Giving Up

[Scott Sheriff]

Mike
“I have been able to take my same tape and drop into my older SONY DVCAM deck and capture successfully with firewire on most projects. But that machine has limitations and will not allow HD captures.”

Sony and JVC HDV are two different formats. So even if your older Sony deck was an HDV model, it wouldn’t play your tapes.
The ability to capturing DV is not an effective benchmark of your system for HDV work. All that does is confirm your FW is working.

“Oh, Tape Stock was mentioned: JVC ProHd for HD/DV. We use exclusively.”

OK, but why do you have a Sony deck? Are you saying you have never used Sony tape in either the deck or camera? This is not a flame on Sony. In the past Sony tapes had a lube that was incompatible with JVC/Panasonic/Fuji tape lubes. If that deck (or any other) was used with Sony tape in the past then there is a chance that you have spread that lube to other gear contaminating it. Especially if you clean the tape path infrequently.
And are these tapes are new? Do not reuse DV tapes. I know people do, but they are cheap and not robust like a Betacam or U-Matic tape that can be used over and over.
Do you regularly (and properly) use a JVC cleaning tape on the deck and camera?
Does the person that shoots your material have a habit of taking the deck out of Record and ‘checking’ the tape? This can put unwanted wear at the point on the tape where the re-cue occurs. Also if the process of re-cuing the tape isn’t done properly it can cause TC flutter, or breaks. And of course this is happening at the same point on the tape where you are most likely to try and capture your clip.

“In attemtpting to capture several clips, the BSR usually goes into a Non capture mode after the first clip. Whatever that clips name is slated as, it will contine to capture, almost randomly with all the clips with a numeric code after each clips such as “Dancing Clip” Dancing Clip-1, Dancing Clip -2, etc. overwriting what would have been the original capturing editors dialog.”

It sounds like you are capturing off the tape in a clip by clip style. You didn’t say what your pre-roll is, or if you were using ‘time of day’, or free-running TC.
Free running TC can cause problems on HDV, use at you own risk.
Pre-roll has a lot of influence over the process on HDV due to the GOP structure. And it isn’t a case of more is better. Too much can put you too far back and confuse the capture machine. Too little and the tape is not up to speed.
Actually, capturing on a clip by clip basis is not the way to go. It effectively doubles the wear on the machine per tape captured, and puts much back and forth strain on the tape and transports. It causes many more opportunities for a wrinkle, or to miss a clip due to TC or pre-roll issues.
The best way is to go is capture the entire tape as one clip, in one pass. Just set your IN at the beginning of your material, and your OUT at the end of the tape and capture that clip. (actually don’t even rewind the tape, and get the OUT point first) No matter how you have FCP set up, it will still split this one clip into many at any TC break, or camera start. Then you can screen, and further separate your material into separate clips, and Media Manage the unwanted footage. This not only greatly reduces the amount of head time, and transport use, but it means there is only one pre-roll/capture cycle to go bad.
You didn’t mention how many hours your deck and camera have on them. These machines do not have an infinite lifespan. They also have a major service interval based on the number of hours.

I’m sure that I’m making it sound as if HDV is fragile. It is.
The tape is small, the head is small in diameter, the transport is small. It records in a compressed format that any one missing frame in a group of 6 (JVC) or 15 (Sony) wipes out all the frames from that group, and usually the following group.
I see people all the time treat HDV gear like it is Beta. Lots of shuttling, reusing tapes, knocking it around, use in dirty environs, etc.
There is a price to pay for HDV’s compact camera size, low cost, compact cassette, and low storage space requirement. That price is that it should be handled much more carefully to get the best results.

“I use a KONA LH card for capture.
I always use a Firestore now, which eliminates most of these issues, but I still periodically must go back to tape if the Firestore didn’t get programmed correctly. We also shoot both.

We used FCP 6.06, Mac G5, 8 Gb Ram. 2.7 dual processors, etc, with SATA 2 TB Drive for capture.2”

I didn’t see what OS version your running. Have you done your Pro-Aps update? How about the OS? Have you updated the card driver?
I use a Mac Pro that has it’s own FW port, and don’t have any issues, but you might have update/driver issues.
HDV is processor intensive, and your on a G5. When capturing are you trying to do other work?
How full is your capture drive? Once they get 3/4 full performance decreases.
Are you trying to capture to your system drive? I hope not.

“Not sure if you thought I was flaming JVC because I am not. I am merely frustrating with the deck as it is not peforming as it should. I have contacted JVC 2 times about this problem and they insist that there is nothing wrong with my machine rather in my set up.”

No, but I thought another poster was flaming based on “what he heard”.
As far as the deck not performing, again I ask how many hours your deck and camera have on them.
It could be the camera, the tape, your workflow, your computer, the deck, or a combination.
And what did JVC say was wrong with your set-up?

I’m not sure if any of this actually applies in your situation, but once you eliminate all the possible causes, whatever is left is probably the problem(s).

Scott Sheriff
Director
SST Digital Media
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

[Mike Maloney]

Thank you for an extraordinary amount of input. It is certainly appreciated. Your suggestions will be heeded. As you should know, this is not a new venture, but one developed over 18 years of shooting and posting. We have run a gamut of issues and problems of the years and I’ve not posted on the Cow for quite sometime relying on our skill and expertise. I found an issue that was problematic and troublesome and I appreciate someone, in earnest, taking the time out of their day to help address the issues. I hope I can return the favor someday. I am a dead aim at Pro Tools should you ever need help in the audio arena.

OH BTW, the old SONY DVCAM machine was one of the first machines we purchased (along with our trusty Beta SP1800) it just does a grand job when everything else goes awry.

Mike Maloney

Mike Maloney
Maloney Marketing Group
maloneymarketinggroup.com
beartoothrecording.com
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