Macs won't recognize my Z1U

Jeez Drew you're up early/late!!

 

Cheers, Simon

Yeah, sometimes it goes like that. Kept on thinking I may try to get back to sleep for a bit, so have held off making the coffee, just in case

Jules do you have any noticeable increase in quality by capturing that way or is it just a method to bypass a major mac hardware upgrade? I've heard about using a similar system for live recording, but if you have already recorded to tape then isn't it ultimately HDV quality that you are capturing even though you are using ProRes?

 

Cheers, Simon

It has two uses:

1. live recording: you can get 1920*10890 4:2:2 stream from your V1 into your computer (the Kona has the Xena variant for the windows world)

2. Capture avoiding HDV codec: here you simple save time. Instead of capturing HDV and then re-compress it to a different codec, you can get right the desired codec in much-much less time. No quality improvement in the means of quality of the footage, but later on, if you are making color grading, or compositing, or simply rendering, the ProRes codec will be much better.

Hey Bryce!

Have you tried checking the firewire port on your Z1U in DVCAM format to see if FCP recognizes the cam via your firewire port in that format?

Or, since you also have a PD170, you could try changing the Z1U to DVCAM mode, and using a 4 pin to 4 pin firewire cable see if you can get a transfer between cams using that cable--which could be a good indication that the firewire port is working OK for data transfer.

One thing I've often noticed is that when I use the Easy Set-up in FCP I need to make sure it's set it to HDV, HDV - 1080i60 and 29.97 *specifically* or my Z1U often won't be recognized by FCP in HDV format.

Please keep us posted!

Mary Lynn