FCP Capture Help

[Rik Sanchez]

John,
my friend did the same thing as you, partioned his drive in two, one for each OS, but OS X got corrupted somehow and it started to affect 9 so now he is slowly losing data, having crashes.

I have a Tempo ATA PCI card coming soon, so I'll add two 80 gig drives for video, and use my current 60 gig drive for OS X and the original 10 gig drive the mac came with for OS 9. He suggested using a separate physical drive for each OS as opposed to partioning. If partioning will be fine then maybe I can drop the 10 gig and add another 80 gig for a total of 240 gigs for video.

[Rik Sanchez]

John,
finally got OS X installed and updated, my friend helped me install FCP 3 and it works okay in X, did a quick batch capture and it worked fine, my friend was surprised it worked, it doesn't work on his system. He still doesn't know why he can't get it to work.

The only thing I did different from him is I have a separate physical drive for OS X, I have OS 9.2 on another drive, right now have 5 drives: 10 gig for OS 9, 60 for OS X, and a 60, 80, and 120 drive for video.

How does June 16th (sunday night) sound for getting together in Tokyo? I'm spending the night there with a friend and then taking the train back the next morning? I'll send Adrian an email and see what's up with him.

HI John...

Check out my new post on dropped frames... Just got my new Mac system, full blown and maxed out, along with FCP.... Having problems....

Let me know what you think...

[John Locke]

Daniel,

If you read through this thread (pre your wrangler days), you'll see that everyone has had good ideas for possible solutions...but believe it or not...after all this time...I'm still capturing using iMovie and then importing the clips into FCP 3.0.

Just wondering if you might have an idea how to fix this problem?

HI JOHN....


Been a while since I've been here... Well, got the dropped frames problem solved, at least for myself... Apple refuses to believe this, but they DO have problems with their systems and equipment... OX 10.2 (Jaguar) won't solve it either.... Seems they just don't want to admit that they have ANY problems with ANYTHING...

When I got my new G4 I had monumental problems and they said nothing was wrong and it was all me... Apple again was wrong.. There was a problem with the motherboard and I finally got the computer exchanged after some long arguing and it proved out I was right...

As for the drop frames issue, I refused to give up on it and finally found the solution... Now, after having FCP working for the last month or so without a single dropped frame, I'm sharing it so that anyone out there with the problem can try it for themselves...

The whole drop frames issue stems from the hard drives... Yes! That's where it is... It's so simple that no one seems to have thought of it... I did a lot of experimenting and what I discovered, WORKS... Yes! You MUST have the system and programs on the main drive, and the files on a work drive, which has been known..... BUT, HERES THE KICKER.... Partitions DON'T work either... MUST be TWO SEPERATE DRIVES and THE TWO DRIVES MUST BE IDENTICAL DRIVES IN BRAND, TYPE AND SIZE, no matter what brand, type or size is being used... ie, If an xxx brand ATA100 80G is the main drive, the same xxx brand ATA100 80G MUST be used as the work or second drive.....

I have 2 Seagate Cheeta X15 36G SCSI drives with a 39160 Adaptec dual board, and they work great now... I'll add more of the same drives when I need more work space... I use the ATA100 drive that came with the computer, as a storage drive only, to keep files backed up and for files not in use....

TRY IT, IT WORKS.....

Ron

[John Locke]

Hi Ron,

That's an interesting...albeit frustrating bit of news. I can't run out and get matching drives now. So if that's the root of my problem, looks like I'm stuck capturing with iMovie for awhile.

Thanks for stepping up to the plate with info. I guess Daniel is on hiatus or bogged down (I know how that is). I'm guessing this is a problem that won't go away without major backpeddling...so...I'll just learn to live with it.

HI AGAIN.....

Thanks for your reply.... Yes! That may be the problem with all the drop frame issues with FCP.... It makes sense too, what with the same drives running at the same speed and same transfer rates, characteristics etc.... I got the clue from the error messages, but following the advise given, never solved the problem and figured there had to be another answer.....

Fortunately, with the drives I had from my other PC's, which made it a little easier, I started experimenting..... It was a job switching, formatting etc., but my effort seemed to find the solution... The second I put a non-matching drive to the main drive in, I had drop frames... Upon replacing it with a matching drive, the problem was non-existant and FCP ran smooth.... I was not able to find any other solution anywhere...

As I said before, I am not a novice to computers, PC's that is, as I have been building my own for years... I am, however, novice to Macintosh, but am learning.... Now with this solved, I'm able to go back and continue trying to learn FCP... Been using Adobe for quite a while and FCP is very differant, and more complicated.... What with the training films I'm making now, I need the ability to do much more than I have in the past and FCP gives me that edge.... I'll soon be adding Boris Red to my software, for the effects etc....

Can you recommend any GOOD CD burning software for the Mac??? I've been using Nero on my PC, and it's great, but they don't make a Mac version... I had tried Adaptec's (Roxio now) software on my PC before and it was terrible.... Don't know how it is for the Mac, if it's just as bad or not, and hate to go and spend the money if it's no good.... The built in Mac software doesn't allow one to add to the CD or DVD once it's burned.... I use the CD's for backup and film storage and need the ability to add whatever as necessary until the CD is full... Too expensive to use hard drives for permenant storage...

Well, got to get some work done.... Let me know your thoughts.... Nice talking again....

Later.... Ron

[Jeff Donald]

Toast (Roxio) is the standard on the Mac. I've been using it several years and have never had a problem. I have heard in the last week though, that Toast (5.1.4) may be having a few issues with Jaguar. However, I've used Toast probably a dozen times with Jaguar in the last week with no problems. I believe there was a version of Nero for Mac but it was generally regarded as a joke, very buggy.

John,

I think there can be more than one solution. My drives don't match and I don't have a dropped frame or sync problem. I think in Ron's case, for his configuration, the matched drives solved his problems. SCSI drives are very fast and can solve some issues because of their speed. When I edit on clients systems with SCSI I never have drop frame or sync issues. How full are some of your drives? How fragmented are they? When you upgraded to OS X did you install new drivers? I would be happy to try to work on this with you. Post your Apple System Profile (or email it to me if you don't want everyone seeing it). Also, exactly the model of drives you're using and how you have the software configured (what's on what drive).

Jeff

[Ken Tanaka]

My internal drives do not match in brrand or capacity, either. Also no problem. I can see why partitioning would not produce favorable results. A disk partition is a logical construct, versus a physical one. That is, it does not add heads or platters to a drive. It merely divides it and actually adds some extra work during i/o.

That said, adding a clean, fast drive to your system and making sure that you've established it (under FCP preferences) as the primary target for capture/scratch operations will make a very real difference. Many folks forget to do this and then report no difference in their problems, not realizing that FCP is still using their system drive for intermediate operations even though their project is homed on the new drive.