I'm using FCE 2.0.02 and have been for quite some time (nearly 3 years - I know it's time to upgrade. I'll get there eventually.) Recently, on the last two projects I've worked on, capturing footage has been a problem. Here's the run down of the current issue.

Final Cut sees the camera fine and the capture windows works fine. I hit "Capture Now" and then press Play on the camera. FCE starts importing footage fine. My Capture & Scratch Disk is an external Firewire 800 Lacie drive (1TB). I know some of you would say not to use a firewire drive when trying to capture, so I've tried using the internal drive - same result.

About five minutes into capturing, FCE stops as though it's dropped a frame, but I don't get the dropped frame error message. I hit ESC and then FCE hangs with the multicolored swirly spinning for over five minutes. Then I get the message that FCE has reached the end of the tape. If I let the tape continue to run after the video has frozen in the capture window, the audio still records and about five minutes later the video starts recording again.

My first thought is that it is a disk issue with defragmentation at the heart of the matter, but I cannot find a Mac disk defragmenter. OS 10.3.9 is just supposed to handle it - I'm told. So tonight I'll leave the computer on all night so that any magic that is supposed to happen will. But are there any other ideas?

Please, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Kevin

First of all, there is no problem capturing to external disks that is my normal work flow for some four years now

Secondly, what is the capture limit set for Capture Now? Make sure it is as long as what you are trying to capture. I believe that preference is set in System Settings, (it may be in User Settings its been a while since I've set it)

If you are hitting dropped frames you may have the warning shut off which won't stop that issue, it just doesn't warn you

If you think you may have a problem with the drive, run Disk Utilily first, there is a Disk Repair function there. I would also reccomend Disk Warrior, an extremely handy utility program

Don't capture to your system disk and make sure FCE lives on a separate drive from your scratch disk

If none of this works, try starting a capture after the point where it hangs up, just to try to eliminate any tape issues there

Kevin,

Ditto to what Victor has mentioned.

Also, if your capture disk is becoming full that too can cause problems - if the disk is heavily fragmented.

Speaking of which "iDefrag" is the only Mac-disk defragmenter left on the market and it does it's job extremely well; it even gives you the option to create a boot-disk which will allow you to defragment your OS/boot drive also.

http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php

Along with Disk Warrior which Victor mentioned (most definitely get a copy) you should also download Onyx for Mac. This free utility will go a long way into keeping the Mac OS tuned-up and optimized. Again, highly recommended; run all it's cleaning and maintenance routines at least once a month. Make sure you download the version for your OS.

http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/onyx_leopard.html

My guess is that what Victor has already alluded to that you most likely have some settings in FCE that are either turned "on" or "off" that you may be unaware of, and on top of running some routine maintenance your problems should disappear, but if not let us know.

Here's the latest update...

I bought iDefrag and defragged my external Lacie drive yesterday. It took quite a while but it was done by the time I came back into the office today. I also downloaded Onyx and installed it. I ran the clean up utility, optimization and the standard daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance. Then I tried to import from the same cam and tape as before, but no luck. It stopped after about five minutes again.

So... I switched cameras. I put the same tape in a different cam (not the one that recorded it) and tried to import again. Stopped after five minutes.

So... I check the capture now settings on FCE and unchecked the box linked to the time constraint about how long capture now will run. I had this set to 63 minutes previously, just in case the tape ran long for some reason. Capture stopped again after about 5 minutes.

I tried importing again from the #2 cam with the #1 tape... stalled yet agin after 5 minutes.

I thought, "Why not re-install FCE?" So I looked up online how to do a full un-install and re-install and followed the directions. After completing this I hooked up a third camera to my computer and put a tape in I had not tried to capture before. It stalled after 5 minutes.

To sum up:
FCE stalls on import after 5 minutes or so
I've tried three different cams
I've tried 2 different tapes
I've defragged my capture & scratch drive
I've optimized and cleaned up my application drive
I have approx 390 GB free on the capture & scratch drive
I have approx 80 GB free on my application drive
I'm running a PowerMac G5 dual 2.0 with 1 GB ram on OS 10.3.9
And I'm all out of ideas....

Please, any help would be appreciated. I've got another shoot for a short doc starting on Saturday and another project to continue shooting Saturday night. And as I'm sure you all know... I'm dead in the water if I can't get the footage into the computer...

Please help...

Kevin

Kevin,

Send me a PM with your phone #, I can probably help but it would be far too cumbersome typing out instructions on the forum. We'll get you up and running.

PM Sent

Thanks,
Kevin