live capture to MBP help needed

R

raw911

Active member
my set up is a MBP C2D laptop / Gdrive mini 100gb and HVX-200 i am using FCP and trying to capture footage straight into the Gdrive ... i have read the manual and cannot find out how to get this done. only thing i saw refers to downloading P2 footage.

I am testing this out now cause i have an fashion show/comedy show that person would like for me to record. due to the lenght of program P2 is not an option so i am trying to work the bugs out of this set up if it is at all possible.


thx in advance
 
ok now i am getting drop frames can it be due to the HD that i want to use is not fast enough? pls anyone have any suggrestions ... i figure the program is gonna probably be about 3 - 4hrs the most .... and really need a solution
 
raw911 said:
ok now i am getting drop frames can it be due to the HD that i want to use is not fast enough? pls anyone have any suggrestions ... i figure the program is gonna probably be about 3 - 4hrs the most .... and really need a solution
Click to expand...

I would say the drive is probably the problem. It is a bus powered drive correct?
Another way to do this would be to have 3 or 4 P2 cards and you could record continuously for as long as the camera has power. Get a hold of a laptop with a PCMCIA slot and then just dump the footage from the P2 cards to an external drive hooked up to the laptop. It can be a PC or MAC.
 
When you go to the "log and capture" menu in FCP you need to set the Device Control to "non-controllable device". This will then allow you to capture straight onto FCP and from my experience it has worked well everytime. Though when doing this you always run the risk of FCP crashing on you (but again this hasn't ever happened to me and I've done this setup quite a bit).

For your external hard drive are you using USB, FireWire 400, or FireWire 800? I would imagine using USB would not be fast enough and end up giving you dropped frames. I have a 17" powerbook G4 and Lacie hard drives (FW-800) and I've never experienced dropped frames while using them. So I doubt your MBP is the cause of the problem because it's a much faster computer than mine.

Also if you are going to be recording 3-4 hours of footage you will need a bigger hard drive than 100GB especially if you are shooting in 60p (which I recommend for what you're doing).

Hope that provides you with at least some answers to your questions.

- Isaac
 
yes HD is connected via usb only cause MBP only has one fw400 i do have Graid 500 gb ... i was planning on shooting 720/60p and the only reason i wanted to do live capture cause not sure of the program if there would be time to change cards .... only thing that i am shaky about in the live capture is that everytime drops come up no footage is recorded all is lost ... but then that is probably only due to HD connected via usb
 
Capturing 3-4 hours of HD to a 500g fw hard drive seem risky.
just shuttle multiple p2 cards to an assistant with a laptop for offload while you walk around shooting untethered.
with a firewire daisy chain you will have to be stationary and tethered to the pc.
 
USB isn't going to be fast enough for live capture. Your solution is to get a FW card for your cardslot, and run your camera to that, your media hard drive off the MBP's built in FW port.

Or use an FS-100.
 
BenB said:
USB isn't going to be fast enough for live capture. Your solution is to get a FW card for your cardslot, and run your camera to that, your media hard drive off the MBP's built in FW port.

Or use an FS-100.
Click to expand...

What about a Firewire hub? I use a Pelkin six-port (although
for editing, never captured live but have captured from tape
in camera or deck.) Would that work?
 
No, won't work. Problem is only so much data can pass through on one data buss. Thus, a FW card will give you two seperate data busses. A hub will only make matter much worse.

Capturing is capturing, live, tape, it's all the same process in the computer.
 
With the availability of Express34 SATA cards, SATA external enclosures and, of course, SATA drives, I strongly recommend considering SATA over FW for MBP capture, live capture, editing, etc. I am running a SATA external on my MBP and don't drop a frame. I use the FS-100, and can import FW from the FS-100 directly to the external SATA drive. Alternatively, I run DVRackPro under BootCamp and have MacDrive installed on the XP side. So, it recognizes my external SATA drive and lets me capture live directly to the external drive.

I have never been the strongest advocate of firewire drives for editing and with the availability of SATA for the same price, I see no need to persist in FW. And, as Ben mentioned, USB2 does not keep up with the data rate on the Mac side and as such should not be used for acquisition or editing.

Ned Soltz
 
BenB said:
USB isn't going to be fast enough for live capture.
Click to expand...
I agree that FW is a better choice than USB, but USB should work as well. I've used a low-end (P4M 1.5GHz) PC laptop with DV Rack 2.0 HD to record hours of video to an external USB drive, and never had any problems.
 
Macs don't work that way, USB falls apart for doing HD video on a Mac. Macs seem to handle Firewire better than PCs, though. Go figure. Oh yeah, cause Apple was on the board that developed Firewire...
 
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