DIGITIZING AUDIO WITH A MEDIA CONVERTER

Hi All,
It's been a long time (that's kind of a good thing), but I need help again...trying to digitize audio for a film project.
Using an older canopus converter to bring audio in from a tascam recorder/player to fcp 6 with firewire 400 coming into the comp and rca connector from the tascam to the canopus.
using dv ntsc for capture with non-controllable device. tried a couple other settings, to no avail.
Also tried coming into soundtrack pro with both line inputs, but that didn't work either.
I'm stumped...could it be the lack of video? or is there some kind of funky setting for this conversion?

so, am working with a friend on this. I gave him your response and this is his reply...

getting closer, but still no. set the clip settings to canopus and tried to capture but still getting no read. the vtr is good and it is communicating but still no audio when i attempt capture. if i set the clip setting to uncontrollable device, it slips back into no communication mode. i have the fire wire out of the camera and into the canopus. i have the rca jacks lined into the canopus from the tascam. i have a fire wire out of the canopus and into the mac. when i attempt capture, the fcp box says waiting for timecode. device must be in vtr mode when device control is enabled, press esc. to abort. which i do. again and again and again. i have tried it with both audio and video capture settings. i have tried it with only audio settings. nothing.

Also, can this converter be set-up to take the audio into soundtrack pro?

When your capture setting is set to "non-controllable device," I believe your control interface WILL say "no communication," and display a gray screen. Try connecting a tv or some other display to the Canopus to make sure video (or audio) is actually getting out of it. If it is, then reconnect to the Mac and click "record now." If it's working you should see it in the record window.

DD

I did not know that. Thanks, DH. I don't care which platform you go with, just keep checking back here, as you always bring something helpful.

DD

problem is, there is no analog video device and up until now, whenever it's set to non-controllable, there's no communication. the camera was added to give a video source and has digital output.

As I stated in my first response, FCP needs to "see" a video source even though you may have it set to capture audio only. Since you're trying to convert analog audio to digital for capture, you must include an analog video feed as well. If the camera only has a digital output, it will not work for this purpose.

When I've had to capture analog audio from a non-video source (such as a cassette tape), I simply plug in the analog video output of a DVD player to my converter. The converter converts the analog audio and video to a Firewire signal which is then captured in FCP. It's really a pretty simple set up and I cannot understand why you're having such a problem with this. Is there something else adding to the problem?

If so, an alternative method would be to record (dub) the analog audio to DV or HDV tape, then capture the tape as you normally would in FCP. This will require a bit more time since you're essentially doing everything twice, but it will work.

-DH