Any help appreciated! - trying to edit HDV on iMac with external drive

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kookooframe

Well-known member
I've got a brand new iMac and bought an external drive so I can edit HDV from my Canon XH-A1. Problem is, the sound synch is way off when I capture. Since the iMac has only one Firewire 800 port I am capturing from my camera into that port, and saving the captured footage through a USB 2.0 from the iMac into the external drive.

Is my problem a bus problem or something due to the slow speed of the USB port going from the iMac into the external drive? If so, then how do other people edit with external drives on an IMac? I'm hoping surely it can't be that you need to put in some kind of card just to capture to an external drive. This is a brand new iMac!

Any help appreciated -- I've been troubleshooting all night and still can't figure this out.

Would one workaround solution be to capture to the iMac hard drive and then transfer to the external drive later? (That seems like a clumsy way of working...)
 
kookooframe said:
Since the iMac has only one Firewire 800 port I am capturing from my camera into that port, and saving the captured footage through a USB 2.0 from the iMac into the external drive.
Click to expand...

There's your problem. USB is not going to hold up for you when editing video on a Mac.

Though FW daisy-chaining is generally not recommended, with HDV you'll most likely be fine sending your camera through a FW800 drive and the drive then connecting to the computer. I edited for years on an iMac using a daisy-chained DVCAM deck and FW400 drive with no problems. Just remember that the FW chain will only be as fast as its slowest piece, which would be your camera in this case. Once you've connected a FW400 device to a FW800 chain, you're only getting the performance of FW400. Again, with HDV, this should hold up as long as you don't chain several drives along with the camera.

I should also note that you may find FW compatibility issues, which is the other reason daisy-chaining is not recommended. Some devices play nice together, some don't. So if you connect your camera and drive and are facing issues, you may want to try a different drive.

The other solution, which is a real PITA, is to capture to your iMac's internal HD. You'll then need to connect a FW800 drive and move that footage to the external drive before you edit.
 
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Thanks, for the speedy reply C2V! -- I really appreciate the input. I will try daisy-chaining by going straight into the external drive from the camera. (Gee, I thought getting a new fast iMac would make things so easy!)
 
any files to watch out for?

any files to watch out for?

Well I tried daisy-chaining straight through the external drive via Firewire 400 but sound synch was still off. Don't know if that might be due to some interplay between the firewire and the drive. It's a Western Digital 2TB drive which I got a good price on, but maybe I should return and try something else that might work in a daisy chain at least...

What does work right now is capturing to the internal hard drive, then moving the captured files to the external hard drive. This seems cumbersome, but maybe not too bad once I get a dependable workflow going... I'm willing to do what I need to make it work. I am moving only the captured movie files to the external drive -- then to use them I am using the import function to get them into a bin.

I am wondering whether there are any other files created during capture that I need to move as well.

Any input or suggestions appreciated!
 
Now I'm REALLY puzzled. Now even when I capture straight to the internal hard drive on the iMac, the synch is off. Some clips I get the synch exact. Others are way off. I have checked preferences and settings and I can't seem to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

I've been editing FCE4 for years on a different Mac with no problem like this.

Any thoughts appreciated!
 
There's got to be a setting somewhere that's messed up. It's Final Cut Express, so options are extremely limited, but... walk us through your workflow. Which shooting mode are you using on the XH-A1? What's your project setting in FCE?

Another potential hiccup may be a corrupted .plist file. Trashing Final Cut prefs is usually a first line of defense if it suddenly starts misbehaving without any logical reason. Go to User>Library>Preferences and look for com.apple.FinalCutExpress.plist, then drag that file to the trash. Re-launch FCE and see if that helps.
 
hmm...now it happens even on my good system

hmm...now it happens even on my good system

Thanks C2V for the suggestions. But the plot keeps thickening. I tried the same exact footage, which is 24F, on my other Mac system with FCE4. To my surprise, I got the same results -- some footage right in synch, then other clips way off. In fact, when I recaptured some of the same scenes over again, the synch would be off one time and on the other time.

Now these are two completely different computers so I started thinking it must be the camera. I went into my shooting settings on the XH-A1 and saw that it was set to 30F. So I changed it to 24F to match the footage. I don't see how a shooting setting would affect playback, but I thought that might solve the problem.

But no. The first clip I captured after that -- perfectly in synch. The next clip, way out. And this on my good system that has been working perfectly fine.

I've checked and reset the settings on the camera. I know the manual pretty well and have had the camera 3 years so I don't think I've missed anything. Though I may be wrong...

I'm capturing with the Apple Intermediate Codec 1440X1080i60. My version of FCE4 on both computers is 4.0.1

I have put in about 12 hours on this in the last two days -- good thing there was a snowstorm and no work today!
 
one more note

one more note

Yes I have tried trashing the preferences several times.

The synch seems to work perfectly in iMovie -- same camera, same footage.

I am at a loss to explain why FCE4 randomly gets or loses the synch on both my Macs. Could it be some kind of problem with an Apple system update recently?
 
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