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Troubleshooting tapes and capture problems
Hi, I’m capturing casting auditions for my wife. Something strange is happening (at the worst time of course). She used her PD100 (because our Z1 is out for servicing). After shooting like 2 tapes, we tried capturing in FCP 7, on a (Snow Leopard) Macbook Pro, with a hard drive daisy chained to the camera, and it would stop and give an error message every ten seconds or so. Besides daisy chaining (bad), she reused SONY DV Premium tapes, with HDV footage on them (bad, bad). Even trying to read the tapes on the PD100, we would get frequent sound drops. One thing I noticed (positively) is that the drops wouldn’t always occur at the same place.
This was yesterday night, so today, I knew what to do : I went and rent another PD100, bought a head cleaner tape, a pack of new SONY Premium DV tapes, and I was sure that would do, at least for the remaining sessions.
Actually it got worst.
The same thing happened with the “new” (rented) PD100, on new tapes. Maybe even a bit worst with the new tapes.
Then I thought that – since the breaks don’t always occur at the same place – audio and video data did have been recorded, maybe the reading heads were misaligned, yes, on both PD100 (what else could I think of?). So I went to pick up a DSR-11 from a friend, came back, and it’s the same.
Of course, I had tried to capture on my main workstation (Mac Pro/10.4.11/FCP5.1.4). Same thing.
I have tried both logging + batch capture and “capture now”.
The point is that footages aren’t even being properly read on the cameras themself…
No need to say that my wife is being very nervous as she’s due to deliver edited clips tomorrow…
One thing I think I noticed (have tried so many) is that on a new devide, it tend to work for a while (raising hopes in vain), and then back to the same.
I also tried to capture in iMovie. iMovie doesn’t stop, but I’m getting tons of sound break, or no sound at all on certain test clips. On clips where sound gets recorded, it seems that everytime I can see a sound break while capturing, this results in the portion being entirely snipped (audio and video) on the .dv resulting file.
I really don’t know what to think, or what next to try, especially since (as we read tapes on the camera itself), the drop do not always occur at the exact same place (which leads me to think that it may be TC related, and that data was somehow properly recorded, but is being unproperly played).
Many thanks for reading that far, and any input will be greatly appreciate.
— AG
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5 Replies
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PS : Fottage are DV Pal. Have tried both Firewire Pal and “Basic” in FCP.
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If you are getting the dropouts when monitoring the picture & sound in the camera, then you will not be able to capture them without those breaks, regardless of if you use FCP or iMovie.
The fact that they don’t occur in the same place means that if you capture the same clips a few times with timecode, can you edit between the various captures to create shots with no dropouts? Tedious I know but the fact that the dropouts are not always in the same place gives you some hope of stitching together a version.
Reusing tapes shot in HDV in a DV camera is a recipe for disaster.
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Many thanks for reading, and the workaround tip. We’ll try this.
For the used HDV tapes, yes, yet I’m still puzzled as to the same thing occuring on a rented PD100 (from a trusted supplier) + new DV Premium tapes.
Thanks again anyway.
— AG
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Sometimes having a Ext. FireWire Drive AND capturing from a Camera via Firewwire can result in capture issues.
Now, I have heard audio drops during capture but they were fine during playback…
Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta -
Thanks to all those who answered; we’re in the rush right now, trying to work this around. If I come to a sound conclusion on this, I’ll try to post it here.
— AG
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