capturing with Final Cut Express

[ansberry]

I am a newbie to digital video. I have a copy of Final Cut Express. I hook my analog camera through a DV converter into the firewire port on my 9500 (G4/450). When I play the camera, the video shows up in the window. When I hit the capture button, I get a blank screen and a message that the machine can't capture, and I need to check my hardware setup. I checked preferences and everything else I could think of to find the hardware setup. I used EZ setup to select NTSC. I couldn't find any other means of setting up hardware on the menus. I went to BAM to buy a book to help me out, but when I scanned the books they didn't address my problem and assumed a level of expertise that I don't possess. I looked through the forum archives and various menus here, but didn't find anything that addresses my problem.

How can I get my Mac to capture my video?

Thanks- Mike

[terryj]

From the only FCP book you will ever need,
the Excellent "Jerry Hoffman on FCP HD"
by author Jerry Hoffman, page 474:

"if FCP reports "VTR OK" in the bottom of the Log and
Capture window, the FCP can control and capture
from your deck/camera.
If FCP can't communicate with the machine, a window
opens, warning you that FCP has no communication
with your specified device and you can only log clips,
not capture. If you are sourcing DV, and controlling it with
FW, you need to restart FCP withyour deck or camera
turned on, with cameras to be set in VTR or VR mode."

To wit,
set your analog camera to "play" or 'VCR" mode.
Set your box to analog in, ( if like the Canaopus ADVC-100)
and have it playing BEFORE launching FCP.
In FCP, have your Capture Settings set from "Firewire NTSC"
to "non-controllable device".
It should then allow you to capture now, and thus won't try
and auto control capture.

[ansberry]

I followed your advice exactly. Now I see the video coming into the window when I launch FC Express. When I go to the file menu and go to "capture" the capture window opens. When I click the "now" button, a capture window opens, but nothing happens. There is a text box that says "waiting for timecode" . I let it set for several minutes, but nothing happens. Any ideas?

Thanks
Mike

[decay]

Maybe your hardware it too slow? The bus speed of a 9500 is 50 MHz, so that's your bottleneck, not the G4's MHz rating. Also, the PCI slot rating may come into account.

Do you have any friends with more modern Macs that you could test it on? I'd say 100 MHz bus minimum, like a G4 AGP (400 MHz+) model.

[TugBoat]

There is a text box that says "waiting for timecode"

I think I remember this having to do with the 'Easy Setups'. Try changing the Easy Setup to 'DV Converter'. I think the default is 'FW Basic'. It's been a while :P

[ansberry]

I started out trying to do this in iMovie. The iMovie program would not let me choose any drive to save to except the drive with OS 10.2 (startup drive). That is a problem because OS 10.2 requires that I have it on a partition of no more than 8 gigs. There isn't enough room for doing video. I then went to FCE to try to solve the problem. I couldn't get it to capture. Last night I took the folder with the partial iMovie in it and copied it to another partition (26 gigs) and threw away the folder from the OS 10.2 desktop. Now I can work with iMovie and save it to the larger partition. I got the movie captured. I did my editing. I exported it to quicktime at the best quality setting. Once again, it will only let me save the movie to the 10.2 startup partition. It renders fairly quickly. It had finished about 17 minutes of the video in about half an hour. Then it tells me there isn't enough room on the drive to finish. I can't seem to figure out how to save the compressed video to the larger drive. When I start the export it asks me where to save it, but only gives me options on the 10.2 drive.

So, in summary, iMovie captures smooth as glass on my old 9500 Mac running OS10.2. It renders fairly quickly with iMovie. Could my problems with FCE still be due to the slow front side bus? How can I get iMovie to export the quicktime video to the larger partition?

Thanks- Mike

[TugBoat]

Which version of FCE do you have? Note: FCE 1.0 will not capture from a non-controllable device. you must have at least 1.0.1 for this feature.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61846
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@117.E3GBah9yyBO.11@.689afb9c

Just to give you an idea of what's possible, I just did a quick install of FCE 1.0 on a 7 year old PowerBook G3. It's the very first G3 PowerBook and doesn't even support Cardbus, let alone 10.2.8. I had to run 10.2.8 from an external SCSI disk as 10.3.4 is on the internal drive. This machine has the original 250MHz G3, a 50 MHz system bus, 160MB of ram, and a very slow HD.

I used an Adaptec Fireconnect AFW-1430 Cardbus card to connect a Sony TRV-340 Camcorder, opened FCE and told it to capture to the internal disk and to not worry about dropped frames. I selected capture, hit the play button, and then the now button. It captured just fine. Of course it did have dropped frames, what do you expect from something using a HD that benches at 7MB/s and passing through something not even rated for cardbus. It is possible though :P

[ansberry]

yup. I'm running FCE 1.0 Guess that's my problem.

thanks- Mike