Log and Capture FCP4

I just switched from editing on an iMac to a Powerbook and I am having some problems loging and capturing. I have my Canon hooked up via the firewire 600 and my LaCie drive via the Firewire 800 but I am dropping frames despite having 1.5Gb of Ram. I can log and capture no problem to the harddrive. Any suggestions?? I figure my problem stems from the differing firewire connections, the lacie is hooked up with a 600 to 800 cord. Any idea what may be causing the problem??

Thanks and Happy New Year.

FW600? I thik you mean 400, thats most likely the problem, FW 400 is vastly slower than FW 800. what kind of camera is it, model?

Macman said:

FW600? I thik you mean 400, thats most likely the problem, FW 400 is vastly slower than FW 800. what kind of camera is it, model?

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Yes FW 400. It is a Canon GL2. I have had no problem in the past with FW400, the only difference now is that the Powerbook has one FW 400 and one FW 800 port. Which means I have a Lacie with FW 400 hooked up to the FW 800 port with a converted cord. I am having no problems logging clips to my hardrive via the Canon-FW 400 hook up. But logging clips with the lacie as my capture scratch is causing the problem. I suspect it may have something to do with the FW400-to-FW800 hook up.

Does you LaCie drive have another firewire port? If so, connect your camera there.

You need to capture to your main drive and not your firewire drive.

Going from 400 to 800 really doesn't matter, but you need to make sure you're using the fastest drive to capture on. I'd turn any anti virus software off as well.

When you want to work with your project you could run it off of the firewire 800 drive.

If you are concerned about space, capture to you main hd then edit the project and then transfer to the external firewire drive to save space on you laptop drive so you can go back to it in the future if you need the file, but i only keep one project on my hd on my powerbook at a time.