desperate - capture not working with QT 7!

hi,

i recently wrote about this in someone else's post, but since i still have made no headway with this and am feeling increasingly desperate, i thought i would start a new post to see if i got more response.

so on friday i thoughtlessly upgraded my G4 tower to os 10.3.9 and quicktime 7.0.3 - having had no previous upgrade disasters, i naively thought upgrades are always a helpful improvement. very foolish!

so next time i opened my final cut project, i was unable to capture. many other people seem to have reported the same problem - the l+c window says "preview disabled," though i am still able to control the deck from the computer. when i hit capture now, it tells me it cannot find a deck. when i look in the capture preset, it says the dv deck is missing, but won't let me reconfigure the settings.

i've done all the obvious things over and over again - trashed prefs, rebuilt permissions, downgraded back to quicktime 6.5.2 (which made the computer stop recognizing my deck altogether both times i tried it), and throwing away quicktime receipts.

nothing has helped. i reinstalled qt 7.0.3 because it was freaking me out that with 6.5.2 it stopped recognizing the deck, so now i am back where i started, feeling incredibly frustrated and panicked, having spent the past eight hours installing and reinstalling various versions of quicktime.

what to try next???

i really hope someone can help!

irene

try this

[docs.info.apple.com]

like i already said, that is one of the many things i have already tried multiple times with no success. i have deleted receipts and reinstalled quicktimes of different versions over and over again for about six hours straight today.

Then re-install FCP. That should do it. If not then once again reinstall QT And make sure no FW devices are hooked up when you do.

Mike

nope, i've already done all of that. uninstalled final cut with fcp dumper, reinstalled fcp 4.0, reupgraded to fcp HD. same exact problem as before - fcp still won't capture.

i would reinstall the OS, but i don't actually have an OS 3 installer disk - long story - and it is no longer available for purchase.

does anyone know if it would help to reinstall the OS? also, can i use the tiger installer from my powerbook for my g4 tower, or will that not work? i'm onw backing up my whole internal drive in case more awful things happen. but... i have to solve this problem as soon as possible!!!

i am feeling utterly crazed at this point. i have huge dealdines that i am missing, the appple care people were totally useless, and i need to figure out what is going on with my system! i am tearing my hair out here... what is going on?? and how can apple allow an upgrade to go out into the world that can totally screw up a system like this?

and also i did do the thing where i disconnect all firewire devices and redo all the installs. i've installed quicktime every possible way imaginable. this is having no effect on the problem at all. and when i revert to the old 6.5.2 the problems only get worse (i don't really get how that's possible, when just the other day before this whole nightmare my system was running perfectly with QT 6.5

also nothing is daisychained in my system (another suggestion i keep reading in archived posts)

how is this possible??

How did you do the upgrade to 10.3.9? through the software update control panel? If so then go get the combo installer and reinstall the update.

[www.apple.com]

no. my editing computer is not networked and i never use software update for upgrades. i downloaded exactly from your link.

Then install the upgrade again if you havent. Other than that I'm stumped

Irene, maybe it's time to take the system to a professional, or get one in.

You sound like you've done all the normal things to restore to working order, so it's either something more sinister, or something that you've overlooked and will probably continue to overlook the more stressed you get.

There are lots of good people listed in the LAFCPUG Taent directory here <[www.lafcpug.org];.

Hope you get it sorted.

right - i'd like to try reinstalling the OS as last resort - but back to my previous question. at the moment i only have tiger on the installer disk that came with my laptop (my g4 came with jaguar and then i borrowed panther disks from a friend to do the upgrade to OS 3 that i needed to run fcp HD, so i don't actually have an os 3 installer disk of my own) - can i use the laptop CD to upgrade my g4 tower or do i actually have to go out and purchase tiger? i mean, is there any difference in the OS from the fact that it's for a laptop vs. a power mac?

also, i've just backed up my internal drive using carbon copy cloner in case things go even more haywire. in the event that something does go wrong with insall of the OS, what do i do to replace my internal drive with the backup?

thanks jude -but this list seems to be mostly l.a. people - i'm in nyc. any idea how i would find someone? preferably someone who will come to my place, since i don't have a car, and the g4 tower is heavy...

