Is this machine too slow to import DV?
 

Powerbook G4 1.25Ghz FCP5 Canon XL1s Pluggged in, 1Gb RAM, 12.36Gb free on disk. Getting TC Drops trying to import which fails my import... Is there a way to get it to work?

Abort! No!
 

TC drops may be just that, and this may have nothing to do w/ the computer. Turn off the "stop on tc drop" preference and that'll get it to work alright...even turning off abort on dropped frames. Sometimes you just don't need the frame/s or the hassle...

Don't count on any match frame edits from tape, though ;-)

If you are using the internal drive to capture, that could be your problem (you don't specify). I successfully capture with FCS 5.1 to an external HDD, 7200 RPM, with an iBook G4, 1 GHz, 512 MB RAM [don't laugh, it works :-) ] with no problems. External HDD connected to FW 400 port, camera (Sony VX2100) connected to second port on HDD (I use this to capture on location and then use the HDD with my editing Mac). I wouldn't try it to the main HDD.

It shouldn't be the computer based on your specs (unless you are capturing to a fragmented internal drive), like Jeffrey said, turn off the option under User Preferences if it continues to give you problems.

Grant

No reason that the computer should be too slow. As already said, capturing to the primary (internal) hard drive is always a risk.

(I used to use a 400MHz PII system to capture DV via FireWire with no problem - but I used a dedicated drive for the capture. Not a Mac but that shouldn't matter for FireWire transfer capability.)

thank you all so much, I'm trying to get it going as wel speak! :) I had never thought of using the second port on an external device to plug the camera into, I've always thought high bandwidth devices were supposed to be directly connected, so I've done that. Perhaps I'll invest in a different drive dock with two ports for this application.

If you plan to daisy-chain your DV camcorder with a FireWire hard drive, viz:

DV camcorder----->HDD---->Computer

then be mindful that the FireWire transfer will drop to speed of the slowest device. e.g., if the camcorder has a 100Mbps FireWire interface, the HDD will also operate at 100Mbps, even if it can support higher speeds.

This is why it is often advantageous to use USB2.0 for external drives. For many cases, the theoretical performance hit due to using the CPU for controlling the data transfer (unlike FireWire) doesn't really show up.

If you have an external drive with both types of interfaces, you can try both to see which offers the better performance with you specific system and work flow.

FCP can't capture from USB 2.0 cameras, and with a Macintosh, I wouldn't recommend capturing video to a USB drive. It works fine for data files, but not video capture. From what I understand about the two, FW is sustained transfer and USB 2 is in bursts.

Grant

Changing the setting worked like a champ...had to capture now though, so I'll have to make sub clips to get rid of the cruft.

USB 2.0 has never proven to me to be anything other than theoretical maximum...even as the only device on a USB 2.0 chain, working video on a USB 2.0 HD was painful. I've had to do tons of testing on throughput in my previous job as lots of really fast storage was important to us. We tested every conceivable drive with every conceivable connection...informally, so no actual results. FW always out performed USB 1.1/2.0 in every situation we could come up with...FW just has better sustained transfer rates.

The move on apple's part to USB2.0 on their iPods has me sad. My 1st gen iPod 5Gb transfers the same set of songs faster than my son's brand new iPod Video (USB 2.0)...direct to machine, only device on that bus. I'll leave USB to keyboards and mice.

http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html

Unique clips for each shot
 

I have a suggestion regarding breaking up clips...you may already know it since you mention subclips.

Anyway, the purpose of doing this is to get single clips of each shot, rather than all the shots in one piece of media. Humor me if you know...

1) Use DV Start/Stop detection to add markers where your shots changed;
2) Select the markers then the menu item Make New Master Clips, then make Subclips...(I could only get the end result doing these two like this)
3) Select the newly created odd subclips (to avoid simply joining the media on 'export')
4) Use Media manager to move the clips (or copy if your skeered) to a new location. Make sure "delete unused media from clips" is checked (I think I'm paraphrasing the menu items...) then hit okay. That check marks actually removes all the other footage, except for the clip.
5) BEFORE you click anywhere else, after the first media manager pass is done, hit delete to delete the odd markers.
6) Now easily lasso the remaining even ones and repeat the media move.

Now what? And why? This process is to break up on large media files based on the start/stop of each shot. It puts your media on your drive as unique shots giving you finer control. Then, before you bring them back into FCP, rename all the clips with something meaningful (use R-name or similar) to help with organization. If you've already done a tremendous amout of logging, the only way to retain some of that is actually retype or copy/paste it into the start/stop marker names, then select the appropriate option on media manage.

Wow. Sorry for that long post. It's not all that complete - so if there's any further interest, let me know. I just had to do this yesterday for wedding footage. It's a much better way to store the stuff in my mind...having each shot as a unique piece of media is a good way to work.

Just to add my experience, I did quite a lot of DV capturing/editing/exporting while working in South America with my PowerBook G4 1ghz and had no problems whatsoever.

As a bit of cheap "insurance" I got a Firewire 400 PC card to provide a second independent firewire bus. It only cost about $30 at Best Buy a couple years ago. This should eliminate any concerns about the camera and external hard drive competing for bandwidth, and it also speeds up backup copies between two external drives.

I use a 1.5 ghz powerbook and have a seperate firewire card for the slot and it works great. DSR-11 deck into firewire card and hardrive into built in firewire slot. That way you have two busses instead of one. Before that I was using a 400 mhz G3 with Final Cut Pro 2 and it worked great as well. Renders were awful but just basic video editing was fine. And by the way for anyone reading this, DON'T use USB 2 hardrives for video....believe me, just don't even go there. It does NOT work worth anything on a Mac....it doesn't have the substained transfer rate that even firewire 400 has. Yes I've tried it, and no it has never worked on any Mac that I've tried it on, laptop or desktop.