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FCP Capture Problems
Hi all,
I’m new to Creative Cow, seen it occasionally and thought I’d take the plunge and join. It seems like a great, highly professional resource.My facility just went into the video production business, using FCP. I’ve had a bit of training with it and feel comfortable capturing our classes and editing them for internal post and archive.
The current setup (2 halls identical) is: installed cameras sending 1080i images to a Panasonic AV-HS400A, program out from there sending SDI to a Multibridge Pro encoder for capture, then available for editing in FCP 7.01. We’ve also just added Matrox CompressHD cards for speedier compression. The problems described below occurred before we installed the Matrox cards.
Right now the capture window image is pink and unstable! We cannot capture the image before we get a “dropped frames” error and termination of the capture. What drives me nuts is that the system worked fine before last Tuesday. I WAS capturing in the Log & Capture window at 1080i 59.94-JPEG. Now I only get image at either 1080i59.94-Apple ProRes 4444 or 1080i 59.94-10 bit RGB 4.4.4.4.
I have a feeling we’ve messed up the output settings of the switcher somehow, or somehow damaged the Multibridge Pro. The switcher is sending imagery fine to the rest of the room systems, so I conclude the output is OK. I’ve looked at the Multibridge Preferences and reset the FCP preferences using the Apple Assistant. Neither has helped. Now I’m out of ideas.
Anyone experience this or similar problems? Any info gratefully appreciated. Please feel free to post direct if posting to the forums is a problem.
John
John Steele
Multimedia Production Coordinator
Armstrong Medical Education Building
Johns Hopkins University -
5 Replies
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I’m just guessing here. Are you feeding ref video to at least the switcher and Multibridge? How long are your cable runs?
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.1, Motion 4.0.1, Comp 3.5.1, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.1)Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
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Hey John,
THanks for the reply.Not sure what you mean by reference video. I have the capability for bars out of the switch and I’ll check that.
Cable runs from switcher to encoder (blkmgc) are less than 4 feet.
The fact that it did run well last week makes me think there’s a setting wrong somewhere. I wish I could check the Blackmagics functions separate from the switch. I’ll work on that today.
I thought I could check the incoming signal with iMovie but iMovie doesn’t open within camera mode, probably as a function of the 1080i and the signal coming in thru the PCI Express bus instead of Firewire.
John
John Steele
Multimedia Production Coordinator
Armstrong Medical Education Building
Johns Hopkins University -
HI Guys,
Another think I noticed: the video capture seems to bog down the longer it goes, until it gives me a Dropped Frames error and drops out (within 30 secs). Could that point to a timing error of some sort?Thanks, John
John Steele
Multimedia Production Coordinator
Armstrong Medical Education Building
Johns Hopkins University -
Ref (reference) video comes from a sync generator. Its purpose is to send a timing signal to various devices. It’s possible your switcher generates its own sync. If so (and if the signal is available) feed it to the Multibridge Pro ref in. See if it helps.
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.1, Motion 4.0.1, Comp 3.5.1, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.1)Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
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John and All,
Thanks for the information. It helped point to the solution of the mystery.It turns out that the Multibridge will accept SD info on the IN A and IN B inputs. However, if it senses SD input on both of those inputs it assumes you are sending dual-channel SD and will only allow digitization at 4:4:4:4 rates.
That was the reason my visual was pink and out of sync. I was not sending 2 channel SD, only one channel on 2 different lines. So I was fooling the Multibridge. The cure was to remove the IN B input and poof! the Multibridge understood the signal and gave good output to FCP.
Thanks for everyone’s input, it really helped track down the mystery. Thanks also the Eric at Multibridge for going slow for a newbie. In the process of solving this I’ve found several excellent professional forums that I’ll stay connected to, including this one.
Thanks again, John
John Steele
Multimedia Production Coordinator
Armstrong Medical Education Building
Johns Hopkins University
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