dropped frames in FCP5

I've been working with FCP at work for around three years and finally decided to break down and buy a system for home. I purchased the G5 Dual 1.7 gig with 1- 1/2 GB ram with final cut 5 studio. I work exclusively with Mini DV at this time.

I've had the misfortune of having dropped frame issues when I want to output my program to tape from the timeline. It's become a big issue. I've done most everything recommended to prevent this but this is the first time I've had to deal with this since I've started using FCP.

In the last three years, I've purchase three other systems from Promax and not one of the systems behaved this badly.

Any suggestions out there?

What is your COMPLETE setup? What external drives (or do you have a SECONDARY internal) do you have? You cannot capture to the main drive with the OS.

do you have virus software installed?

First, Miko e-mailed me and asked:

"Hi Shane -
 
I've got a Seagate 160 Gb internal I had installed, also a 250Gb internal that came with the rig from apple that houses only applications (I still can't for the life of me figure why apple would give you that much space on a hard drive for applications. 
 
I thought I might switch the 250 for the 160 and drop all the applications on the 160 to free up the 250 for Final Cut Storage, but that would void my warranty. I also have a Lacie 160 external I use when I travel from my machine to other machines for certain projects.
 
My Mac is not online."

To which I replied:

Lets try to keep this stuff on the forum so that others can chime in with their suggestions and add their input.

The 160 GB isn't only for your applications, but music, sound effects (in .aiff form they take up a LOT of space) exported movies for DVD burning...all things not media for FCP.

How is the Seagate formatted? Should be MacOS Extended.


Now, in another post you say that you bought this at Fry's. OK. Now, once you install it you need to use the Disk Utility to format it Mac OS Extended BEFORE you capture footage to it. If you already have footage on it, move it to your system drive (if you have room), reformat the drive, then put it back...then try capturing to it again.

Hey Shane - it seems the Seagate drive was formatted correctly with the Mac extension when I purchased and had it installed.

Just to clarify something - I wanted to take a near completed project cut on a G5 dual 2.0 running Panther and Motion 1, and finish it on my new G5 dual 1.7 with Motion 2. I dropped the project into my Lacie 160 gb external drive and attempted to open the project in my new system.

The "open & close graphics" which were created using the original version of Motion went haywire when I opened them on my new system and caused me to have to create a QT of those segments and re-import them back onto the FCP5 timeline. That was the only way I could get them to play back correctly - and it seemed to work -

I got one master out to tape of that show before the system refused to let me spit out another. That was the beginning of my dropped frames issue. Shane Ross wrote:

> First, Miko e-mailed me and asked:
>
> "Hi Shane -
>  
> I've got a Seagate 160 Gb internal I had installed, also a
> 250Gb internal that came with the rig from apple that houses
> only applications (I still can't for the life of me figure why
> apple would give you that much space on a hard drive for
> applications. 
>  
> I thought I might switch the 250 for the 160 and drop all
> the applications on the 160 to free up the 250 for Final Cut
> Storage, but that would void my warranty. I also have a Lacie
> 160 external I use when I travel from my machine to other
> machines for certain projects.
>  
> My Mac is not online."
>
> To which I replied:
>
> Lets try to keep this stuff on the forum so that others can
> chime in with their suggestions and add their input.
>
> The 160 GB isn't only for your applications, but music, sound
> effects (in .aiff form they take up a LOT of space) exported
> movies for DVD burning...all things not media for FCP.
>
> How is the Seagate formatted? Should be MacOS Extended.
>
>
> Now, in another post you say that you bought this at Fry's.
> OK. Now, once you install it you need to use the Disk Utility
> to format it Mac OS Extended BEFORE you capture footage to it.
> If you already have footage on it, move it to your system drive
> (if you have room), reformat the drive, then put it back...then
> try capturing to it again.

Hi.

I have a similar problem and wonder if anybody could help me.

Is there a way I can capture HDV footage on FCP5 without using the Tape timecode?

Thanks