In general, the installer disks for a particular computer can not be used on another type of computer. There is also the license issue that you can not use one copy of the OS on more than one computer.

You would be better off purchasing a copy of Tiger 10.4 to install on your G5 for several reasons; that is if you are running FCP 5 or Final Cut Studio.

It is well know that FCP 5 works best on Tiger and FCP HD or 4.5 works best on Panther 10.3. It is more about the Quicktime versions of 6.5 on 10.3 and 7.0 on 10.4 that make those versions of FCP stable.

You can also purchase a version of Panther from several sources for a much reduced price so that you own Panther, in the case that you want to stay on Panther.

The thing that most people don't realize is that you need to reinstall your operating system after a period of time, that being operating hours or some other metric for the sake of a stable editing system. It is very good insurance and helps clean up the drives. Planning on this will save many operational headaches along the way.

thanks. i'm actually not on fcp studio yet - i was going to wait to upgrade until i was done with this projec that i'm still on FCP 4.5, is it still advisable to buy tiger? buying panther seems dumb since i do plan to move to fcp studio in the near future...

also, since you seem to know what you're talking about, maybe you can walk me through the erase and install process so i do this as cleanly as possible. i've just used carbon copy cloner to back up my whole internal hard drive to an external firewire drive. so let's say i go out and buy a copy of tiger, then what? i erase my internal hardrive completely? then boot from the disk and install? and then how do i restore my applictaions, documents etc from the backup? i imagine if i copy everything back i'll also be overwriting the new OS, so that would defeat the purpose...

i really want to do this as thoroughly and cleanly as possible, because clearly something has gone pretty haywire in the system. any help would be much appreciated...

irene

Irene,

If you will send me a private email with your information I can communicate with you about helping out.

John

You seem to have created a greatly unstable system. Lets do a few basics. Generally, operating systems and applications get bigger with time and upgrades. Did you fill up the System Drive? Anything over 90% will give troubles with Final Cut and anything around 95% will start affecting the operation of the machine.

There is no one symptom when this happens. The machine just starts "acting crazy."

I'm reading all this and I still don't get a really good feel for how things are connected to the machine. Do you change connections regularly? You could have damaged one of the FireWire ports during a cable swap. This is more common than people think.

We know Final Cut went nuts. Anything else? When you playback a video from the TimeLine in View, External Video, All Frames, does the show appear on the camcorder or deck?

If you straight swap a FireWire drive for the deck, can you transfer files back and forth with the machine with no errors?

Does iMovie work? iMovie is a stripped down video editor, but it has a lot of the same basic tools like capture and playback.

Koz

let's see...

my internal drive is a bit too full, but not crazily so - it's a 111 GB drive with about 6 GB free at the moment.

i've connected a firewire drive to the same port where the deck usually goes, and it seems to work fine - so i'm hoping that is evidence that nothing physical is damaged.

i tried imovie yesterday. i've never used imovie before, so i might have been using it wrong, but it apppeared to suffer from the same problem in capture - i could rewind and fast forward the deck remotely, but not bring in any footage.

i don't change my connections regularly. i keep most of my media on two internal media drives, and now i have one external firewire promax 250 GB drive on one firewire port, and the deck on the other. i never move these things around - that is pretty much the way i leave my set-up.

thanks for your help,

irene

What's the deck? Can you borrow a camcorder from your mom and try to capture from that? Doesn't matter what the show is. This is just to see if it works. Also, use a tape that you haven't been struggling with.

Koz

the deck is a sony dsr-11, and it worked flawlessly until this upgrade. it seems impossible that a quicktime upgrade could ruin my deck!

lots of people seem to have reported that QT 7 made their log and capture misbehave, but everyone else seems to have had better luck with the standard fixes (either throwing away receipts, or downgrading back to 6.5).

i haven't tried a camcorder, but i have tried the deck with my laptop and final cut (tiger, QT 7, same fcp version), and that works fine.

