Topic: Any Final Cut/iMovie experts?

[ethan]

I volunteer at a public access TV station and am trying to get them set up to do video capture right to computer. Basically they have a Sony DVCAM DSR-11 http://www.supermediastore.com/sony-dsr11-dvcam-compact-vtr.html that the Audio and video output from the A/V mixer goes.

I have the DSR-11 set up to pass the video out the iLink (IEEE1394) output.

The problem is it seems that both iMovie and Final Cut want to control the DSR-11 as if it were a camera. What I mean here is when I select capture in the software switches the DSR-11 into play. This is not what I want. I want the computer to passively capture the output. What happened yesterday is I hit record on the DSR-11, it was recording then as soon as I hit Capture on the mac it switched the DSR-11 from record to play which killed the DSR-11's recording.

I'm a real n00b on mac's and final cut. Does anyone know if there's some way to configure Final Cut to not try to "take over" the DVCAM?
If not is there any other MAC based software that might function as I described?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

-e

[willndmb]

1st i am far from an expert with fcp

i am not sure if every camera you can do it or not, in fact i am pretty sure you can't do it with every camera
because
one of my old minidv cams i can record directly to the comp
but on another one it does exactly what you stated - switches to "playback mode" and stops the transfer
(even the one older camera that i can get to do it, i can not get to do it 100% of the time)

with that said you need a lot of ram and a fasssst hd in order to keep up for long period of time without dropped frames (skips in the recording)

[ethan]

This looks like what I need:


In Final Cut Pro, under the File menu, select Log and Capture...
In the Log and Capture window, click on the Capture Settings tab and change the Device Control popup menu to Non-Controllable Device, as pictured below:

[willndmb]

+t i learned something new and seems you figured out the answer too

[evilchris]

Yep ... Turn off device control and you should be golden.

[taper420]

that's what i was gonna say.... let us know how it works out.

I'd also recommend doing a long test to see how long it stays stable. I get occasional dropped frames during capture, and I have to recapture that segment. And my computers pretty dam fast (although I am working with 1080i). I believe there is a setting so that it will keep capturing through dropped frames. You may have to check that for it to be reliable. Either way I would make sure you have a backup rolling, especially if it's important or live. We just had a pretty bad mess up at work because the main deck that was feeding everything else (a webfeed, the backup recorder, the live cable feed) shut off at 29:44 . It was a combination of messy wire configuration (pass-through instead of split), user error, and the failure to load the actual cameras with a tape (or at least having a VTR directly linked to each camera). Having the final product was more important than having the live feed but we ended up with neither.

Anyway...back to you.... have you considered a firestore drive? Hell of a lot more convenient and portable than what your doing.

[ethan]

Anyway...back to you.... have you considered a firestore drive? Hell of a lot more convenient and portable than what your doing.

Never heard of a firestore drive. I'll google

[Kevin]

Apple 8 (shortcut for opening up capture window)