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Capturing DV Material on a Mini DV tape
Greetings Creative Cows,
I just booked my first professional editing project. It’s a very simple edit, one I can handle, but I’m having trouble capturing the video appropriately.
I use a Sony DCR-HC28 Handycam to import my Mini DV footage. So far, it has worked just fine on anything that was shot in Mini-DV. We chose this camera because it plays back stuff shot in DV format. I have a box of my client’s tapes, most of which were shot in DV format. They do, indeed playback just fine in my camera.
When I try to capture the footage in Premiere 2.0, it starts out fine, but then starts to drop so many frames the stuff becomes VERY choppy. I have tried capturing in drop-frame and non-drop frame. My movies drop a LOT of frames. For example, one 45 minute clip dropped over 20,000 frames.
Do I need to rent a DV Cam deck? Or is there a setting I’m missing?
Thank you in advance!
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10 Replies
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What is your machine like? OS? Drive Capacity? Free Space? What other software and drivers are running? When was the last time you defrag the drive?
I would pursue this avenue — because these problems (if there are problems here) — could also affect the rending of the finished project.
HTH
Mark Cain
Sarasota, FL USA -
You need to supply somemore info on your computer like it spec, cards, number of harddrives and how they are configured, etc. you should have at least 2 drives, 3 is better, also you need to make sure you don’t have alot of processes running in the background when editing, resident programs can raise problems
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Virus and Spyware scanning apps are the biggest culprits. Are you capturing to a internal drive?
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Hi all,
Thank you for the questions. Our system is newly upgraded. We have a new Asrock motherboard, 3.4GHz single core Intel processor, new C:drive and new sound card. We have 1.5GB of ram.
I should mention I have another project I’m working on simultaneously and it’s working fine. No digitzing problems there. I started capturing this project just after we upgraded everything.
The drive I capture to is a MyBook Premium ES Edition, 500GB. It’s connected with an eSATA cable.
While I do not actively run any other programs while I am capturing, I will double check to see what virus protection programs are running in the background.
We are concerned that the trouble is with the way the tapes were recorded.
Any advice is appreciated!
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A external eSata drive should be fine for capture, particularly if you have captured other tapes with no problem, the tapes themselves might be the problem, they could have been shot in the LP mode, if so they should be played back in the cam they were shot in, even then they can cause grief, also sometimes older DV tapes can get flaky from improper storage
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Thanks Blast1. So, even though they show up fine in my camera/deck, they still don’t import correctly because they were shot in LP mode?
Do you think renting a DVCam deck will help? I may be trying that approach tomorrow.
Thanks again,
Julie
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There maybe problems that might not show up on the small lcd on a camcorder that could cause dropped frames, have you tried viewing the camcorders output on a regular monitor? also have you tried playing a tape you know is good through the camcorder and capturing it to make sure everything is still working ok?
borrowing or renting another device would be a way to eliminate possible trouble areas in troubleshooting -
Hi,
I have gone back and played/recaptured tapes I know to be fine and they still work. It’s really sounding like its just the way the tapes were recorded vs. what my player will handle.
Julie
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You can check to see if there is 60min(SP) or 90min(LP)on the tapes if LP you will need the original camcorder and even then if the tapes have aged playback can be questionable.
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One Final NOTE!
When I’ve had Mini DV tape problems a last resort that can SOMETIMES clear up problems is playing the tape back in the camcorder and capturing the video through the ANALOG outputs of the camcorder. Of course you loose the ability to split out the clips into discreet individual shots BUT at least you would get the video into your system. However if you don’t have an analog capture card this won’t help you.
GOOD LUCK!
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