Snow Leopard- Final Cut 5.1 HDV Capture

Not flip, just born of years of listening to Canon owners complain of issues - and it appears Canon has done NOTHING to address these.

If snow leopard doesn't work for you, simply revert to the previous version. Good practice suggests you DO NOT upgrade without an exit/recovery strategy. To do other wise is foolish and to blame Apple for issues that arise from being an early adopter is simply whining or the ranting of a hobbiest.

I do not work for Apple. I just see people wishing to blame anyone/everyone rather than confront their own lack of patience or forethought as the root cause for the problems they have.

Hang around the forums for a few years and help out. It will be interesting to hear your thoughts after you've answered 10,000 or so questions.

x

Just chiming in to add to the fury. I have two systems, both running FCP 5.1.4.

MBP 10.6.1
G4 PPC 10.5.8

Snow Leopard system will not recognize my XH A1s in HD mode, only SD. iMovie will recognize in HD, but using live capture defeats the purpose of marking clips with in/out for partial captures, and later recollection. I don't want to transfer 60 minutes of footage at a time, I want to log the clips separately. That's one of the "advantages" to owning a $1200+ piece of software.

The Leopard system works flawlessly on the G4.

I've reinstalled FCP on the MBP, no luck. (yes I removed ALL FCP files from my system)

I'm just waiting inline like the rest of you to hear about a fix coming out for this issue...

The "fix" is to run the current version of FCP/FCS with OSX 10.6.

If you don't want to keep your software current with the OS, don't move to the current OS. There is nothing in it (OSX 10.6) that will make your version of FCP run better and a lot to break it.

x

I have not tried this myself, but I think the problem lies in some of the components not being carried over in Quicktime 7 after the upgrade. The mpeg2 component specifically does not seem to be carried over and may be the culprit in FCP's inability to capture HDV after upgrading to 10.6. As we know, MPEG2 is the compression used for all HDV.

This is an excerpt from a Creative Cow poster:
[[[ I'm unsure of when I'll be able to install Snow Leopard on my production machine with FCS2 on it, but if/when that happens, I'll make sure to post to this thread with the results.

I seem to remember having to do this same thing back when I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard. I did the clean install upgrade, and I had to copy the MPEG2 component back to the proper location, as it was removed on the install of Leopard. I've read that Snow Leopard's upgrade is essentially the clean install option that was on older OS installs.

So, based on that, here's my theory: Since my QuickTimeMPEG2.component was installed in /System/Library/QuickTime, it got overwritten by the default directories and files located on the Snow Leopard installer. Since the MPEG2 component isn't included on the Snow Leopard install, it wasn't included. I'd assume that if any other codec was installed in that location, it would be removed as well. But, since most codecs are installed in /Library/QuickTime/ or ~/Library/QuickTime/ codec loss on a system upgrade usually isn't a problem.

So, if I go to work on Monday, and see that my production machine has the QuickTimeMPEG2.component installed in the /System/Library/QuickTime/ location, I can only assume that it'd be deleted if I install Snow Leopard. However, if the codec is installed somewhere else, like the /Library/QuickTime/ location, it'll probably still be there when I install Snow Leopard, and there won't be any issues. ]]]

If this is true (again I have not done this myself), then copying the proper components back into the correct folders of Quicktime might be able to fix this.

Please let me know if this helps anyone.

I am having the same problem trying to import HDV with a Sony Z7. I can import DV but not HDV (camera not recognized). If nobody can come up with a solution in a few days I'm going to have to downgrade back to Leopard. Does anyone know if that will solve the problem?

I experienced the same problem with my Canon HV-30 on Final Cut Express HD. I also could not capture with iMovie or iMovie HD. I called Apple Tech Support and after a few checks it turned out my Fire Wire port on the back of the iMac wasn't working (tried to hook up an external firewire drive and it wouldn't mount). The tech ran me through the "reset pram" procedure and it works fine now. If you need the steps for this let me know.

Ok, to follow up on my previous post...

Today I decided to go ahead and try upgrading to Snow Leop 10.6 . I was running Final Cut Studio 2 and Final Cut Pro 6.0.6 on a Macbook running the latest version of Leopard. Hearing all of these problems, I decided to play it safe and clone my harddrive. I then booted from the cloned HDD and did the Snow Leopard upgrade to that clone - not my internal HDD. I did the standard upgrade but made sure to include both Quicktime 7 and Rosetta.

The upgrade finished successfully and I am currently running 10.6.1 with FCS2 and FCP 6.0.6 off of my cloned drive. Just as I had noted earlier, I checked the Quicktime folder located at System/Library/Quicktime. Lo and behold, the QuicktimeMPEG2.component had mysteriously disappeared. I then copied over this component from my Leopard Backup in Time Machine and put it in the same System/Library/Quicktime folder (make sure that you are in system/ and NOT user/Library ).

