Emergency help!- Hard drive exploded, can’t recapture media

[Shane Ross]

Did you capture with the UNCONTROLLED DEVICE setting? if so, you captured without timecode. In which case you are in trouble and your clips will not match. This is the importance of LOGGING & CAPTURING…and why I stress it as much as I do.

If you captured and preserved timecode, then when you recaptured things would match up. Another issue with huge clips and automatic subclipping is that recapturing often does not result in them matching up…as you are now finding.

Unfortunately do not know how to save your project at this point. Only to say that you really need to log & capture and capture clips in small chunks.

Shane

Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net

[Samuel Frazier]

Shane, thanks for the help. I actually got it to work. I have no explanation for this, but by changing the names of the new clips to match the old clips, things worked. Before the name change, reconnecting resulted in chaos. Same clips, but different result. Go figure.
I did not capture with the uncontrolled device, it’s definitely a controlled device setting. So I guess there should be timecode but leaves me wondering why the clips wouldn’t batch capture back again.
Anyway, I know you have a point about logging and capturing, but I didn’t do it for a few reasons. #1 I’d have to pay for a deck or take the abuse on my camera (I’m also about the sell the camera), #2 the rewinding and fast forwarding takes forever compared to having it on a hard drive and everytime I think I’ll never use such and such a shot, I end up wanting to check it out for one reason or another somewhere down the line, #3 my only other FCP project was a film originated project where we logged and captured only b/c we needed to start each clip from its 0 frame to make the cinema tools conversion easy, & #4 this project is due by tuesday and thereafter I’m never going to have anything else to do with it. Famous last words, I guess. But, this is the risk you take I suppose doing things this way.
Again, thank you for the help, I do apprecite it and am looking forward to the new doc I was reading about on DV.com. Sounds like a really cool show coming up.

[Kevin Monahan]

[mus man] “ut leaves me wondering why the clips wouldn’t batch capture back again”
Likely it was only the first clip of the batch that failed due to lack of pre-roll. The fix is capture everything but the first clip and manually place the first clip using Capture Now.

This is why it is crucial to have plenty of pre-roll and post-roll for your master tapes. Often it’s the DP that controls this – in your case the telecine house.

[mus man] ” take the abuse on my camera”

It’s an old wive’s tale that logging and capturing will destroy your camcorder. I’ve used mine (which is a cheap one) for 6 years and it’s still taking a licking and keepin’ on ticking.

My feeling is that DV will be obsolete before a camcorder will be broken from log and capturing.

If you capture individual clips rather than a whole tape, it’s definitely an advantage in the long run over the short run time you’ll save. Keep that in mind. 😉

Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com

[Samuel Frazier]

Kevin,
Sorry for the delay. Took a couple days off after I finished the project. Unfortunately, I was the DP for the shoot, but I did add about 1 min of bars at the start of each tape. But I tried re-batch capturing clips other than the first one and I still got the same error message. Weird.