FCP crashes when camera/deck is hooked up

I am using a NTSC Sony DCR PC5 as a deck/capture device. Whenever I turn on View All Frames in External Video, FCP gives me the spinning ball and I have to force quit. But FCP has no problem when the PAL Sony DCR TRV900E camera is hooked up.

The problem is I need to capture an NTSC tape.

Is FCP HD incompatible with this model camera? Any reason why we can't use this camera as a deck?

As far as I know, all my settings in FCP are correct, set to NTSC capture, etc.

Thanks.
Sharon

FCP4.5/G5

It's not the Capture Settings I'd worry about but your Video Playback Settings and Device Control Settings. Are they still set to PAL?

What happens when you open the Log and Capture window? Do you get a preview? Do you get device control.

Andy

Andy. All the settings are set to NTSC including Device Control and Video Playback. I'm still working on it, but right now two things are happening. FCP refuses to open/shut down while the camera is connected. Once I disconnect, FCP is normal. I connected the cam after FCP opened and it gives me error "unable to initialize video deck".

Sharon

Well, I've now tried everything I can think of. I've switched out DV/firewire cables, trashed prefs, restarted, checked settings. Nothing works.

Could it be the dv port on the camera?

Sharon

What other peripherals do you have hooked up to the computer? I'm talking ALL of them -- don't count out a little old scanner just because it's using USB. The computer talks to all of its peripherals and any number of them can be messing with your FireWire connection to the new camera.

How full are your disks? Check your system and all connected drives -- all of them must have 10-20 per cent free space. An overfilled system drive begins to have all kinds of voodoo problems. And make sure you're not capturing/rendering to your system drive, a surefire way to fill, frag and kill it.

Did you upgrade to QuickTime 7? I know, tired old question, but since you're working on FCP4.5, it has to be asked.

If none of the above apply, I'd try switching on FCP without the camera, and then turning OFF all your Video Playback and External Video. (Video Playback settings do not affect capturing -- only the Capture Preset and Device Control Preset count.) Now turn on your camera and see if FCP can function. Freezes and crashes happen when FCP is trying to communicate with a device that doesn't speak its language, or is damaged/mis-configured in some way.

If you can get FCP not to crash or freeze this way, try another set of presets. Don't use Easy Setup -- it's a trap that can screw you up if you don't check the settings yourself. Go into the Audio/Video Settings and actually look at the presets, and list them to us. You may have to try FireWire Basic or Non-Controllable Device settings.

Hi Derek. Thanks for your help.

Here's what I have:

- 500GB Lacie drive (26GB free)
- 230Gb Lacie Porsche drive (63GB free)

NTSC camera is plugged into Porsche drive, which is hooked up to G5.
500GB Lacie is plugged straight in the G5

On this G5, it seems the local disk is partitioned - one is 35GB with 5.84GB free. The other is 114GB with 44.25 free.

All the capture settings were done manually, no easy set -up. quicktime version is 7.0.4.

I also tried capturing on the NTSC cam straight onto the G5 with NO peripherals connected and it's still doesn't see it. It was crashing at one point when we hooked up the cam, and also at one point, FCP saw the cam briefly, but we turned it off for some reason, I think to put a tape in and it never came back. Now it doesnt seem to see the camera at all, though the the camera seems to be working perfectly fine otherwise.

Sharon

Derek. One other thing.
I'm getting an i/o error in final cut, and some media appears to have gotten corrupted, I can't reconnect it. And in the Finder, its no longer readable.
Thanks.
Sharon

Marta,
Run Disk Warrior on that drive to rescue any corrupt files.

As far as the crashing goes, first of all, the PC5 is pretty ancient - and I'm not even sure that it's on the compatibility list - please check that out - it may be time for a new dv deck or camcorder.

Barring that, unplug the FireWire drives and see if you can capture to your boot drive. If you can capture to the boot drive, then you know that your FireWire drives are at the root of the problem (which they typically are - there's a reason Apple cannot recommend them).

If I were you, I'd get a PCI Card with additional FireWire slots on it and attach my drives to that. Take the camcorder and put it on the native FireWire port.

If it's been very long since you last erased your drives, you should do that the next time you are in between projects.



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