Capturing HD-DV footage through Firewire…

[Victor Perez]

Try this,
In System Settings / Scratch Disks
check that the Limit Capture Now To is correctly set or unchecked.
also check the Limit Capture/Export File Segment Size.

hope that helps,

Victor

[Kenny Mccoy]

The box is unchecked on the “limit capture now to”…should I specify a length so that it will capture it right or leave it unchecked? And I’m not sure where the first option you told me is located.

Kenny

[Kenny Mccoy]

I just recaptured the same clip and it split it up into 165 individual clips…..what is happening??? I have never seen it like this. Should I trash the prefs and try again? My project is due tomorrow and I have no idea what to try next. Any help is most appreciated!!!

[Alan Okey]

Are there timecode breaks in your HDV source tapes?

[Kenny Mccoy]

I’m positive. I never stopped the camera. It ran for a good 50 minutes. I’ve captured this twice with two different results.

1st time – roughly 30 files
2nd time – roughly 160 files

Something is quirky here.

[Jerry Alto]

Kenny- Things to check;
-Connect your firewire cable to a an independent firewire bus (no other firewire devices can be connected)
Test
-Go into Audio/Video settings> capture>change the drop/non-drop setting
Test
-Go to Audio/Video settings>capture>change firewire control protocols ’till you find one that works then do yourself a favor and make a custom Easy Setup.

HTH,
Jerry

G5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP Studio 6.02
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1
GV-HD700

[Kenny Mccoy]

I went to where you suggested but I see nothing about drop/non-drop.

And I made the easy setup with my desired settings a while ago…that’s why I was ok with stuff before as it never did this to me until now.

[Kenny Mccoy]

OK….here is the latest….

I went ahead and powered down the deck….unplugged both the power cable and firewire….put them both back in and fired up the deck. I just did tests on three separate clips and so far no hiccups. It just may have needed a kick in the head to get it to work right again. I’m going to try one last time to capture this material. If I am not successful, I’ll post back with another update. Thanks to all who helped so far….be back later with the results.

[Jennifer Cunningham]

Hi

I had a similar problem when capturing HD DV footage
It all broke into short segments even though I had the camera running contineously

This can happen when you dont format your external hard drives for macs.(not sure why..I think most external hard drives are automatically formatted for PCs which tend to break up information into small segments…)
or it seems to happen randomly. Sometimes I find using capture now can help. and once when I was really stuck I didnt digitise the footage as HD just normal DV pal.I had a project the next day so was pretty desparate as some footage is better than none at all. It worked and the resulting project actually looked ok. I dont have a blue ray burner anyway……
Final cut can be sometimes peculiar with HD.

Anyway I wish you the best of luck and someone else is bound to respond to your problem. There are a lot of very generous technical geniuses out there
Jennifer

[Phil Balsdon]

I used to have problems bringing the files in using the default HDV Easy Setup.
I now use A workflow that brings the footage in as Apple ProRes, seems to be very reliable.
I lose 6 frames of video between each camera stop / start. I suspect that’s to do with the 6 frame GOP structure of the HDV.
Video demonstration here;
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/vlog/12/04/2009/jvc-hdv-video-into-final-cut-pro-6

Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/