capture now time limit

[Peter Mcauley]

Long clips especially of the “capturenow” variety have been know to cause clip weirdness when doing speed changes.

Peter McAuley
Axyz Edit
Toronto
G5 dual 2.0
4 gigs ram
10.3.8
FCP 4.5 HD
QT 6.5.2
Kona 2 v1.1 with K Box
4 X 250 gig external F800 Lacie firewire drive
2 X 23″ Apple cinema display

[Craig Seeman]

I’m a risk taker like you. I often use capture now on long captures without problem.

BUT

The client needs to bear the costs of that risk and I always make it clear to them. I’d give them an estimate on the number of hours (I assume these hi8 tapes are 120min.) and tell them that if the tapes have issues that I have to fix I have to charge for that time too.

Two issues you can run into with capture now is drop outs killing the capture and/or Audio Video sync issues.

My rule: Never take a job at a flat rate if you don’t have control of everything from start to finish. You have no idea of the tape quality on these home videos.

My Suggestions. Capture one tape and see how it goes. If you find problems notify client ASAP. Reevaluate price and don’t take a bath on a job like this. Some tapes may be great, others not. Only way to know is to do it. You can simply prorate price for the “easy” tapes and then explain you need to charge to work with tapes with issues. You can end up spending an entire business day fighting one tape. If these are to put on a “server” for future editing then they might consider paying for DVCAM (2 hour tapes) dubs, or splitting the tapes in to 2 60 minute miniDV tapes (means future editing) and capture from that. If this job is important to your client they’ll pay.

[Tom Meegan]

Long Captures tend to drift out of lip sync, more so on lower end playback/converter devices (your mileage may vary). The drift, from what I’ve read, is consistent, and so becomes more and more pronounced as you get deeper into the clip. I had this happen to me in an earlier version of FCP, and didn’t see it until I was pretty far along in the project (I was doing the job as a favor on an Imac, and did not have an NTSC monitor until late in the process.) It was misery to fix.

Search the forums and the net on this topic and you’ll get a lot of information on the whys and wherefores, as well as some work arounds I wish I’d had.

Also, I agree that dubbing the footage up is a good idea. If you had two decks you could minimize lost time by dubbing at one station while you capture on the other.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Tom Meegan

[David Bogie]

Where you been?

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Jones]

Have you tried…
User Preferences/General
Deselect: Abort capture on dropped frames
On time code break (Make new clip)

[Jeff Handy]

Hey, Bogie! Email me, bro. jeffh at bisk dot com

[Mp Peters]

Thank you all for so many fine suggestions. The best solution for my assignment, however, is another route. I will simply record a DVD for each tape. I will clone a couple more sets (three total) of the DVDs. One is for my client’s kids to play frisbee. One is for his desk at home. One is for his safe deposit box. When his 15 year old wants to cut some of the material together, putting all of us out of work, they will use the contemporary version of DVDxDV Pro. Steve Martin raved about it at the LAFCPUG meeting last week. Why have a spooky QT Movie which might be out of sync sitting on a hard drive for years? So now I am happy. I do have another problem which I will make a new post about but life is like that. Thanks to Ken Stone as well.

[Dan Allen]

You can always consider an alternate program for capturing. I looked at this thread hoping to solve the same issue with capturing from DV tapes, DVC Pro decks, and Beta Cam. All have a capture limit of 20 minutes.

So I’m telling you that you should try Premiere Pro. I’ve been using that program for years prior to FCP. And I think the capturing method is superior. It can do a capture “now-like” method without fail. All the way to roll out without a timecode break. In and Out point are a thing of the past IMO.

So give Premiere Pro a chance all you FCP people. After all, the designer of the original creator of Premiere designed FCP too.

[Craig Seeman]

You’re looking for current information in a thread that’s over 3 years old????
I’ve seen NO time limit capturing to FCP and I’ve captured from 180 minute DVCAM tapes.

[Dan Allen]

Oh yes, didn’t see that date. Considering this issue came up again is very strange. And to answer your question, yes there was a capture limit due to a software issue which I just figured out today.

Turns out when something is updated, everything else is left in the dust. A silly update on all the video playing software and capture hardware solves this problem.

I’m sure you knew this, but I just had to explain myself =D.
Bye