is when I request the info under quicktime it doesnt show up..meaning when I ask what version it is it says player 6.4. When I go to systempreferences and activate quicktime from there i get it telling me its version 6 Pro...

Do you have two versions of QT on your computer now?

Yes one in a folder called 'previous system'. I know stuff out of this folder is active because it would would work in finder and so on.. I tried to delete the folder but I cant empty my trash because I get an error telling me 'stuff cannot be read'
greetings

It would almost be impossible for those apps to be used unless you moved them out of the old system folder, then moved them back or you're using other apps in that folder. This may be a case where you want to erase your HD and reinstall from your installation disks (OS and software).

I did not but have now, moved them to the trash..but cannot delete them.
But I seem to have a firewireproblem !

I tried avid to capture and it captured or it gave me timecode warnings and aborted capture even do I told it to capture if there are timecode breaks.
But when reviewing the material it is jumpy, not 25 frames but more like 12 frames on both programs!

I solved the problem, I simply reinstalled the OS and all my problems went away!! thanks everybody

greetings