A new "dropped frames" situation

Dear LAFCPUG, I've had smooth sailing with my system for years...but now I'm encountering dropped frames during capture. In Log & Capture, video plays perfectly fine in the preview. Plus the tapes have been captured before so I know they have solid TC. However, I continually get "timecode break" messages within the first few seconds of capture, even when using Capture Now. This is a first. Capture Now usually saves the day. Anyway, I tried capturing different sections of the tape, tried different settings in User Preferences, etc. No luck. Just to experiment, I tried capturing in iMovie. Same problem. I'm starting to wonder if it might be my playback device (Canon GL-1 camera). But it plays back smoothly with no visible jumps in the TC numbers, plus the video plays smoothly in the Log & Capture preview. The only other variable is the Firewire Cable, but I assume it's okay because video is making its way into FCP, it's just not capturing. If it can play in the preview, it should be able to capture, right? Before I ship my camera off to Canon, has anyone encountered such a problem? Thanks for any advice you might have.

<<<smooth sailing with my system for years...but now I'm encountering dropped frames during capture.>>>

Old news....I hope.

This almost always means your hard drives are filling up. Do an INFO on **all** your drives and make sure none of them is over 90% full.

Don't leave out the System Drive.

Koz

What Koz said, plus CLEAN THE CAMERA HEAD! I was getting these breaks form a known good tape on my DECK and a cleaning did the trick.

Then look at getting a DV deck like a DSR-11, and be good to your camera.

- Loren
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My drives all have available space...I've cleaned my camera heads several times. I DID however start having these problems when I upgraded to FCP 4. The default capture pre-set displayed "DSR-900" so I made a copy and switched it to "Canon DV" but it didn't help. Also, the default displayed "DV - NTSC" (which is the setting I used in FCP 3), however when I copied the capture pre-set, "DV - NTSC" was not available, only "DV/DVCPRO - NTSC." Could my problem be due to incorrect capture settings? Thanks again!

<<<My drives all have available space>>>

We need you to do five minutes on those drives. What kind? Where? Don't leave any out. Every time Apple upgrades either the system or the program, borderline systems (which worked last week) fall slightly below the minimum acceptable level and appear erratic or unstable. They may have been unstable for years, but worked enough to pass.

Apple may have revoked your pass.

Koz

apologies to all who received the junk mail from this post.
i'm now locking it.

Nick Meyers,
Lafcpug Moderator