Capture Scratch

Getting the following error message when I go to capture a clip - "An error occured finding one or more of the specified capture scratch volume(s). Verify that both audio and video scratch disks are set in the preferences. "

Never got this before. What can I do?

Do exactly what it says! Go to the Final cut pro system settings and make sure you have a scratch disk allocated. You may have previously had a disk set as the scratch disk that is no longer hooked up to the computer.

While I would be sure you've probably checked this, there is another instigator that will cause this error message: that little foward slash that has gotten me when I edit for periods w/o needing to capture regularly. Then, when I'm in a hurry to capture some footage and to write a description thereof, again quickly, I have erred by occasionally using this usually harmless hyphenation (as above, for "without", or more commonly, "beach pan w/CU," or the likes). In any case, FCP will stumble w/ these clips and this message will appear. Simply remove those offending slashes and things should capture w/o incident.
But, if this is not your case, then by all means do as Mr. Nolan indicates, check the settings.
Hope this helps.

It was the slash mark in the clip names - that's why it was intermittent and driving me crazy - Thanks for your promp[t response.

Nice catch, Frank! This should be in the FAQs -- another case of FCP not reporting a problem accurately and confusing the user.

>>another case of FCP not reporting a problem accurately and confusing the user.
<<

Actually, it is reporting correctly, because in (flavours of) Unix the forward slash does the same thing as it does in a web address - it indicates a subdirectory or the one before it.

So just like [www.lafcpug.org] means 'the phorum section at www.lafcpug', something like "beach w/CU" means the CU file or subdirectory of the 'beach w' directory.

Um. OK. Yes, I am being a geek, but I thought it might help understand why this happens

<<<Um. OK. Yes, I am being a geek, but I thought it might help understand why this happens >>>

Absolutely correct. The machine didn't return an error because you did something perfectly valid--just not what you intended. There are a number of "magic" characters and it's necessary to avoid them, like * and ?. They all mean something special to the operating system.

Koz