we are using avid express pro on our mac and we are trying to digitse from our panasonic AJ-HD1200A deck however we are having no joy. We can get deck control, but it won't digitze any footage. We have it connected through firewire. We've also tried changing relevant settings on the deck to no avail.

We can digitse from this deck through firewire on final cut pro and avid on a PC.

I can't think what else to do? any suggestions would be much appreciaed.

So you have all the DIF settings correctly (speed, format output, etc)?

You have the proper resolution set in your Avid Cature Tool?

Also, make sure the deck's INPUT is set to 1394 and not HD-SDI.

Also, what happens when you try? Do you get an error message?

yes its set all correctly. exactly same settings used on avid on pc, which is woring fine. anything you think it might be???

Have you tried a different FW port? DNA hardware connected?

we don't have another firewire port on out macbook pro. Can you explain about the DNA hardware to me please. We have set avid to 1394 for the input, which is showing this in the timeline window.

Once I've finshed digitising from the panasonic deck on another comter, I will plug it into this one to see what the error message is.

DNA = Adrenaline or Mojo hardware.

Are you capturing the same format on both computers?

so I have deck control, but no video comes through when I play it. when I try to capture it the system seems to be start capturing for about 10 secs when this message comes up

Exception: audio/video is unexpectedly no longer coming into the system.

we are not using any DNA hardware, we have direct connection from the deck.

the dif is set to DV as we are editing offline SD.

we are using Avid express pro version 5.8 on our macbook pro, Mac os x 10.4.11  and quicktime pro 7.4.5, if this helps?

7.4.5 is not  supported so you might try rolling back to 7.3.1.

Other  than  that, to what storage are you capturing and how is it connected?

Firstly thank you for all these quick responses!  It is much appreciated.  I will try rolling back the QT version we are using but have done some tests with other decks and have had no problem capturing from a DSR 45p & an HDV clam shell and seeing as FCP has been able to get picture from the deck as it is that surely... most likely leaves a deck setting or Avid setting as the problem.  What are the DIF settings you asked about earlier.  We have them on default as that is what has worked for us in the past.  I have also just added a DVCPROCOMPONENTS patch from the apple website.  Which I believe is more for FCP problems with this deck, it has had no effect anyway.  I will try the quicktime rollback now but if you can think of any other things we could try I am all ears!

Thank you again

Ian

Ok, i've rolled back to 7.3.1 but still no luck.  I have been capturing to an external hard disk and to the internal hard disk for test.  The external drives have been formatted as Fat32, NTFS & HFS! (Fat32 & NTFS dont work since upgrading fro 5.7 even with Paragon running).

...help! :(

Can anyone help me check the settings the deck should be on to output SD DV via firewire (DIF) from a 1080 50i DVCPRO HD tape? ... or any other suggestions

So, right now, what is the  format of  the drive to which you are attempting to capture? Do you have anything like Paragon running when trying to capture? You aren't attempting to run Avid  in Paragon...are you?

Going to mac internal hard drive now as it works with DSR45p & HDV clamshell.  Guess Paragon is running in the background somewhere but it certainly isn't launched so dont think it will be having an impact... It's so strange that it picks up the DV signal from the DSR & clamshell but not from the AJ1200... while FCP is detecting the DV signal straight away... are you thinking paragon needs to go?

What is different between the SD DV signal from the aj1200 and the signal from a DSR45p?  When i do an auto configure it detects the deck as a generic DV basic Pal device so it knows somethings there...