capture encountered a problem reading the data on your source tape.

Could partly be due to limitations of the iMac.

But, why are you capturing with DV50 NTSC...MiniDV is DV(25) NTSC?

Are you capturing to your internal drive, or to an external?

If external, what make/model and is it FW or USB?

Post back with info, along with exact OS/FCP/QT versions.

K

I have the same problem and have a fairly high spec Mac pro.

It use to work, and iMovies seems my only way to capture footage when FCP fails and saus there's a problem with my source tape.

Not sure if there's setting on my camera or I need to set up FCP?

Any ideas?

Hello everyone,

I tried different Macs with different Cams and different tapes, even a new tape. Every capture try aborts after 3 seconds (+- few frames). iMovie is fine 😟

Make sure that all Canon cameras' device control setting is set to BASIC... they are notorious for this sort of behavior with FCP for whatever reason, but they all use that BASIC setting be it DV Or HDV.

Jerry

And, if you have an external hard drive attached, you may need to remove it. Canons are notorious for not playing well with other devices on the same firewire bus - and since all firewire ports on a mac are on the same bus ...

x

I'm having a similar issue using a Sony DC-9 camera as my deck, the tape is Sony too. At first, it wouldn't even show the video, so I changed to generic capture template and non-controllable device. Video came up, but now I get the error message after 3:00 of dig'ing saying there must be a problem with my tape. I am running the most current FCP 6, and have tried dig'ing to both internal and external drive with no luck.

Anyone know if there's a new Quicktime update? I seem to remember years ago that there were problems capturing because of wrong Quicktime version. I'll check that out, and post back if it's the case.

Thanks for any help...
Jenn

also, iMovie didn't work for me, wouldn't see the video, so now I'm currently recording into Quicktime player and it's working fine no breaks

Deleting
/Users/loefflad/Library/Preferences/Final\ Cut\ Pro\ User\ Data/Final\ Cut\ Pro\ 6.0\ Prefs.fcset
worked for me. There seems to be a localization problem, because I had some german words inside this binary file. But my Mac and therefore FCP is set to english.

After deleting and starting FCP all were fine here.

PROBLEM SOLVED! I've had the same problem and I was able to resolve it.

I had my camera professionally cleaned and serviced. Besides being cleaned, the gears that turn the tape were tweaked and set back to the correct specifications.

I had used tape head cleaner I bought at camera stores to clean my camera, but that was not good enough.

I can now digitize without any problem.

There is one catch. The tapes I shot with my camera before I had it serviced play back fine, BUT still can not be digitized without getting the 'can not read source tape' error message.

All new tapes recorded with the camera AFTER it was PROFESSIONALLY CLEANED and had ROUTINE MAINTENANCE digitize perfectly without any error.

I've seen this problem crop up on other message boards when I was doing research into this problem, and there never seems to be any solution to this. I finally found a message forum from 3 years ago, in a deep Google search, where a guy solved this problem by having his camera professionally cleaned and serviced. I took his advice, and it solved the problem of 'CAN'T READ SOURCE TAPE'

BRAVO! FINITO!

By the way, I went to a place in Burbank, California called TEK Media Group. There phone number is 818-244-4440

It cost me $350 to have the camera cleaned and serviced. They said the the drums were dirty and the tension was off too.