> my internal drive is a bit too full, but not crazily so - it's a 111 GB drive with
> about 6 GB free at the moment.

Whoa. Clean out 10-15GB right now. The rule is that no drive should be 90 per cent full. Have you been capturing to the system drive? What's on there? Downloads, MP3s, renders? Applications don't take up much room.

Looks like your computer needs a maintenance routine. With a 111GB drive, alarms bells should go off in your head when you get to about 90GB full. Despite what you think, 6GB out of 111GB is nearing critical mass -- that's just over five per cent free space.

Koz said: " Anything over 90% will give troubles with Final Cut and anything around 95% will start affecting the operation of the machine."

Irene said: "my internal drive is a bit too full, but not crazily so - it's a 111 GB drive with about 6 GB free at the moment."

So your system drive is 95% full - that sounds crazy full to me. You're not going to get anywhere with a reinstall or other troubleshooting trick without making some serious space available on that drive first. Move or dump enough to have at least 15 GB free and then see where you are. If this isn't causing the problem now, it'g going to real soon.

Scott

yes, i understand that - that's why i was hoping someone could help me with the erase and installl process so that i can really clean up the drive, install tiger (or whatever else will work best) on a freshly formatted internal drive, and then only bring back things i need to put on my drive. i never ever use this drive for media storage, but i do sometimes use it to archive dvd projects, so that may be what is taking up the space... but actually all those fcp / dvd sp applications with all those loops and livetype things and stuff... they pretty much eat up all my drive space.

i don't know that this is what is causing the problem, but that's why i want to try the erase and install. but i am VERY nervous about wiping my drive clean, and woudl appreciate guidance so i don't mess things up even more.

> i never ever use this drive for media storage, but i do sometimes use it to
> archive dvd projects, so that may be what is taking up the space...

The fact is, the system drive should never, ever be used for backing up media. Or any kind of regular, substantial storage, for that matter. You mentioned you do use DVD Studio Pro -- those files often bloat up to 200MB, 300MB and above. I know my own editing reel is 275MB. In other words, if you're consistently holding on to these things, even multiple copies, it would clog up your system. Even more, of course, if you keep the MPEG-2s, AIFFs and encoded files used for the DVD burn.

If you have a time crunch and can't find somebody to be there physically to clean out your system, you can navigate through the system drive and do a bit of cleanup yourself. If you had a file-management system, it would help greatly. Get rid of clips that aren't from active projects. Get rid of any render files. Keep an eye out for anything with a QuickTime or Final Cut Pro icon (EXCEPT the Final Cut Pro application itself, of course), then comb through those carefully looking for things you can delete. Any clip that was captured from a batch list is expendable.

Kill those DVD backups. If you really need to keep them, burn them to a data DVD and get them out of your system. It's my belief that non-active project backups of any kind -- editing, DVD, sound -- should not be kept in computers' internal drives; if you get into that habit, they start to clog up your system, which could be what's happening here.

Some of the suggestions John, Jude, Michael and the others have suggested may actually work if your system drive is brought back to a more healthy state.

> livetype things and stuff... they pretty much eat up all my drive space.

I have Soundtrack and LiveType as well, but I'd find it hard to believe that you have enough loops and graphics files to bury your system to 105GB. Sounds like you need more internal drive space. Do you have a second internal drive? That's where all those DVD Studio Pro files, backups etc should have gone.

One word of caution: If you really were reinstalling QuickTime 7 and/or FCP for six hours straight, I don't think that was a very good approach towards the problem. After two or three attempts at a troubleshooting operation, if it doesn't yield results, you should stop and take a step back instead of repeating the attempt again and again. I'm concerned that the multiple reinstalls back to back may actually have further destabilized your system. I would stop trying any kind of receipt dump, preference dump or reinstall until you get more help.

