batch capture timecode problem

[Nick Meyers]

is your tape tail out, perhaps?
ooh.. old film term..
is your tape parked at the END of the tape, past the TC?

otherwise try trashing your preferences, as outlined here:

https://www.lafcpug.org/trashing_fcp_prefs.html

cheers,
nick

[Bill Lee]

Eric,

It’s a really good idea to have a couple of seconds of good timecode before the marked In point and after the marked Out point before capturing. This is to allow the deck/camera to overrun the In/Out point when cueing the tape, since if – during the cueing – the head leaves good timecode, then you will get that message. You can adjust these Pre-roll and Post-roll amounts in Final Cut Pro>Audio/Video Settings>Device Control (page I-140 of the manual), but if you cut it too short, you may get dropped frames at the beginning of your batch capture. If you absolutely have to capture an event at the very beginning of a tape (or start of valid timecode), then Capture Now might allow you to capture it where batch capture won’t. See page I-159 for managing timecode breaks inside a captured video segment.

It’s also a really, really, really good idea not to have timecode breaks anywhere in your tapes. There are ways of dealing with timecode breaks but they are not pretty and require a certain amount of dedication and attention to detail when loading your tapes. Most of the time, if these tapes are likely to be batch captured a number of times is to digitally copy the tape from deck to deck (or camera to deck) via FireWire cable (which may create problems if you need to have the original time code it was captured with).

I have seen problems with the tape deck not correctly reading the time code and thus FCP thinks you have a timecode break. These are unusual though.

Read page I-332 “The Importance of Avoiding Timecode Breaks”, and page I-335 for other advice on broken timecode.

Cheers,
Bill Lee

[Paul Watson]

If you have varying timecodes on your tapes, that is where you have quite different time codes on different clips, that can be a problem too. What I do is to pre-stripe all my new tapes with original timecode and then use the regenerate timecode from the camera’s recording setup menu. That way there is never a timecode break on a tape.

[Eric N]

Thanks everyone, all those suggestions helped me get the batch capturing working, thanks a bunch
-Eric