External Hard Drive Issues & Questions

[Gordon B. Alley]

Can you capture to your internal hard disk? Some camcorders can't be 
captured to external FireWire drives without major problems. I 
haven't tried it lately, but I once had to reformat a new external 
drive that I tried to capture video to from my Canon ZR 40. The 
capture ran for a few seconds before it crashed.

There used to be a warning in the iMovie help about this, specific to 
Canon camcorders. I just checked the help for iMovie 4, but didn't 
find the same warning. I may have to give it another try when I'm 
feeling adventurous.

On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 13:16:23 -0600, William Hofius <wjh at mac.com> wrote:
>[...]
>Because my PowerBook has only one FireWire port, if I am using the=20
>external hard drive, I need to connect the digital video camera to the=20=
>second FireWire port on the hard drive.
>
>When I did this, both iMovie 3 and Final Cut Express recognized both=20
>hard drive and camera. =46rom these apps, I could set the drive as the=20=
>source for capture and scratch files, save files to the drive, and read=20=
>media files from the drive. =46rom these apps, I could control the=20
>camera=97play, rewind, fast-forward, stop, pause=97and I could view =
>footage=20
>from the camera.
>
>However, in each and every instance I attempted to capture video, each=20=
>app would capture a few frames of video and then freeze. The freeze=20
>would be so deep that it would hose the Finder and the only way to=20
>revive the PowerBook was to forced restart.
>
>Is this a problem with the external hard drive? (A cheap FireWire=20
>bridge or controller for example.) Is this an issue with having a=20
>single FireWire port? Is the issue resolvable?
>[...]

-- 
Gordon Alley  <*>
<mailto:galley at texas.net>
<http://galley.home.texas.net>