After this, I ran all my tests. I opened up Final Cut perfectly (it even seems a little snappier, particularly shocking because remember I am running the HDD off a cloned external drive). I hooked up my Canon XHA1 and imported 108060i footage successfully (using Log and Capture and controlling the camera through the Log and Capture interface). I did a few basic edits/transitions all rendering successfully. I opened up LiveType successfully and then tried exporting. I exported both using Quicktime conversion and with compressor. With Quicktime I exported using h.264 and with Compressor I exported using the 90minute DVD settings. I figured if there was going to be a problem, Compressor would surely be the one to show it. However, everything ran perfectly normal, without any problems. Finally, I opened DVD Studio Pro to burn the file to a DVD. (DVDs also use MPEG2 compression btw, so if you want further confirmation that the MPEG2.component is to blame try playing any footage in the DVDStudioPro preview windows) . The DVD burned successfully as well.

Overall, I had a very very happy upgrade experience. I hope this helps others. I now feel confident enough to upgrade my main internal HDD, and maybe this MPEG2 component fix will help you too.

A flippant as before, please try to help, not scold us for not buying software every year. I originally would have said there should not be a reason to buy FCP7 since 5 is only a few years old. But used this problem as an excuse to, and I did. I installed it yesterday, all glorious 6 hours worth, and guess what... It still won't recognize my XH A1s. So I am off to try a few of the solutions mentioned above to see if I can take full advantage of my new shiny Studio suite. Really looking forward to Motion and Compressor upgrade.

Short Story: Mac Support fixed the problem (90 day phone support with FCS 3 purchase)

Long story: Let's see if I can remember it all...

Hardware stuff:
Disconnect ALL cables, power included.
Shutdown
PRAM Reset - 3 Chimes
Plug Power in
Open System preferences, view FireWire Bus (should be empty)
Connect Camera in VCR Mode (ensure your Canon is set to HD Playback, w/o Downscaling)
Refresh FW bus, and confirm camera is mounted

QT Component Check:
Open QT7 (it should be in your utilities folder) NOT QT PLAYER 10
Preferences > Recording > Select XH A1s as source > Select Device Native as quality > Close Preferences
File > New movie recording > Hit Play on camera > Record a clip to desktop
Close QTP

FCP Setup:
Go to your User > Library > Preferences directory, move the following two files to desktop... Final Cut Pro User Data (Folder), com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist.
Start FCP 7
In Setup, select following:
Format: HD
Use: HDV - 1080i60 Firewire Basic
Scratch disk: default (you can change this LATER if you have an external, but for now, you should not have one attached)

Voila!!!! Happy Mac User!!! (well, I am at least)

My stuff:

MBP 17" 2.5 4GB RAM : OS 10.6.1
FCS 3 (Final Cut 7)
Canon XH A1s
External 800 FW Drive - WD Studio Passport (confirmed working after above setup completed, and Capture Scratch reassigned to it, afterwards)

Hummmm thanks for the help ODV. Now I can record but there is no preview on my QT7 Window when recording just a black screen in the windwo but I hit record anyhow to see what would happen and when I try and play back the movie I get a error stating that the movie is not in a format that QT player understands. I can however open it in VLC. Now I am at a loss. I will assume this is a codec issue then. So what Codec should I get and where should I place the codec (namely the QuickTimeMPEG2, that was on my old machine before upgrade) on my machine? I really hope this will not cost me. Here is a screen cap of what I have done and what I see. Hope someone can help me. I am 90% of the way back but need some help with the remaining 10%.
http://screencast.com/t/WeXSBCWe2A

Contents of my QT Library....

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/1638/screenshot20090930at122.png

Whoooooot!

Ok so it was a CODEC! What I did was go back to my old backup of my previous install of Leopard.dmg and looked at the codecs I had and then transfered them to the SnowLeopard install.(You backed up right?) I found the files in /Library/QuickTime/ :
http://screencast.com/t/N2Cy14WzQiy

This is what I had on my SnowLeopard install:
http://screencast.com/t/5bSjXsTEJ

I also installed perian http://perian.org/

Now what was the trigger to get it all to work i am not sure but after reboot I am back to normal! Thanks all for your help here I hope this will help others solve the problem.

I would like to see someone install perian and reboot and see if that worked if not we will have to see what codec was the culprit and get everyone the file to fix things up.

Ben

ODV wrote:
guess what... It still won't recognize my XH A1s.

Make sure AV->DV is set to OFF in your camera settings (it's somewhere in the signal setup menu in the VCR menu options, as far as I can recall).

When AV->DV is ON, there's no output from the firewire port (or at least that's my experience).

Message was edited by: Denis Murphy

Thanks, Denis.

Apple support got me up and running today, I noted my fix above.

Thanks!

This is total crap! Have the same prob with an XHA1... why the **** do I have to capture in imovie. I will upgrade to FCS3 but this is a pain!