Cant Capture on External HD

smithgallTV

smithgallTV

Active member
I am using a apple powerbook g4 OS 10.4. Running FC Express. I just bought a new external harddrive so i can capture but when i attempt to capture from my DV camera i get an error message stating "allocating disk space" it then freezes. I was able to capture a good amount but then this week it started doing this. It wont let me capture at all now without that message. The hard drive hasnt been hooked to the internet and its not full. The powerbook does recognize the HD is there and i can access the HD through normal means. Its just having this one significant problem. Is there a setting that I may need to change or make some other adjustment.
 
Did you format it for the Mac? Soem drives are formatted for windows.
Are you going from Camera to Mac to drive or camera to drive to mac?
Does FCE use a capture now or is there an option to capture a section?
Is it set as your scratch drive as well>
 
i was going from cam to mac and mac to drive., yes it was set as scratch drive. It worked before. No i havent specifically formatted it for the mac but then again it did work so i wasnt sure if i needed to specifically format it or not.
 
Run a disk utility on it.
Try capturing a small amount to it and a small amount to your internal just to make sure it's the drive issue and not FCP corruption.
 
smithgallTV ---

I have had this *exact* same problem - "Allocating Disk Space", then freezes up. It was also seemingly random - it worked initially, as in your situation. The way I got around it was to capture to internal drive, then move the media later using the media manager, so if you just need a quick fix you could do that.

So, I got it to go away once I used my DVX100A to capture the material. It was the camera I was using that was causing all the trouble. What I would suggest is seeing if you can capture to the drive using a different deck then whatever you are using now (check the list of FCP qualified devices, available at Apple's website).

If that still doesn't work, though it worked perfectly for me to find another deck on that list, here are general drive troubleshooting tips that is generally reccomended to follow:

-Make sure the drive is formatted for "Mac OS Extended", NOT "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Journaling is an option which records all disk activity to a log, which creates a slight latency for all disk operations. Generally un-noticable for most applications, but as a scratch disk you want journaling off.

You can format disks by using the disk utility: Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility.

-Make sure the drive is getting power from the a wall plug, NOT firewire.

-Do not daisy chain firewire devices when capturing, i.e., plug the camera DIRECTLY into your powerbook. Do not plug the camera into the drive. I've had no trouble daisying chaining external drives to other devices, however.

This is all I can think of right now, but best of luck in getting it to work.
 
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