capturing live video in FCP

I am shooting 80 hours of training on minidv tape on my DVX100 and want to simultaneously capture to my Firewire Hard Drives. I have a 2x2gig G5 and would like feedback about if this is reliable enough to go live.

Can I expect FCP to capture flawlessly for 2 hours again and again???

I am exploring using Serious Magic DV Deck running on a PC, using MacDrive Software to cature straight to my Mac formatted firewire Hard Drive as my primary solution.

I have looked at Firestore from Focus Enhancement and it is very expensive and not enough storage.

Please share real experience not guesses. Thanks.

as long as your capture drives are big enough it should be ok. just start the cam and do a capture now - and youre off to the races!

i did it a couple years back with a 40 min straight capture and it worked flawlessly out to an external firewire drive.

I record the odd interview 30 min to 1 hour and have never had a problem with my G4-933, 1.25 GB ram and loads of internal harddrive.
Have not captured to external.
Bj

Capturing live to FCP is a time-saving technique, but I would never do it because there's no hard media archive - no tape, no DVD, no nothing in case the FCP process dies or produces weird video.

Not that recording to tape or DVD can't do the same, but with G4 and below known glitches with firewire buss and drives, I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket and try to import live.

I shoot tape, and simultaneously do a DVD with a $99 DVD burner in 60-min mode from Target, when in studio.

Even if I had a camera with no on-board tape, I would at least capture to tape or DVD... or tape, DVD AND FCP, but never just FCP.

Thanks. I plan to record minidv tape in the camera while live capturing to firewire drives in FCP. I am running tests right now with the setup. Once setting the preferences to no device control, the capture seems to be reliable. I can even stop the dv tape and change it while still going live to the drive.

I am trying to avoid purchasing the dvdeck software, which only runs on PC, then using MacDrive software to burn to mac formatted firewire drives.

I will try to avoid firewire bus issues as much as possible.

At least have a tape backup chum.



Kevin Monahan
Social Support Lead, DV Products
Adobe
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro Community Blog
Follow Me on Twitter!

Yes, I will go to tape. ProMax suggests I add a 2nd firewire bus on my g5 to insure no bus issues.

i gotta tell ya, ive been going out to firewire on about 12 different g3, g4 and g5's to promax fw drives on the internal fw bus (on both laptops and desktops) and have yet to se a single problem...

That is encouraging news. With all that FCP can do, it seems silly to set up another system just for live capture.

Yeah we often capture from the studio (green screen) room live to FCP for a technology show. No problems if you are in non-controllable device mode. And yeah, running a tape in the camera as well.

I'm trying to get FCP to see more than 2 frames of live video before it gives me a "End of tape has been encountered" warning and quitting it's aquisition. I'm using a Sony HVR-A1U HDV camera. When I choose Log and Capture it immediately requests a clip title and goes directly to capturing upon receiving a title. I don't even get the opportunity to do a "Capture Now" using a non-controlled device as I've read previously. I'm trying to do a Chroma Key project and would love to see the live capture so as to see the impact of my lighting in the video scope (i.e. hotspots) and I also have a great interest in recording to hard drive as a backup to tape. Can anyone help me. Thanks in advance.

I don't know this for sure, but I wonder if it's even possible to do this with HDV given the nature of the long GOP?

So, in your capture settings, device control is set to 'Non-controllable device', right? What is the capture/input setting? DV NTSC? HDV? Generic?

Also, what version of FCP, quicktime and OS are you running?

Thank you for your quick reply. Yes, when I plug in my HDV camera
into any one of my Macs it instantly wants to start capturing after I
put in a main clip title. To answer your questions:

- I've tried many combinations of setting on a few Macs just hoping
to get one to work with my camera.
- The 3 Macs I have are:
- Dual 2.7 GHZ PowerPC G5, OS 10.4.9, QT 7.1.5, FCP 5.0.4 (waiting
for my 5.1 media disks to arrive)
- Dual 1.0 GHz PowerPC G4, OS 10.4.8, QT 7.1.5, FCP 5.0.4 (working
on this one right now)
- 2 GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook, OS 10.4.8, QT 7.1.3, FCP 5.0.4
- Yes, I've tried the "non-controllable device" and "Generic"
capture setting. Only gives me a maximum of 2 frames before it
states a "The end of tape has been encountered" warning stopping any
further acquisition.

I hope that you can help me. I've done as much research into this as
I know how (online, manuals, forums, colleagues). Thanks for
anything you can do to help me find an answer to this question. Will
FCP 5.1 have any better result for me?

Thanks again,

Dan van der Werf
Digital Media Analyst
New Media - Managed Services
Academic Information & Communication Technologies
University of Alberta
780.492.7500
danv@ualberta.ca

Can you do a test with another camera - not HDV - to try and narrow down the cause of the problem? Does it work OK with a non-HDV cam?

FCP 5 was HDV capable - so I don't think FCP 5.1 will make much difference.

What order do you connect the camera and turn everything on? Someone recently told me they solved a 'not seen' issue with a HDV camera by changing the order of start-up.