using sony hdv as a deck

i'm trying to capture footage shot on mini dv cameras on the sony hdv onto my laptop. my questions are these:

what is the best capture presets, a/v settings, sequence presets to set my final cut 5.1 to in order to export video shorts to the web at the highest quality. how do i hook up the camera to my powerbook g4 in order to do so?

right now i have a 6 pin to 4pin firewire cable going from the sony hdv camera into my laptop. i also have a fw800 cable going from my lacie drive into my laptop. i have tried both the easy setup for dv/ntsc and hdv and now i have the following presets:

sequence preset: hdv 1080i60
capture preset: hdv
device control preset: sony hdv firewire

when i try to start log and capture it says:
unable to initialize capture device and device control ; device is not connected or the capture preset and device preset are not set up correctly.

i have tried capturing with the hdv camera on both camera and vcr.

thanks for any and all of your help.

If these were shot as mini dv your presets have to match that in FCP to be able to capture footage. You can't capture regular dv footage with the presets set to HDV. HDV and DV are totally different formats. Your camera will play the footage as regular dv automatically, connect via firewire and capture. DO NOT plug in the firewire cable while your camera is on, it can fry the sony connection and costs some money to get it fixed.

good luck!

Kevin

thanks, kevin.

the dv tapes were shot in the hdv 1080i. i figured out some of the presets with helps to the wonderful guys at b&h here in nyc. but, double thanks for the tip on not connecting the firewire while the camera is on. don't think i've done that yet but now i will definitely not.

as far as capturing using the sony hdv, all is working, but i am still having problems when i use capture now--it's glitches up on me, stutters, and sometimes shuts down fcp. any help on that.

thanks again, tons!

were all the mini-dv hdv tapes shot on the same camera? sony hdv players cant see hdv shot from other brands of cameras... at least in HDV mode. not sure how this translates to plain DV

yes, all the mini-dv tapes were shot on the same sony hdv camera i was using to capture them.

It might be time code breaks that are causing that. Make sure you have a second of running scene before you hit capture now.

my new problem is now that when i go to capture now or even try to log a clip that i get no video in the capture screen, only on the sony hdv lcd screen. i can control the sony hdv "device" from log and capture on my laptop but when i try to capture now i get the following message:

capture was aborted due to lack of incoming data from device. check your connections and that the deck is playing.

if i can control the deck from my laptop then my connections are secure, right? the deck is playing and i can also control that from my laptop as well. i am waiting 10 seconds before trying to log a clip or press capture now. any advice? thanks...

Have you got an iSight camera or other Firewire device active on the bus? Try taking it off. Just you, the camera -as-deck, FireWire connection, and your laptop.

Capture Now is less relaible than Log Clip in most all cases. Allow for at least 3 seconds preroll from the head of the tape-- sounds lke you're doing everything right.

- Loren
Today's FCP 5 keytip:
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thanks for helping out on labor day.

i reset my files to the mac hd instead of my lacie drive so that only me, the laptop and the camera are running. i've tried logging clips but i am still not getting any picture in fcp, only on camera lcd. i don't know what an isight camera is, i'm using the sony hdv 1080i/z1.

should i have the i link converter on? do you know? also, i have a/v to dv out set to "on". i've tried switching these two around a few times, but to no avail.

i've logged clips (again w/o picture in fcp) and when i try to capture them the camera rewinds and i see on the lcd screen that it goes back to the original in point. then the capture window says cueing source but it never picks up picture and the tape just keeps playing in the camera on the lcd past where the out point is and will just keep playing.

any thoughts?

also, just noticed that when i tried to choose hdv or dv for vcr set up it said below menu choices (of which i have tried "auto" and "hdv" that it says:

changes not allowed. disconnect i link cable.

what is this about?

i have talked to the guys at b&h and am STILL having troubles. forgot to mention this to lafcpug people as well: as i said, i can still control the deck thru log and capture in fcp but i forgot to mention that log and capture says vtr ok, but does not come up with bars. only black. does this help anyone?

Check if your deck is set to 'i-Link Conversion'. This setting causes the deck to down-convert HDV to DV automatically. If this is not what you want, turn it off.

i link conversion has been set to "off" throughout all this mess. what next? thanks in advance.

~a.