Trouble with getting video footage into FCP

Hey there all....I am self learning FCP 4.....Trying to get my dv footage (coming from my canon mini dv camera via firewire) into FCP (Tower Mac g4)..I tried the various choices in "Audio & Video Settings"....and "Capture Settings" but I get the following message...."Attempt to capture video w/o a video device selected. Please select a video capture device in your capture presets and try again". What could be the problem...on the same computer everything works with imovie 3..but I want to use FCP....my niece just gave me this computer she was using in college...but she is away in Japan on honeymoon...HELP.

Thanks!!

Well since you are messing around with the preferences with no luck, its time to trash them and start over. Here is how:

How to trash FCP Prefs

Now unplug the camera from the Mac. Re-start. Plug the camera back in and make sure it is on and in VTR mode. Launch FCP. Go into Easy set ups and pick the appropriate easy set up. Set your capture scratch drive to a drive other than the drive your system software is on. If your Mac has only one drive then go buy another and hook it up.

Depending on how old the Canon cam is you may have to create a custom easy set up and choose Firewire Basic as your protocol. Once you do all that, open the Log and Capture window and log and capture.

If you have never done this before and are just beginning, forget what I've written here and start reading the manual. If you go into FCP blind you will never see and will be forever frustrated.

Good luck

Michael Horton
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Thanks for the prompt response...tried it....no win.....driving me crazy....now I see why people go to classes for this stuff.....I'm so through with this that I am selling my g4 and starting my project with imovie 2...which will just spoil me further with simplistic editing...ugh!...but I'll get the job done for the moment although i was looking forward to bigger steaks with FCP

When you start a project in FCP, the FIRST THING YOU DO is go to the FINAL CUT PRO menu and choose an EASY SETUP that matches your footage. In your case, DV/NTSC. This tells the application what sort of device you are going to connect and what codec you want to capture it as. Your system might be set up for some other format, thus it doesn't recognize the camera.

Once you choose this easy setup, delete SEQUENCE 1 and make a new squence...the new sequence will contain the proper settigs for the footage you are capturing.

iMovie is easy this way as you only have two choices, DV and HDV...and it asks you right away what format you are working with. FCP can edit dozens of formats.


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