Good suggestion, Chris. If Final Cut is set to use the FireWire for an external monitor and does not "see" a Firewire device when it starts-up all kinds of funky "fropped frames" stuff can happen during both capture and playback. FCP3 became a bit more forgiving and at least sets the session's external monitor preferences to "None" when it sees no device.

Jeff,

Somebody listed a solution to this in an earlier thread...but I think it's only available if you have the new 3.0 version.

In preferences, you can turn off the option that tells FCP to stop capturing when frames are dropped.

I did that...and I was able to capture normally (before I kept getting the dropped frames warning). At the end of the capture, I still got a warning about dropped frames, but when I played it back, everything was fine. No dropped frames.

If you have 3.0, try it out and see what happens.

(strange...mine worked fine for awhile too before the dropped frames problem cropped up)

OK...here's the update...I tried Chris' solution but didn't solve the problem. A fellow XL1/FCPer in another forum suggested I switch the "Capture device" to "Firewire Basic". I am not seeing the option...I'll continue to look for it as I now wonder if this could be the problem.

I'm on my way over lunch to visit with a friend who uses FCP 3.0 to see if I have any better luck there.

I'll keep 'ya posted...thanks again for your assistance.

@#$%^@#$
 

Got my friend's comp to capture just fine from my XL1 just fine. When I came back, made the adjustment to "Firewire Basic" I still ran into the problem. This is painful...

Well, at least that narrows it down to the computer. Best of luck,

Ugh. I feel your pain! My neck and shoulder are both getting all cramped up because of it!

Not long ago I kept getting the "dropped frames" warning in Final Cut Pro 2. I turned off the preference that says "Abort capture on dropped frames". I still got the warning when capture was complete, but the footage was fine. At least for awhile. Not too long after that I noticed that the video files were actually dropping frames and getting pretty messed up. The solution was to defragment my capture drive. Once that was done everything cleared right up. If you can defrag your drive, please try that! Unfortunately the Mac OS does not give a built in means to defrag like Windows does.

Have you tried switching the firewire cable that goes from your XL1 to your computer to the OTHER firewire port on the back? It's a long shot, but we gotta try everything.

Capturing in Macintosh
 

I would like to use Mac for two purposes:

1) monitoring video images by capturing them through firewire.
2) editing them in iDVD, or FCP.

1) is more like cheap way to view my PAL images in Mac monitor.
Depending on the quality of image in Mac monitor, I will decide to buy a separate PAL monitor.

I tried to view the images by capturing in PC and Premire, but
the video images looked dark and zagged in PC monitor.

Does anyone know the captured images look good in Mac monitor, or look dark and zagged like PC?

Any News, Jeff?
 

How is your capture problem going?

Well...turns out, after all was said and done...after I was ready to blowout the whole computer and start from scratch (painful thought) I realized that, while I defragmented my A/V drives I had not defragmented the boot drive in quite some time.

Turns out, a half-hour with Norton Utilities appears to have done the trick.

I got the project done in a marathon Thursday session and have a happy client who'll receive their project on schedule (Monday).

I'd like to thank each and every one of you for your assistance ...after investing in equipment & time it was downright depressing to realize that when any one part of the entire chain goes down the whole operation comes to a halt.

Lesson learned...I'll be defragmenting ALL drives on a regular basis. BTW...the suggestions that were given in this and other forums were all helpful as it gave me a chance to tweak FCP to run better with the XL1 setup.

Thanks again to you all. Hopefully I can return the favor in the not too distant future! :)

Really happy to hear your success! What a relief it must have been. Looks like Joe rang the bell on this one! Good thinking Joe.

The gamma setting on PCs make images look darker in general. This is a problem in designing web pages and working with images for the internet because they are viewed on different platforms. Colors do look much brighter on the Mac. As far as the images looking jagged - that might be the specific monitor or resolution. I use a Mac with a flat panel LCD display, so my picture is very bright and I've never had problems with jagged (pixilated) images in video (unless they were poor quality to begin with or rendered in a low resolution).

That said - (no matter which format you use - PAL or NTSC) having a separate monitor (PAL/NTSC) is a big plus. No computer monitor you use can show you what the image would look like on a television.

Derrick

I do all my work on a Mac, then when doing the final compression for web I use Cleaner Pro. It has a Gamma adjustment setting for PC that allows you to crank out two copies of your film, one for Mac monitors and one for PC monitors, and also the code to insert in your HTML page that will detect which monitor is being used by the viewer then select the appropriate film.

Apple G5 and burning DVDs
 

Hi,
Does anyone knows when the Apple G5 comes? I was thinking about getting the G4, but now I heard rumors that the G5 is just about to be launched. Does anyone knows what the differences will be in terms of using it for editing DV?

My second question is: I will also buy a XL1S PAL version. Can I choose using FCP3 and a G4 to burn DVDs which can be viewed either using a DVD NTSC and a DVD PAL (different DVDs) ? As far as I can see I will need to convert the output to record on VHS in NTSC when I caputure the DV on PAL. I am just not sure if the DVD standard is the same using NTSC or PAL.

Best regards,
Thomas B. Petersen

I don't think you'll see a G5 for awhile. Apple wants to sell a bunch of the upgraded G4s. I just moved from a G3 to a dual G4 -- it was, as expected, faster. The G5 will bump that up some, no doubt. You can count on that whatever you get will be outdated soon after you get it -- such is the nature of computers. When you're ready to upgrade, just dive in. After all, when the G5 gets introduced, can the G6 be far behind? :)

I'll let someone else take on the PAL/DVD question.

Cheers

As far as I know, Final Cut Pro is not a standards converter. You can capture and edit in PAL, but then your output is PAL also.