HVX to Powerbook "Capture Now "questions

L

Lenilenapi

Carbonite Member
I have 2 questions about using the HVX to capture directly to a Powerbook via Firewire into Final Cut Pro using "Capture Now" through the log & capture window.

1. Is there a way to capture the timecode from the HVX . In my tests the newly captured clips always start @ "0" timecode. (Even with the HVX on "freerun")

2. Are there dropout problems with this scenario?

I had been led to believe that this was a pretty simple & reliable way to capture, but a thread on "DV Info Net" suggests that it is very prone to corruption and drop out:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=60199&highlight=firewire

Here they suggest that for a reliable capture you should add an extra firewire 800 port through a PCI card (on the powerbook) and capture to an external drive through this port.

This is new to me, but critically important.
Any reaction?
 
1. I don't think there is a way of getting timecode on clips captured via capture now. Because you are telling FCP that the device is uncontrollable, it is not looking at the TC because (I guess) the programmers thought that in this scenario you wouldn't see any (given that it is not expecting any control link). I can't see anyway of setting a preset or even time-of-day code in FCP. It's a bit of a pain.

2. The drop-out problems capturing to the internal HD don't surprise me. Because the HD has to deal with the system and application calls too, it's easy exceed what it's capable of. This could possibly be alleviated by using a faster internal HD (such as the new breed of 7200 2.5" HDs now available) or booting from an external HD.

The problems with the drive and the camcorder on the same Firewire bus (even on seperate ports) I suspect are related to the FW bridge being overwhelmed. In the early days of DV Apple specifically said you shouldn't run a camcorder and an HD on the same firewire bus. You would think, however, that with a theoretical speed of 400Mb/s it would be able to handle 104Mb/s of video & audio plus 20Mb/s(?) of transport overheads going in two directions... but apparently not!

These are theoretical ramblings, because I don't have anything to capture DVCProHD from (yet).

Hope they help.
 
Thanks Alex,
Your help is appreciated and makes sense, but I was hoping to get a response for the experts around here who tested the gear - like Barry, Jarred or Jan because these questions are critical to how I am trying to convince clients that this is a credible workflow.
I need to know if the "capture now" method has unexpected drop outs or not. I never heard anything about this on this forum but it seems to be a major issue over at DV Info net.
I'd love to hear its not an issue, and if a $79 PCU card fixes it, it is no big deal.

Please respond Barry etc.
 
I haven't done much in the way of "capture now" so I can't advise you. But Robert Lane over on DVInfo has thoroughly researched it and tested it, as has Evin Grant, and both will tell you that it works fine. If using a Mac Powerbook G4 I think they require you to use two separate firewire busses, one for the camera and one for an external drive, but other than that it should work just fine. Look for Robert's posts on DVInfo for more information.
 
Barry:

How well built is the firewire port on the cam?

Can it sustain much tug and pull when tethered to a firewire drive and to a laptop?

Do you believe this is much of an issue?
 
Actually it was Robert Lane who first scared me about this so i'm glad you tipped me to take him seriously.

He says you must add a La Cie PCIMIA card adapter that adds another 800 Firewire adapter to make this work right otherwise you will have problems.
You can't rely on the 2 firewire portsin the powerbook because they are on the same bus and that creates a slowdown.

This info should be more widely known since many of the readers here plan on this scenario.
 
David S. said:
How well built is the firewire port on the cam?

Can it sustain much tug and pull when tethered to a firewire drive and to a laptop?

Do you believe this is much of an issue?
Click to expand...
I do believe it's much of an issue, yes. The firewire is such a useful thing, I really don't want to see anything bad happen to it. I am not altogether comfortable with it yet, I would *much* rather see some sort of extension that includes a locking connector.

As is, I'd just wrap the firewire cable around the handle or use a rip-tie to keep the cord stable so that there'd never be any tension on the firewire port. But ideally I'd like to see a little plug-in module that screws onto the camera and extends the firewire port; that way if anything ever did become damaged it'd be that extend-o-port instead of the built-in one...
 
Lenilenapi said:
Actually it was Robert Lane who first scared me about this so i'm glad you tipped me to take him seriously.

He says you must add a La Cie PCIMIA card adapter that adds another 800 Firewire adapter to make this work right otherwise you will have problems.
You can't rely on the 2 firewire portsin the powerbook because they are on the same bus and that creates a slowdown.

This info should be more widely known since many of the readers here plan on this scenario.
Click to expand...

I just got my two LaCie cards today, and I already have my OWC RAID hard drives. After reading about the workflow problem I decided to follow Robert Lane's advice and get the cards. One guy there on DVinfonet put it like this, trying to get one bus to handle both intake from the camera and output to a Hard Drive is like trying to breath in and out at the same time. Also the bus will run at the slowest speed of anything attached to it, which in this case is the camera feed and that speed will be to slow to record to a HD, so use two bus's and the problem is solved. I'll do a little testing over the next few days and get back with you on this.

Barry I agree with Lenilenapi, perhaps this info should be collected and made a sticky here?

David
 
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