I am trying to capture material I captured yesterday from the same tape but I am getting a general error message, also on "capture now". I trashed the prefs and repaired permissions, I think, but to no avail...
The only difference is I installed Sapphire pluginn, tryout.

I disconnected the computer and started it again but still no capture possible. I am runnning FCP 4 on panther and it was always working well but now I dont know what is wrong..

Have you tried removing the plugin? What computer are you using, what size drives, how full are they, how much ram, what version FCP, what version OS? Anything else plugged into FireWire?

I deleted the project and openend a new one. This somehow solved the problem.
My system is panther, single 1.25 mac with fcp 4.0 and one gig of ram... Never had this problem before. I did remove the plugin but it had no effect on it whatsoever. Deleting the project and making a new one solved everything but I still dont know what was the problem Jeff

The drives are big enough and are internal, 120 gig, i can still use 50 gigs. OS 10.3.2 but none of that stuff changed maybe the project somehow got corrupted?? only the canon on firewire for capture

Here (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18209&highlight=delete+FCP+preferences) are the directions for deleting FCP preferences. You may have had some corrupt project files.

thanks Jeff, I have seen that piece by you before but I am wondering about repairing permissions on the STARTUP DRIVE. why? and this can only be done if you use the install cd and read from it because thats what disk utility tell's me.

You do not need the install disk. Open Disk Utility. The default location is My Drive> Applictions>Utillities>Disk Utility. Highlight My Drive (by clicking on it's name in the left hand column once) and select repair permissions. You can only repair permissions on the start-up drive.