Capture encountered a problem reading the data on your source tape

[Lee Berger]

I’ve had this happen from DVCam tapes (although the situation is probably not limited to DVCam). My solution was to capture the material as analog component via my AJA Io. While not as clean as native DV, it allowed me to get the material into my system and continue the edit. The results were quite acceptable. You may be able to use one of the two decks you mentioned (M10 and 1500) as an analog to digital device. The other could serve as the player.

Lee Berger
http://www.leebergermedia.com

[Gary Adcock]

[Lee Berger] “My solution was to capture the material as analog component via my AJA Io. While not as clean as native DV,”

Lee
I do not know where you got that, however it is incorrect.

The Component or SDI out from any source would be at a higher quality than a compressed original due to the nature of the proprietary hardware that is used to convert the signal from digital to uncompressed analog.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Inside look at the IoHD

[Bill Dewald]

[gary adcock] “The Component or SDI out from any source would be at a higher quality than a compressed original”

Really? I had always operated under the assumption that the “compressed original” from a DV tape was the best that you’ve got.

Are you suggesting that digitizing DV through a IO box results in a higher quality image than ingesting the DV “original” via firewire?

[Gary Adcock]

[Bill Dewald] “Really? I had always operated under the assumption that the “compressed original” from a DV tape was the best that you’ve got.”

yes. and I am quite sure

ALL camera codec’s — DV, DV50, HDV and DVCPROHD are never more than 8bit color depth and highly compressed and transfer over FW is only moving bits and it always stays compressed unless you decompress it.

Decks and playback from the camera through traditional video pipes ensure that the information recorded to your media (be it tape or card) is decompressed using the Manufacturers Proprietary algorithms – not some software guessing on the geometry and color.

Baseband video is assumed to be 10 bits in HD by most all systems,giving you 768 more levels of gray per channel, in addition to allowing for better quality graphics and animations and faster encoding for DVD or Web usage, along with that higher quality working image.

That being said- Often it is not needed, but when it is there is nothing to be gained from staying in a camera native compressed format- this is one of the main reasons for codec’s like DnxHD and ProRes.

[Bill Dewald] “Are you suggesting that digitizing DV through a IO box results in a higher quality image than ingesting the DV “original” via firewire?”

If you are staying as DV – NO there is no difference. if we are talking about a non camera codec – ala Photo Jpeg, Prores or Uncompressed – YES it is better than trying a software conversion, hands down.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Inside look at the IoHD

[Lee Berger]

Gary,
Thanks for your input. What I was referring to was a component analog to digital capture using the DV codec. I was assuming that the original poster might want to stay in DV. In that case the A to D conversion (decoding and encoding) would would be of lesser quality then a DV capture via Firewire.

Of course superior results can be obtained by capturing to a higher quality codec such as uncompressed 10-bit via component analog or SDI. This assumes that the original poster has storage that is up to the task.

Lee Berger
http://www.leebergermedia.com

[Gary Adcock]

[Lee Berger] “In that case the A to D conversion (decoding and encoding) would would be of lesser quality then a DV capture via Firewire.”

Not necessarily, with a proper A/ D conversion that utilizes 14bit conversion as part of the A/D process, I doubt that the difference would be seen by most users without access to a good digital scope.

Remember that is not re-compressing the native DV codec but decompressing in hardware to 10 bit baseband and then re-compressing back down to DV in 8bit, something easily done in hardware that can be excruciating when done in software.

I tested this process for Panasonic and AJA while exploring the DVCPROHD workflow and my tests indicated that there was less than .1 IRE difference (1/10 of 1 percent) between the original Varicam content on captured over FW vs the Kona’s ability to record the same information. I am assuming that it responds almost the same for SD content. but any damage would be lost in the advanced compression.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Inside look at the IoHD

[Deleted User]

Hi

thanks for your replies – good to see that there has been an interesting debate & sharing of knowledge in my absence (I am on the other side of the world and have been sleeping!) – thanks Gary, Lee & Bill.

Thank you for the original suggestion Lee – from my research I did work out that Firewire captures audio & video quite differently to the way analog captures them and I did wonder whether this might be the way to go, so thanks for confirming that. Unfortunately I’ve had to rent the decks and so replaced the M10 with the 1500 & don’t have an alternative for analog to digital conversion. The client may be happy to may for an additional deck though.

If I have to rely on the firewire capture, I am still interested to know if there are any diagnostic tools available that can report on any tape errors (ideally showing the timecode of the unreliable sections on the tape). Does anyone know if such a tool exists?

[David Cooke]

Yes, I too have run into the “capture encountered a problem reading
data from the tape. Even though I work in broadcast TV as an editor/shooter, I also do weddings from home with a Canon XL min-dv’s.
AND I have found that 95% of the time as this equipment ages, whenever possible, use the camera that you recorded the footage on
to actually playback into your FCP system. KNow that adds wear and
tear to your cams heads and deck, but Iv’e had probs when using
a mini-dv panasonic deck.
Anyway, my one capture “BEEF” with FCP is this. EVen when you change to “uncontrollable device” if your tape has a brief glitch
or frame adjustment, it makes FCP ABORT. FCP should just keep recording and should re-generate its own code or have a setting for
you to Make FCP do this. Our old “Affinity” system at work NEVER
gave us aborts even when feeding it something “non-sync”. Don’t
know if hooking up your capture card (not sure if all have this)
to a blackburst or sync generator input to try and stabilize it.

D’s Video

[Andy Pac]

All this talk about codecs is making me itch and sweat. Does anyone actually have an answer to the problem or has it gone off the beaten track so far no one knows?

I’m having the same problem. I film with a Canon XL1, open FCP on my iMac and when I try to capture, whatever tape I’ve used, even one from I’ve used and captured from before, I still get the same message. Capture encountered a problem reading the data on your source tape, etc. etc.

[Benjie Westafer]

I’m guessing this is ‘just one of those things’. The deck I’m using is rather road-worn and the source tape I’m using has been recorded on several times. It does suck that the geniuses at the mothership haven’t come up with a way to deal with this real-world eventuality; and I think mostly they have: NO MORE TAPES! Of course, one has to purchase said HDD camera. So, I’m off to purchase a lottery ticket…