Auto capture time-of-day tapes

[Tom Wolsky]

If you mark an In point near the beginning of the tape and mark an Out point near the end of the tape, FCP should be able to capture around the timecode breaks. Make sure you don’t have abort capture at timecode breaks set as a preference.

All the best,

Tom

Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 2 Editing Workshop” Class on Demand “Complete Training for FCP5” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy” DVDs

[Bbalser]

You want to “Log & Capture”, yeah, FCP will do it. Not something I do a lot of, as with documentary work, you want to capture inch of footage you got. But FCP will do that. Depending on your deck/camera, it’s usually a very reliable system. Always make sure you have at least 10-15 seconds of blank recorded (with TC) space at the begining of the tape, your deck can handle the FW control, etc. But, no system is 100% bullet proof. When I L&C I don’t have problems, but again, not a method I use very often.

So, you Log you In/Out points, tell FCP to Batch Capture, and it doesn’t track your tape properly. Hmmm….

[Tom Wolsky]

The options on timecode break are: make no clip, abort, or warn after capture. If you use make new clip FCP does not assign timecode, it picks up capture as soon as it has enough pre-roll and readable timecode for it to being capturing a new clip.

All the best,

Tom

Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 2 Editing Workshop” Class on Demand “Complete Training for FCP5” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy” DVDs

[Bill Lee]

Have you looked at using Live Capture Plus?
Price is US$49.

This can either capture whole tapes, or split it into clips based on timecode or scene changes. It can also try to recapture dropped frames (in the case of a soft read error), as well as allow you to monitor tapes being captured and logging tapes/metadata during the capture.

Once you’ve captured, you can import the video/shot logs into FCP.

I haven’t run this software myself, but they’ve been around a couple of years (I’ve never needed to batch capture tapes like this which is why I haven’t purchased so far). They also have a product called CatDV Professional to allow media management of large numbers of clips, including network-wide databases.

Bill Lee