There is one thing that nobody has mentioned yet and I am not sure if it makes a diffrence or not. I think it may depend on how you did your upgrade to QT7 but I have read somewhere that you can lose the QT Pro capabilities on the free download from apple, which then requires you to re-enter your Pro app serial number, somewhere in the QT preferences settings. Also, could it be possible that there is a conflict with the fact that you are using a pirated version of OSx.3.9. I was under the impression that when you download software like QT then it automatically checks to see that the system is legal or registered to that computer, although I could be wrong on this. It just seems to me to be inviting disaster by using an illegal OS.

my edit station, as i've said elsewhere, is not networked at all. when i download upgrades, i have to download to a different machine and then copy the installer files to a portable firewire drive. so it's not possible that any kind of checkup for conflicts or licenses can be happening via internet once things are on my computer.

but, yes, i did download the QT 7 straight off the website, so i think you're right, that means it isn't pro. how would that affect things? and how do i fix? how do i know my QT pro serial number? i assume i used to have whatever QT was installed as part of FCP 4 (which i do legally own!) - does that mean i used to have a pro version and now i don't any more? and where would i find and enter the serial number - i only know my FCP number at the moment.

and the upgrade to 10.3.9 is also a legal download - it was just my initial install of panther that was from a borrowed (but not pirated) disk.

so... is the consensus that i should off on wiping my drive clean or rushing out to buy tiger? i'm not in front of my edit station now while i'm at work, but i can probably find 10-15 GB of stuff to take off without much trouble. it is very likely those DVD backups that are eating up too much space.

i guess i've really learned my lesson about casually upgrading stuff... i had no idea that this could happen and will be much more careful in the future.

please let me know more about this pro vs not pro QT thing, and any other suggestions, and i wil try everything tonight.

thanks, everyone!

When downloading 10.3.9 and QT 7 you LOOSE you QT Pro capabilities. That forces you to buy the $30.00 QT license for QT 7.

The operating system is not serialized and there is nothing to check IF it is a licensed copy or not. You can be sure that will change sooner or later as it did with XP.

The current OS X 5 copy license loads the sam e software on up to five computers. It is just the legality of a license per computer which you agree to when you load it!

Whether your QT is Pro or not has no bearing whatsoever. FCP does not require Pro to do anything. And it doesn't matter where you got your copy of QT, it always requires a key to make a standard QT Player into Pro. The key is provided with your copy of FCP, but a key for QT 6 (which came with FCP 4.x) will not turn QT 7 into Pro. You have to have FCP 5 to have a free QT 7 Pro key, or buy it. But again, it won't affect the performance of FCP.

Concerning "borrowed", "pirated", whatever. If you didn't buy it, for your machine only, it's not legal. But the more important point, as mentioned way up the thread, is that an OS X system disk that came with another system is hardware specific, and could cause weird problems on a different platform. Did someone say they're having a "weird problem"?

Scott

> and the upgrade to 10.3.9 is also a legal download - it was just my
> initial install of panther that was from a borrowed (but not pirated)
> disk.

Borrowed is pirated, because that means you're attempting to run the program on two separate machines. Some applications are more sensitive to that than others. Two copies of FCP without a group license, for example, cannot exist on two stations on the same network. I've never encountered a machine with pirated/duplicated OS, so I have no idea what the penalties are.

It's been mentioned in here before -- OS is not something you'd want to borrow or pirate. Whether that has anything to do with your current dilemma is uncertain, but rest assured, a legitimate set of applications is always healthier.

so, like i said, i am happy to atone for less-than-legal acts of the past by running out to buy tiger today, if anyone thinks it will solve my problems to have a fresh OS install from a legit installer disk. but some of you seem to be saying that tiger and QT 7 are not so good for fcp 4.5... so what do you actually recommend i try?

Perhaps QT Pro doesn't affect the operation of Final Cut Pro as such, but it sure does affect it's abiliity to output to lots of codecs. THe MPEG codecs are enabled by QT license. That won't affect the QT direct output but there is a need for the QT Pro license to make FCP complete. Since Compressor is a GUI on top of Quicktime, you know what I mean.