Dropped frames in HDV Capture?

[13]

what type of drive are you capturing to

[Shiloh Heyman]

Internal 500G SATA 3.0 Western digital 7200 RPM 16MB buffer. Have had similar reults capturing to an external USB 2.0 IDE enclosure with a 400G 7200 RPM 16MB buffer. If the drive were to blame it would not explain the sections of tape that cannot be recaptured after multiple attempts, However most sections can be succesfully recaptured on the 1st attempt wich is a big pain. Also I have tried capturing full tapes using “capture now” as well as logging and capturing sections. Both give dropped frames at times.

Thanks.

Shiloh

Mac Pro 2.66, 3G Ram, X 1900-XT, Kona LHe, FCP6

[13]

Is that western digital also a USB drive? Is it the system drive? How full is the drive?

USB even USB 2.0 works in burst of data, not constant data so it is unsuitable for video work.

If you are capturing to your system drive, that can also cause dropped frames because you are already running the OS and Final Cut Pro From it, it has plenty to do already.

The reason I ask questions about hard drives, is because 9 times out of 10 when people post about dropped frames it is caused by them using ether the system drive, a USB drive, or a drive that is to full.

Douse it drop frames on the same frame each time? If so it is probably the tape. Just because you used better quality tapes douse not mean you will get no drop outs at all, they are just better quality so you will get less drop outs.

Drop outs can always happen.

[Shiloh Heyman]

System drive is stock 250GB western digital. Scratch disc is the WD 500GB with 200GB Free Space, described previously (Internal SATA. Not USB or Firewire).

However when I use to do allot of audio recording (on my G4 with OS X) I would have to use a separate partition on my system drive (I only had one drive at the time) for recording audio only. Before every recording session I would delete every thing on the partition, empty the trash and restart. If I didn’t follow this procedure I would get write errors and Bias Peak Pro would stop recording(I don’t care what apple says their hard drives get fragmented just like windows, and because they say that they don’t need to be de-fragmented, It seems there aren’t any methods to de-fragment an OS X hard drive apart from the for-mentioned method). So I guess the best method would be to start with an empty drive (what a pain) for video capture as well.

Back to my current problem. Some of the dropouts are definitely errors on the tape that cannot be recaptured properly and sometimes a couple frames wont even play back from tape properly under close inspection. However some can be recaptured with a second pass as for-mentioned. My cheap old DV camera with the cheapest and sometimes reused tapes has never even given me one of these problems after years of use. My brand new $3,500.00 camera with high end tapes = Un-acceptable performance in its most basic function, recording video to tape. I hope that someone can feel my frustration and share a resolution before I try to administer a HX A1 enema to Canon or the same to Panasonic with their “Master Quality” tapes.

My next logical step in the troubleshooting process would be to try the cheep brands of tape I use to use with my old camera but I am still concerned about the horror stories I’ve heard, about clogged tape heads from switching tape brands with different lubricants. Does anyone have any input on this subject? What brands of tape use what type of lube, and which ones can be safely switched between?

Thanks.

Shiloh

Mac Pro 2.66, 3G Ram, X 1900-XT, Kona LHe, FCP6

[13]

Unfortunately if there is drop outs on the tape, that cannot be fixed.

Like I said before dropouts can happen no mater what tape stock you are using, perhaps you got a bad tape.

has the camera been used with other brands or tapes previously. One of my big rules is to ALWAYS use the same tape stock in the camera. Different brands of tape use different lubricants. Some dry and some oil based. Mixing these on the camera heads is not good.

Now I cant say that this is the cause, it is just a possibility.

Try shooting another tape, it could have just been a bad tape.

[Shiloh Heyman]

6 hours =6 tapes. Some better, Some worse. All similar results. = Crap camera or crap brand of tape.

[13]

First of all CALM DOWN getting upset is not going to fix any thing.

Run a head cleaner through the camera, and try a different brand of tape. Like I said you may have just gotten a bad batch, it happens.

If it still happens with different tapes, then defiantly look into getting the camera replaced if you just purchased it.