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Adobe Premiere HDV capture error
I have just captured several hours of HDV 50i footage from MiniDV on my Sony Z7 using Adobe Premiere Pro 5 64bit. I have a reasonably powerful computer (i5 processor, 8gb RAM, ATI 5830 1GB graphics) and Windows 7 Professional 64bit.
There are a few brief drop outs/glitches in the captured footage. These are not present on the master tapes. I have recaptured these moments with no problem the second time around. What I am wondering is where these clitches are most likely to have originated?
It is either coming from the camera – not much I can do about this except clean heads I guess. Or it is the software or computer?
I have very cheap capture card in the computer ($25). Is this possibly the point where these errors may of occured?
It is very difficult to speculate, but I would appreciate any advice form experts or users who may have had similar problems. I am hoping that a better capture card may solve this frustrating problem but wanted advice before I spent the money.
Cheers,
Ollie -
3 Replies
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The process of transferring data via firewire from a camera can be troublesome.
There is no error checking protocol unlike USB…the camera says “Here it comes, ready or not” and the computer does its best to catch all the data. Using the system drive to capture to or having virus scanning running are probably the 2 biggest problems. -
It is possible to have a speck of dust on the tape that interferes with playback, corrupting the data, which results in a playback glitch. When recapturing the footage, that speck of dust may then be gone and it plays fine.
As Mike said, use a dedicated drive for video capture so Windows is not competing for time on the drive.
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers -
Having the dropped frames indicator switched on in Premiere might alert you to possible problems but will not always solve them.
Another is discontinuous timecode, something I have been banging on about for years now as a Premiere limitation.
When a tape stop/starts during recording it should have contiguous timecode. The end code of a shot/scene becomes the beginning of the next with a continuous uninterrupted code. Occasionally it fouls up and, when capturing, you get a mismatch in what a file says its duration should be and what it actually is. It might actually be as little as one frame (you can’t always see this when playing back the tape) but this is enough to cause problems.
It might cause the image to try and catch up within the file. Sometimes it results in a corrupt file as the maths don’t add up – you then get an unplayable file. The frustration is that it might not always do this – hence you have managed to successfully capture material that you previously thought was in error.
The solution is not so simple. Your problem might be something more akin to sticky tape – as others have referred to. But if it is caused by my possible suggestion the only alternative is to re-stripe your tape with fresh timecode or be quite fastidious in logging your tape before capture to pre empt potential timecode breaks. This last option is time-consuming but will lead to less hair loss down the line.
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