Final Cut won't start after new external hard drive connected

Green Dog

Green Dog

Active member
Ok, I've got one heck of a frustrating problem.. I've been using Final Cut Express 3.5 HD for awhile now and it's been great. I just added a new Western Digital My Book Studio 1 TB external hard drive via the firewire 800 port and my problems begin. I want the new external hard drive to hold all my captured footage so I went into the Final Cut preferences and changed the scratch disk from the Apple system hard drive to the external drive. I read a post on this forum saying that it could easily be done so I gave it a shot. Now when I try to open Final Cut I get the usual message window, " unable to locate the following external devices: Apple Firewire NTSC (720x480)" so I then click on continue as I would if I were editing an existing project but here's where everything gets funky... The program won't start up and there's no delay. The window disappears and I'm left staring at a blank screen. When the capture device, my little Canon dv, is connected to the Firewire 400 port I get the same message, when I click on check again the window returns, when I click on continue I get the beautiful color wheel that spins forever but nothing happens. Sooooo, I can't even get Final Cut open to change everything back to the way it was before I connected the new external hard drive. Any thoughts or ideas ?

Thanks in advance,

Steve
 
Junk your preferences. It's in " Your Username">Library>Preferences>com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist. Throw it in the trash.
 
I just bought the same HD and would like to avoid the problem. How is trashing
the preferences done- by deleting the file you named?
 
Ok guys, thought I had this monster whipped...... Ended up having more problems that created the need to uninstall Final Cut and reinstall the program. Ugghh.. But wait, if that weren't enough I still can't capture. Final Cut, newly loaded, will still not recognize my deck. Everything is exactly as it was before connecting the new WD external hard drive. The deck, my cheap little Canon mini dv camera, is connected to the Firewire 400 port and the WD hard drive is connected to the Firewire 800 port. The WD drive seems to be working properly but I believe there to be a conflict with FC Express somehow. I can't get far enough into the program to indicate that I want the WD drive to be my scratch disc. Sooo I'm back to square one. Hope you have better luck Fred.

Steve
 
Still having problems with the iMac & Final Cut Express 3.5HD recognizing my deck/capture device. I've read that the iMac, I have the 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, has only one bus that runs either 400 or 800 MHz. I've also read that because of the limited protocol used by Canon cameras, my capture device/deck is a small Canon mini dv, I will not be able to have the camera connected to the 400 port and the Western Digital external HD connected to the 800 port as they're both on the same bus. There is only one FW bus in the computer ?? I would have to capture to the internal and move the media to the external. Now this confuses me some as I know I've read posts from others saying they have an external HD and capture device connected to the iMac and they're able to capture footage that's directed directly to their external HD as the scratch disc but I can't seem to make this happen. Before I connected the external HD I had no problems capturing footage to my internal HD through Final Cut. Anyone out there have any experience with this ?

Thanks,

Steve
 
Green Dog said:
I've read that the iMac, I have the 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, has only one bus that runs either 400 or 800 MHz. I've also read that because of the limited protocol used by Canon cameras, my capture device/deck is a small Canon mini dv, I will not be able to have the camera connected to the 400 port and the Western Digital external HD connected to the 800 port as they're both on the same bus. There is only one FW bus in the computer ?? I would have to capture to the internal and move the media to the external
Click to expand...

FYI, I have a 24 inch 2.16 C2D iMac with FCP 6 and I always have 3 firewire 400 drives and 1 firewire 800 drive connected (no firewire hub) and I can directly capture to any drive I choose. So I don't think the problem you are having is because of iMac limitations.
 
Thanks Ram S.O.S... I've heard that other people are doing the same without any issues. I can't figure it out... I had no problems capturing footage until I connected the Western Digital external HD to the Firewire 800 port and selecting it as the scratch disc. Since then I've not been able to capture any footage. I keep getting that stinking "can't find the device" message. I have a new Firewire 400 cable for the capture deice so it's not that, the Firewire 800 cable for the external HD is new so it's not that, I've reloaded the Final Cut software 4 times, dumped the preferences three times and researched the hell out of this but just can't find an answer to the problem. I've gotta get this resolved asap, I've got 7 hours of footage from a project that needs to be captured in the next couple of days. I'm just banging my head against the wall here trying to get this figured out. VERY frustrating...

Thanks again for the info, glad yours is working fine, hope to get mine fixed soon.

Steve
 
So that's it ?? No one else has any ideas as to what the problem might be ? I've tried everything I can think of and I know other folks are able to connect an external HD and a capture device at the same time without problems. I have 7 hours of footage that I need to capture and edit for a corporate client and at this point no way of getting it done.

Steve
 
Disconnected the Western Digital external hard drive this morning and can now capture footage to my internal HD scratch disk. I still have no idea why the external HD won't allow FCE to acquire/find the capture device. I do need to figure this out as I NEED to be able to use the 1 TB external drive as my scratch disk. So if anyone out there has any thoughts or suggestions please let me know.
Thanks,

Steve
 
The problem is the firewire Buss and the canon minidv camera...I have the same issue..unplug the firewire drives and then startup FCP...replug the drives and try assigning FW800 drive as scratch disk...this reportedly worked for some people...for myself I had to do what youre doing and capture to an internal drive(not system drive) and then copy to my FW800 and now I'm free to edit away...i found this issue on the apple FCP forums.
 
Thanks brdplya1... I've read that the Canon cameras have problems with sharing the same bus. Just for grins I tried connecting my DVX to the 400 port but still no go. Got the same "can't find the device" message I got with the little Canon camera. Sucks having to disconnect the external drive and make the internal the scratch disc. I even talked to someone at Apple who assured me that there should be no problem having the two running at the same time. I'll try your suggestion. Just in case that doesn't work, how did you transfer your footage from your internal to your external drive ? I read that you're supposed to use media manager to move the files or there could be dropped frames. All the footage that I captured the other day is sitting on my internal (system) drive but I really want/need to free that space up for more footage and then transfer that footage to the external as well.

Thanks a bunch,

Steve
 
I just copied over from internal drive to FW800...no problems with dropped frames.I've just got a E-sata card/external e-sata drive and I'm going to try using it as my scratch drive to see If I get around this problem
 
Hi Green Dog--
I researched the issue on another board. I got some good technical advice from a person I trust. I am using a MacG5 2.3 from early 2005. The problem is everything running through the same firewire bus. So it was suggested I get a firewire 800 PCI card in order to free up the other bus. Which I have done. I bought the Firewire 800 PCI-x card from FireWire Depot. (it is supposed to work well with my CalDigitVR external drive array of two drives 250g each.)

I haven't installed it all yet as I am waiting for some memory to arrive that I want to install first. But I will let you know if the setup works for me. I trust that it will.
 
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