[Dark Goob]

OK just bought a new Rocstor 800AV 500GB FW800/400/USB2 hard drive. Using a PowerBook G4 1.67 (FW800/DVI) to capture video from a Canon GL2.

When I try to capture to the HD, it loses timecode after only a few seconds. Then it stops and has to hunt around on the tape for where the timecode break was. I tried a different FW800 cable with the same results.

If I capture using USB2 (instead of FW800) then it goes a lot longer before having this same problem. If I capture using FW400 (using a different drive) then it works fine and drops no frames.

Other than using FCP the drive seems to function normally and is decently fast (about 30MB/sec). Journaling is turned off. The place I bought it from (MacForce) tested it and claims it passes all tests with flying colors. They say there must be something wrong with my PowerBook and its FW800 port.

Has anyone else out there had this same problem? Were there any known issues with the FW800 port on the PowerBook G4? Why would it work fine in all respects except when used with FinalCut Pro? I have the latest versions of everything (MacOS X, FCP, etc.).

Thanks for any help.

bor

[Dark Goob]

I talked to Apple Support about this issue, and they believe that because the PowerBook G4 uses a single Firewire bus for both the 800 and 400 ports that it has, therefore it is not possible to capture video from a Firewire 400 device onto a Firewire 800 hard drive due to bandwidth limitations on the bus.

Can this really be true? Why would Apple design two ports onto a computer but not allow for enough bandwidth for both of those ports to be used at the same time? Or is this just a design flaw of the PowerBook G4? Does the MacBook Pro (FW800) suffer from the same flaw? What about the G5 and Mac Pro?

So far it looks like I'm going to have to shell out for a Firewire PC card in order to get around the bandwidth limitations of the built-in FW bus. But I don't want to buy it and then find out the problem is related to something else.

Any tips you all might have would be appreciated... thanks.

-=DG=-

[Dark Goob]

Well, I got a Firewire PC Card -- and that fixed it.

Adding a Firewire PC Card adds a secondary 400 Mb/sec FW bus that shows up in the System Profiler, beneath the existing 800 Mb/sec internal one. Now, of course, Apple should have engineered the internal bus to be 1200 Mb/sec, since they put 1200 Mb/sec worth of ports on this computer. So shame on them.

But anyway I found my solution for only an extra $30, so I'm excited to start doing some serious video editing again.

Ciao,

-=DG=-