Log and Capture trouble - EMERGENCY DEADLINE TOMORROW!!!!

Hello,
I'm running FCP HD 4.5 on a G5 on Panther 10.3.9 with a 1.8 processor and a gig and a half of RAM.
The main problem here is how my computer is talking to the firewire device. Even when I started the computer up, it was slow to respond and acted strangely with the camera on and connected via firewire. When I turned the camera off it worked fine. I repaired Disk Permissions and everything worked fine, but when I started using the program everything went screwy.
When I open the Log and Capture feature it either says it is unable to initialize or it takes forever and finally give me an error that there's something wrong with my Quicktime and to check my hardware, or it just stalls out. with the camera connected and on, the timeline is sluggish and drops frames. With the camera off this problem is gone.
Is this something simple I've missed? I'm new to Panther... is there some setting for handling external firewire devices that I didn't know about in this version?
Please help, I'm cutting a promo reel for a reality show due into the Exec. Producers in the morning!!!! I'm down to the wire!!!!!
Some of you experts have really helped me before... derekmok I believe.... are you out there? I need you!
Ace

While I'm certainly not an expert. What version of Quicktime are you running? Have you recently upgraded any software i.e. quicktime or your OS. If so you may want to try this.
[docs.info.apple.com]

apparently 4.5 has a bug... and it affects the computers ability to tell it's firewire devices apart and gets all confused. Yay. I'm up sh*tcreek. I plugged it into the rear firewire port and it almost worked. but then it didn't. HELP

Never hook it to front port. Shut your Mac down and wait 10 minutes and try again. Also make sure camera is on and in VTR mode before you boot up FCP.

Sometimes re-installing QT helps

> apparently 4.5 has a bug... and it affects the computers ability to tell it's
> firewire devices apart and gets all confused.

That hasn't been the case as far as I've seen. All the 4.5 systems I've seen have operated smoothly. The 4.2-4.5 upgrade has been especially stable compared to past upgrades (eg. FCP2-FCP3).

Cameras are always iffy capture devices. If you're editing professionally, you should get a deck. I don't even have a separate PCI card for my DSR-11 and my ProMax FireWire drives and I haven't had a single failure in either FireWire drives or the capture device in the two years of owning this system.

Have you been unable to capture anything at all? You still didn't tell us what version of QuickTime you're using. Also, what camera is it? If your clips *have* been captured, I suggest editing without the external device, finish the picture edit, export a self-contained movie file, and either deliver that or find another station to output on.

If you're this pressed for time, you may even have to consider capturing using iMovie (NOT something I'd normally recommend, but it can get you usable clips).

This may be too late but may help you for next time. What hard drive are you capturing to? In the G5 you can put in another SATA drive it's easy and not too expensive. Are you capturing to the Boot drive? It will work and it's fast but not the best idea. Do you have your camera daisy chained to say a firewire drive don't do that plug it into it's own FW port and like Mike said don't use the front port. Also check your firewire cable and don't use those little iPod FW cables that came with the first iPods they don't transfer data as fast as a better FW cable.

Hey guys --

Curious... what's wrong with using the front port?

thanks
karl

I have problems with the front port and my Canon GL2 it just would not work. So I was with Mike on that. It seems to work fine for iPods and hard drives though.

Karl Hirsch wrote:

> Hey guys --
>
> Curious... what's wrong with using the front port?
>
> thanks
> karl

Cause no one seems to get it to work, that's why. Not sure what the reason is, other than its 400

ACE - do you have any other firewire devices conected other than your camera...I have had similar problems when I connect my @&#$ Lac Drive and the camera at the same time -
maybe you want to disconect all other firewire devices and jsut leave the camera...hope this helps


alex rodriguez