capture miniDV problems Premiere (new & old)

[Paul Dougherty]

Sorry no, the problem is capturing. This has not been successful either way.

[Brent Griffin]

I just moved over to FCP X to ingest DV tapes as it was doing this kind of stuff in Premiere. Both softwares will chop at dropped frames and the like, but it seemed that FCP X was a lot more forgiving and would take longer sections of tape before chopping up.

Premiere would make a million tiny files and then when I did get a long take, trying to then work with it, it would only play back 10 seconds of a long file, so I was transcoding and just thought, screw this and bought FCP X.

I’m so tired of the crashes and bugginess that plagues Premiere, and so far, FCP X seems rock solid in comparison.

Sorry I can’t help, but I know how you feel.

[Paul Dougherty]

Thanks Brent,

I don’t think I’ll take the FCP X plunge, but good to know. I wish Premiere (or some capture software alternative) had a setting that allowed for more tolerance of a flawed source. A workflow might go like this… after giving it the good ol’ college try with the standard (rigorous) software setting, failing that I could make the capture setting more forgiving and live with a ‘hit’ or dropped frames in the result… in the interest of getting a long (in my case 40->60min) continuous piece of media (in my case an interview).

Paul

[Brent Griffin]

yeah, I’m not sure of the technical limitations of letting you deal with the glitches yourself. When I have more time, i’m going to attempt to ingest it through an old Canopus 110 and see if that allows for more errors, as i’d rather have one long file that stays in time with my sync than 100 micro clips I can’t use.

I’m interested to see if there’s a better stand alone ingestion device, but i’m assuming DV tech isn’t on anyones priority lists anymore lol.

[Paul Dougherty]

“DV tech isn’t on anyones priority lists anymore lol.” True. I persevere because I’m doing preservation work and tapes are either get saved or not

[Brent Griffin]

Yeah, we filmed to DV off old Sony production cameras, and the old DV decks are a great way of digitising analog content, which I generate a fair bit of with old video mixers, my fairlights and video feedback stuff. Mixing analog video with old & new digital is pretty exciting, but has its headaches. Would love a dedicated 4 channel SD capture / playback device that records in Prores, but again, not anyones priority.

[Jon Doughtie]

These tapes are not by chance recorded at the EP speed, are they? EP tapes will usually only play reliably on the original recording device. That was miniDV’s dirty little secret.

System:
Dell Precision T7600 (x2)
Win 7 64-bit
32GB RAM
Adobe CC 2017.1 (as of 8/2017)
256GB SSD system drive
4 internal media drives RAID 5
Typically cutting short form from UHD MP4, HD MP4, and HD P2 MXF.

[Paul Dougherty]

Thanks Jon, My mini-DV’s were recorded at standard speed. For reasons not clear to me the system is behaving better today. This is anecdotal, I was on the phone with Adobe support doing 2 min. test captures, not full 60min tapes. But two days ago, I couldn’t even capture a second of video. One tape in particular is giving me a hard time, I have to parse what is acting up, the system generally or certain problem tapes.

From the start I did not have “Abort capture on dropped frames” checked – so this should be more forgiving. btw a “batch log” has nothing to do with capturing in-to-out with individual tapes right?

Thanks,

Paul

[Jon Doughtie]

From what I recall, batch logs were generated be setting a series of in and out points on tapes with ID’s (tape 1, tape 2, etc.) that were then saved to bins as clips without associated media. You could then batch capture, with the system prompting you to change tapes as needed to match the metadata in the batch log.

Man, the stuff that still resides inside our brains!

System:
Dell Precision T7600 (x2)
Win 7 64-bit
32GB RAM
Adobe CC 2017.1 (as of 8/2017)
256GB SSD system drive
4 internal media drives RAID 5
Typically cutting short form from UHD MP4, HD MP4, and HD P2 MXF.

[Roger Averdahl]

If you have access to a Windows computer, use ScenalyzerLive to capture instead of Premiere Pro. ScenalyzerLive can be downloaded for free these days and has been superiour to Premiere Pro´s capture module since forever.

https://www.scenalyzer.com