Clicks and pops are introduced into my audio during capture from my Canon XL2 using Final Cut Pro. It doesn't happen all the time, and if I decide to capture the clip(s) again, the clicks and pops don't occur in the same places, or even not at all. When I listen to the source audio, the pops are not present. I have no idea what might be causing this problem. Can a firewire cable go bad?

Yes, it's possible. Especially with the tiny 4-conductor plug on the back of the camera. Why they chose that particular plug is beyond me. I'd rather have the honking big 6-conductor "standard" firewire plug. I'm always worried I'll break it when I connect to capture.

Never had any audio problems capturing from my XL-2, though I'm running Premier CS3. Buying or borrowing another firewire cable would be the easiest way to check. Hopefully it's the cable, and not the camera. Though, generally, I'd expect a cable defect would show up as causing problems with BOTH audio and video, and should give you a system error of some kind if it's really major.

Regards;
Martin

Make sure and double check the sample rates. The only time I remember that happening to me is when my audio sample rate doesn't match the timeline sample rate. You might have already checked but it doesn't hurt to check again.

When I listen to the source audio, the pops are not present...Can a firewire cable go bad?
The firewire cable is more than likely NOT the cause of your problem.

When you say "source audio" what do you exactly mean? Playing the tape on camera? Watching the video on some other software, not the NLE?

Have you tested the setup with another, known good tape? Also test without tape, just run the camera in standby and capture.

One idea that comes to mind is an electrostatically charged tape that may discharge to the video head when the tape runs... just a technician's idea, not real word experience. This scenario would explain the randomness of the pops.

Record the audio from the cam's headphone jack into your computer's sound board. If it's clean, as it was when I did it, that rules out the tape and everything in the tape playback system. Plus, then you have a usable track.

Clicks and pops are introduced into my audio during capture from my Canon XL2 using Final Cut Pro. It doesn't happen all the time, and if I decide to capture the clip(s) again, the clicks and pops don't occur in the same places, or even not at all. When I listen to the source audio, the pops are not present. I have no idea what might be causing this problem. Can a firewire cable go bad?

Having struggled recently with clicks and pops on firewire audio interface plugged on pcmcia on laptop... I realized the quickest way to get rid of them was to turn off the wifi interface, disable the antenna and disable the driver in Hardware of Device Manager (Windows XP).

There's a free tool called DPC Latency Checker showing how much audio/video realtime your Windows' kernel can be, and disabling some of the devices on laptop or pc shows live improvement on that tool.

Not sure this addresses your troubles but often the pc/mac hardware issues may be important about clicks and pops, check forums dedicated to your computer system.

Alex