Garbled frames + sound hickup when capturing to external drive

[ByronFortescue]

Hi There,

I'm new here, so here's my first question, hope you can help me out!

I use a Powerbook G4 with iMovie '08 (yes, I know it's not officially supported, but that's just because of the HD stuff)..
I have a simple JVC 720DV camcorder which uses MiniDV tapes and has a firewire out (duh).. I also have a Lacie D2 Quadra 750GB external HD, which is hooked up via FireWire 800.. The cables I use have this thing on them which protects them from interference, don't know what it's called in english, sorry..

When I capture my video in iMovie and I choose the location of the files to be on my external drive, the capturing goes bad and I get a 'wrong' frame each couple of seconds (blocks of garble in the frame), including a short hiss sound.. Really annoying.. I tried shutting down all other programs, turning of stuff (speakers, cellphone), etcetera, etcetera, didn't really matter..

Until, I tried to capture to my internal HD, which I luckily upgraded to 250GB recently, and everything was fine, perfect capture..

Now, I can of course capture the stuff to my internal HD, and then move it to the external and restart iMovie.. Which is fine as a work around, but I'm just a bit frustrated that the capture to the external drive isn't working really well.. The FW 800 connection is blazingly fast and I can usually transfer big files with about 60MB/s..

Thanks in advance for the help, hope I give some of my knowledge to this site/forum in return..

[patlabombe]

iMovie 08 on a G4 might be the problem. On older version, when I was using my old PowerMac G4 350 mgz, I never got any problem capturing to a Firewire 400 disk. Try to capture using an older version or using Quicktime Pro. A Mac with an Intel processor is another option, depending on you budget.

[rumplestiltskin]

Is the LaCie drive formatted correctly for Mac use or is it FAT32? (Don't assume; check it.)

iMovie'08 is a total rewrite and it shouldn't even be called iMovie as it has an entirely different set of resource requirements; it really does need much better hardware.

Can you describe "this thing on them which protects them..."? Is it a "choke" (a metal ring) or is it something else?

[ByronFortescue]

Is the LaCie drive formatted correctly for Mac use or is it FAT32? (Don't assume; check it.)

iMovie'08 is a total rewrite and it shouldn't even be called iMovie as it has an entirely different set of resource requirements; it really does need much better hardware.

Can you describe "this thing on them which protects them..."? Is it a "choke" (a metal ring) or is it something else?

Yes, The Lacie drive is formatted HFS+, I already checked the disk with disk utility, it says nothing is wrong.. When I had the other drive, which used USB2.0, I had no problems getting a good capture to the external drive..

Besides, my guess the only reason iMovie '08 has that system requirements, is because of the AVCHD and HD support, which cannot be used on my machine, however, the rest of the program runs completely smooth and superfast. It's also my number one choice for editing, cause it moves away of the old ideas used in Final Cut and lets me edit really really fast..

The thing you call a choke might be it, it's an elongated metal device to protect the kabel core for interference..

I might try using USB 2.0 to capture instead of Firewire 800 and see what happens..

And no, an Intel machine is not an option yet

thanks for the suggestions..

[Frobozz]

Odd Firewire (and USB) problems sometimes happen after an incremental system update. I suggest downloading the latest Combined System update from Apple (for your OS) and apply it. It does no harm and may fix this problem.

[ByronFortescue]

Well, it seems that when I use USB2.0 with the external drive, it works completely fine.. weird.. However, this does save me the need to capture to my internal HD and then moving everything over to the external drive..