Capturing from cannon XM2 onto my external with fcp

[Devin Toselli]

Good day guys...

i have had a problem for a while was wondering if you might have sujestions...

the problem is.
that i can not capture from my Cannon XM2 onto my external hard drive using FCP. however if i capture onto my power book's hard drive i do not encounter this problem.?
i enitially thought this was due to not enough ram but now i am up too 1.5Gb and it persists

equipment:
Cannon XM2 (i belive in the states it is called some thing different HM2?)
power book G4
Final cut 5.1.4
Lacie hard drive with fire wire 800.

the problem seems to be with the connection of the vt deck(XM2) to FCP capture log...
it slowes down and dose not read properlly also if it dose conect when i begin to capture it will capture like 5-15 frames and then stop and look for time code...

if i repeat this onto my computers hard drive with the hard drive connected it will give the same problem even if the hard drive has been unmounted...

if i repeat with the hard drive disconected and off it works perfectly so the problem lie's with the hard drive but what i do not under stand???????

any sujestions would be appretiated....


over and out Devin............

[craaig]

Have you tried messing with the external hardisk cache settings? in the states it's called GL2. Also, do you know if the external is a SATA or IDE controlled external?

[Devin Toselli]

hey the hard drive is a lacie d2 quadra which dose have eSATA.. (ide?) but i use the fire wire 800 port.

As for playing with the hard drive's cashe i would not know how to!!!

thanks for the quick reply...

[craaig]

Have you tried the USB?
Definately is a weird one..

Here's a guess, you're capturing through firewire also? The hardisks internal cache isn't being used (they are usually 8mb or 16mb(this is normal for an external HDD as clearing the cache means more time for the computer to remove the drive)) meaning the firewire has to reset its threads (because firewire works with large streaming threads, not file threads like USB) every 8mb. So roughly every 8mb down the line your firewire threads are broken and are forced to reset.

If you can, try enabling the cache settings for your drive, otherwise, try using USB2 because then the computer caching won't effect your firewire threads. or, get it running on a eSATA controller if you have the port on your mac.

Hope this is a step in the right direction! It definately sounds like a weird one considering your capturing SD video! but i would probably place my bets on the caching..