Drop frames during capture

[Shane Ross]

[Nicholas Johnson] “externals have issues with capturing footage right?”

WRONG! Internals do! You have it completely backwards. You need to capture to an EXTERNAL drive, not the INTERNAL system drive. That is busy running the OS. But then you have an issue, the mini, like all macs, has only 1 firewire bus. Multiple ports, one bus. So the signal from the camera and then going to the drive, two streams, one bus. That causes issues.

And USB drives are NOT a good idea for storage. Slower than FW when it comes to video.

Yes, the fact that you are using a mini might be the issue.

[Nicholas Johnson] “We’re running FCP HD “

What version? FCP HD was the name given to FCP 4.5, and 4.5 will NOT run reliably on Intel Macs, or Leopard.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Nicholas Johnson]

“WRONG! Internals do! You have it completely backwards. You need to capture to an EXTERNAL drive, not the INTERNAL system drive.”

So do you mean using the external as my capture scratch or actually plugging in the camera to and external drive(which in my head doesn’t make sense…)

I’m running the tape in “capture now” mode and it’s working – so that’s confusing me to why its not dropping frames… but that is not the type of solution I need: babysitting FCP while capturing each clip!

I’ll check the version in a sec, just finishing this “capture now”

[Shane Ross]

[Nicholas Johnson] “So do you mean using the external as my capture scratch or actually plugging in the camera to and external drive”

Plugging the camera into the computer, plugging the drive into the computer, using the external drive as the Capture Scratch.

[Nicholas Johnson] “I’m running the tape in “capture now” mode and it’s working – so that’s confusing me to why its not dropping frames…”

Well, doing this you are not getting TIMECODE. And timecode is so VERY important. If you lose the footage, say a drive dies…you can recapture if you have timecode. if you delete a project’s media, but then need to recapture, you can IF you have timecode. If you don’t, that means a lot of manual recutting of the material.

WIth timecode turned off, it’s working? Are these timecode breaks happening between shots?

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Nicholas Johnson]

Shoot. I didn’t know it didn’t grab the timecode! That’s horrible…

The breaks are not between shots at all – and at one point FCP just stopped capturing and didn’t giving an error msg (it actually froze the last sequence of video in the capture window but it was frozen as in locked, I could still press ESC to cancel out)

I shot this on a Canon XH A1s in 24f in drop frame – as that’s what I was told to use – but I’m wondering if that somehow is affecting things too…

[Shane Ross]

24f is a tricky format….

https://creativemac.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=188809

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2410?viewlocale=en_US

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Nicholas Johnson]

thanks – I had setup based on the first article actually in HDV 1080i60 but maybe could try option 2 of HDV1080p24

[Nicholas Johnson]

So they’re running FCP 6.0.6

A little more detail: the camera was setup in 24f and drop frame mode – I understand the reason for DF versus NDF (for broadcast sync/alignment) but would this affect the FCP capture too???

I’m plugged into the Mac Mini and the capture scratch is on a lacie external drive

tapes are sony HDs

I was also just trying to dump down the whole tape, then half the tape, as the client first wants to have all the footage digitized to have their staff transcribe it – then we’ll do a paper edit and get the clips we want (while deleting the digitized copy on the tape)

HD space is running at about 68gbs on the external and about 25gb on the internal system drive… which to me seems ok if I’m trying to capture about 10gb of vid off one tape

Also it’ll sometimes seem to be capturing 100% fine and then when the clip should end, the capture stops, but a new clip is put into the browser with a “-1” from the original logged name and its not the correct length nor does it have ins and outs set… but no error of drop frames!!!

this is so confusing – not sure what to “fix”

[Nicholas Johnson]

So they’re running FCP 6.0.6

A little more detail: the camera was setup in 24f and drop frame mode – I understand the reason for DF versus NDF (for broadcast sync/alignment) but would this affect the FCP capture too???

I’m plugged into the Mac Mini and the capture scratch is on a lacie external drive

tapes are sony HDs

I was also just trying to dump down the whole tape, then half the tape, as the client first wants to have all the footage digitized to have their staff transcribe it – then we’ll do a paper edit and get the clips we want (while deleting the digitized copy on the tape)

HD space is running at about 68gbs on the external and about 25gb on the internal system drive… which to me seems ok if I’m trying to capture about 10gb of vid off one tape

Also it’ll sometimes seem to be capturing 100% fine and then when the clip should end, the capture stops, but a new clip is put into the browser with a “-1” from the original logged name and its not the correct length nor does it have ins and outs set… but no error of drop frames!!!

this is so confusing – not sure what to “fix”