Capture Problems on Mac!

[pwrlogic]

I am capturing to a dual 867 g4 Mac via firewire.
Final cut express says 'capture is 50% behind source, monitor from source'.
When the scene i want ends FCE says 'processing frames' and either freezes or cuts off the end part of the scene. The entire capture preview in FCE is in slow motion. Imovie does the same thing but says it is 25% behind the source and unlike FCE did produce some strange artifacts here and there.
Do you think this may be a ram problem, i have 512.
if not ram, any ideas.

[pwrlogic]

well the apple site said that it could be a ram problem.
Here is a pretty good thread on the HV 20 and Macs.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4555185&#4555185
I just installed another 512 and i'm still getting the slow motion preview lagging behind the source on the camera.
I think the bottom line is my computer may not be up to HD.
i'm going to install a full 2 gig next week and see if that helps.
I was able to capture into FCE and now i'm rendering so i am making progress.

[8rest8]

Hi,,

I'm new here, But I'm also having the same problems when captureing HDV. Im using a IMAC G5 with 2.0 G processor and 2G ram. Still very slow when capture, lags behind 40 - 50 %. Am I doing something wrong,

[pwrlogic]

hi there is no way to get around the slow capture of HDV.
what i do now is set the HV20 to output to DV and set my final cut project to widescreen dv.
that works much better and the video is still nice and clear.
I do not miss the HDV at all.
Hope that helps!!!!!

[jelliott2k]

Thanks for the link. The info there was most helpful. I have experienced the same problems described in this post, but after reading this thread and the thread on the Apple support page I think I have some answers. This is great! Thanks!

[iThinkergoiMac]

That link is actually somewhat misleading. I consistently capture in real-time, with no lag, on my PowerBook G4. Of course, you need Final Cut Pro for this... if you have FCE or iMovie then, yes, it will lag (especially on PPC Macs). FCE and iMovie convert to Apple Intermediate Codec while capturing, which is what creates the lag. However, if you are using FCP you can select the "HDV - 1080i60" Easy Setup and then you should be able to capture without lag.

Of course, you'll probably still want AIC for easier editing on an older Mac. So it's a bit of a catch-22. You could always capture in HDV (since you kind of have to be there for it, especially if you're not simply capturing the whole tape) and then let Compressor convert to AIC overnight. My workflow is somewhat similar to this... I work almost entirely in 24p with my HV20, which means I have to inverse telecine everything. So I capture, in real-time, in HDV, pull it into JES Desinterlacer for inverse telecining (if you have FCP6 or 7, Compressor will do this as well, and I think faster) and convert to AIC at the same time. I usually just let it run all night, depending on how much I have to do.

Hope this helps!

EDIT: It seems that the whole discussion on the link was about FCE... oops. Still, I'll leave this here for any FCP users who come across this thread with similar problems.

[cgbier]

Jelliot, what are your machine specs? There's no difference in capture speed between FCE and FCP. Transcoding to AIC on an Intel Mac goes on the fly (I never had more than five or six percent lag with AIC or ProRes.
Are you capturing to a USB drive? What's the drive's RPM - 5400 or 7200? Do you have a lot of programs running in the background?

[edard hobson]

That's really strange my g5 is 1.8ghz and only has 1gb of ram, although I am capturing to a hard disk with a firewire 800 connection, which is faster than any of the internal connections in my mac, and I haven't (cross fingers) experienced anything like this even when capturing full hd res. Maybe try capturing onto an external drive using a firewire 800 connection this could solve the issue.

[iThinkergoiMac]

It's not whether or not you capture to an external drive so long as it isn't USB. The camera is transferring video through FW400 speeds, so an external FW400 drive shouldn't slow it up. All internal drives are faster than FW400 (even 4200rpm IDE drives). The main problem is whether or not the processor can keep up with the AIC on-the-fly conversion. My computer (1.5 GHz PowerBook, 2 GB RAM) can't. When capturing in iMovie or FCE, it lags about 50%, which is one reason I never capture AIC. Capturing HDV in FCP is real-time.

As CG pointed out, running other applications in the background also slows things down, especially if your computer can barely keep up to start with.

So there is a difference between FCE and FCP if your machine is old and you don't use AIC capture in FCP. Also, Edward, are you sure that FW800 is faster than the internals of your G5 (an iMac, I presume)? I know it was true of the PowerBook series, but I thought that was the only line it was true of.

[edard hobson]

At least that was what I was told, I was always told to use this when editing beta footage.

[iThinkergoiMac]

Yeah, I just haven't researched it yet. Editing on your fastest external connection is always a good idea.