Dropped frames when capturing to FCP

Ike615

Ike615

Well-known member
So I posted about a week ago with problems concerning dropped frames during capturing live footage. Since then I seem to be getting dropped frames for everything I'm doing now. I'm getting dropped frames even when I'm capturing onto my Mac Pro (not live capturing). And it doesn't matter what DV deck I'm using, what FW cable I'm using, or even what Firewire Bus on my computer i'm hooked into. I've never seemed to have this bad of a problem with dropped frames. I'm wondering if it's a software problem. Maybe a bug in FCP. That or I'm just having really really bad luck. Anyone else experiencing this problem?
 
Why are you capturing to FW?

In any case, what are you OS, QT and FCP version numbers.

RAM, dedicated media drive, sequence settings for FCP?
 
Thanks for replying,

Is there another way of capturing that I'm not aware of?

OS X: 10.4.9
QT: 7.1.5
FCP: 5.1.4

Mac Pro: 2.66 GHz
Ram: 2 GB
Dedicated Media Drive: Lacie 500GB FW 800
Sequence settings: DV NTSC 48khz

4326wsi.jpg
 
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You need a second FW bus.

There is only one on every Mac. Do not confuse FW ports, with the single FW bus. All those ports share the same bus.

The HVX and the Lacie are not competing on a single bus.

Either capture to a dedicated internal SATA drive, or get a create a second PCI X FW card.

Again, many ports, and just one bus.
 
I use a Quad Core G5, I live capture every week to an external LaCie FW800 drive, no problems. I used to do it on my G4/450 and dual 2.0 G5, also. The problem David states is laptop only. Towers should not have a problem. All my consulting clients to this with no problems.

I'd check to make sure you have no third party software running the the background, try a different FW cable, run MacJanitor then DiskUtility then Disk Warrior. On a tower this should be a non-issue with the FW ports.
 
Hi.
I'm having a similar problem using a MacMini (1.86Ghz coreduo), recording from the HVX to a Macmini via firewire and to my external drive via USB (FCP 5.1.4).

This simply does NOT work. It'll record a second or two of footage but then stop. It loads footage from P2 fine though. Is this just not a good setup for live capture or is there some way that I could rig this up to work successfully? Perhaps a firewire hub would work?

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
SurJones said:
Make sure in your prefrences you have the ABORT CAPTURE On DROPPED FRAMES --OFF
Click to expand...

So are you suggesting it would be better to find out he has a problem after maybe days, weeks or months of editing a project that was captured with dropped frames? Would't it be better to find out what's causing the problem now while capturing?
Another thing to try would be to trash the FCP preferences.
 
I have shot over 50 events now using this method, and have NEVER gotten a dropped frame. From my understanding it has to do with tapes typically, Unless now I see benB's quoting one of ya'll using USB to capture(which could be a data rate limitation?). I ONLY use FW800 all the way around the to live capture.

After reading thoroughly through your post. I would say do an Erase and Install. Why are you live capturing DV? You have an HD camera. :)
 
BenB said:
Apple actually states that USB isn't a supported drive for FCP...
Click to expand...

Well.... that would certainly explain why I'm having problems! Lol.

So do you think a firewire hub would be sufficient (the macmini only has a single firewire port)? The manual says that there can only be 1 firewire device connected to the HVX... but I'm sure there must be some sort of hack to make this work, right?
 
Just an update for posterity. I purchased a firewire hub that splits the mac mini's single firewire port into 2 and it worked like a charm. Recording directly from the HVX into FCP via firewire onto a firewire 400 drive.... no dropped frames. Smooth as silk :)

Hope that helps someone down the line with this issue.

Cheers,
Jamey
 
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