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Digitizing DVCPRO HD footage with 1200a
Hello all,
I’m digitizing a project shot on Varicam (720p, 23.98). The project is, for the most part, a live-to-tape show and, as a result, basically it’s one whole tape with no camera stops. I’ll digitize the entire tape (using batch capture, telling it to remove duplicate frames) and I’ll sometimes get to near the end and suddenly the deck (1200a) starts rewinding and attempts to redigitize the clip. When it does this, often, FCP will cue up the deck, pre-roll, and then give me an error the instant it starts capturing telling me that there are cadence and timecode breaks in the clip. It will continue to do this until I restart the deck. I’ve had this happen to me with several decks. Also, if I break the clip into smaller chunks (which is fine for this, but makes things a bit inconvenient later), I haven’t had this problem, which leads me to believe that it’s an issue either with the hard drive or just generally with handling all the data that’s coming through.
I’m digitizing to a Lacie 500GB hard drive over firewire 800 (on a seperate PCI card so that the hard drive is on a different bus than the deck). I’ve run disk speed tests and the disk is writing at 26.3 MB/s, which is more than what’s needed. My mac is running OS 10.4.8, Dual 2GHz G5 with 3.5 GB of RAM, Final Cut 5.1.2.
I have a couple questions. Is anyone else encountering this kind of problem and have they figured out any workarounds or causes? Also, since FCP automatically rewinds the tape when it encounters this error, I’m not usually fast enough or looking up when it hits the spot, so I don’t know where the tape problem might be. Is there a way to tell FCP not to try again when it encounters an error, but just pause the tape right on the spot?
Any help would be appreciated,
Thanks,
– David -
2 Replies
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[dheidel] “I’ll digitize the entire tape (using batch capture, telling it to remove duplicate frames) and I’ll sometimes get to near the end and suddenly the deck (1200a) starts rewinding and attempts to redigitize the clip. When it does this, often, FCP will cue up the deck, pre-roll, and then give me an error the instant it starts capturing telling me that there are cadence and timecode breaks in the clip.”
Sounds like you’re too close to the end of the tape and you run right into the tail of the tape. This is normal behavior for the 1200A to kick into rewind when it hits the end of the tape.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Thanks, but this usually happens about twenty minutes into the tape. There’s still ten minutes left. I think it’s Final Cut that’s rewinding the deck. It hits an error of some sort (dropped frame, I’m guessing), erases the clip it’s been capturing, and then rewinds the deck to try it again. But when it reaches the in-point on the tape, after capturing for a few frames, it stops and tells me it can’t do it, that there’s an error with the clip.
– David
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