HDV Capture gives random red frames and out of sync audio

[Jon Barrie]

What you are experiencing is dropped frames but in GOP (group of pictures) so if 1 frame drops you lose the whole group which could be about 12 or 13 frames.

The reason this happens is because the HDV codec is made up of these GOPs.

Dropping frames can occur when a system is not fast enough in CPU or HDD read write speeds. These two areas can lose performance when running another application or capturing to the same drive as the OS and Apps.

Best practice with capturing HDV is to start the capture process and don’t touch the computer. Make sure the capture drive is a fast one 7200rpm minimum USB2 external works as minimum. Butthe mist important part of any video editing system or laptop is to disable by power saving settings like screen blank or off and HDD sleep modes or CPU voltage. Make absolutely sure it is all set to always be on and never sleep after X amount of time.

Good luck.

– Jon Barrie

Jon Barrie
aJBprods
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter

[Phil Thomas]

Hi, My system is a Intel Quad Core 2.5GHz, 8mb RAM, Stand Alone Desktop, no Internet, therefore no AntiVirus or Firewall running all the time. I capture to 2x 7200Rpm internal Sata HDDs running in a RAID which copies the information to both, there is a seperate HDD for OS. The Raid system is run by the Intel software that came installed with my PC, could this be causing it? Although it did this before I installed those HDDs. There are no sleep timers or Power Saving modes active and I always let it capture without doing anything else on the system. Any other ideas why it might be dropping frames, it does it usually once sometimes twice on nearly every catpure? And also why does it come back out of sync like its being storing the frames then putting them down to the file later?

Thanks
Phil

[Mike Cohen]

We experience these dropouts occasionally, and we believe these are errors in the recording on the HDV tape. We sent a problemativ tape along with out V1U camera to Sony and they told us the camera is fine, we need to use better tapes. So now we are using the most expensive HDV tapes Sony makes and guess what, we still get the occasional red frame dropout.

Makes tapeless recording look better every day.

Mike Cohen

[Jon Barrie]

The camera’s heads could be dirty or have some static too. Run a cleaning tape.

How long are your captures?

Jon Barrie

Jon Barrie
aJBprods
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter

[Jon Barrie]

I found back in the boom of DV that Sony tapes, even in song cams, were terrible. I shoot HDV on a Z1P and have done for years with Panasinic ONLY stock. The HDV range of stock aren’t any more bang for bang in my experience. I use the standard MiniDV Panasinic tapes and have never had a problem with them.

Capture problems may happen in HDV. Tapeless does appear to be a good option in comparison. Just got a HDSLR canon camera and an finding it very nice.

I do like having a tape as backup. Old thinking I guess.

😉

Jon Barrie
aJBprods
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter

[Phil Thomas]

I’ve run a cleaning tape and the problem isn’t recorded on the tape and doesn’t show on the LCD of the camera while you are capturing it. The captures can be between a couple of minutes long to the full hour and it seems to happen randomly. I also get problems in capturing SD footage only this time it messes up only blocks within a frame or two rather than making the whole thing red. I’ve captured with two different cameras, both the same model and get the same problem.

Cheers
Phil

[Jon Barrie]

If you are getting DV splats too across cameras then there is mire than likely something wring with the tapestock. It possibly building up a static that creates a problem seemingly at random spots.
– Jon Barrie

Jon Barrie
aJBprods
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter

[Phil Thomas]

Yeh but these artifacts and the red frames only appear on the computer file and not on the LCD screen of the camera so the camera is reading and displaying it from the tape properly but simultanously the file being captured into the computer having these problems. Also in HDV it reads the some of the frames then seems to store them somewhere then put them to the file out of sync once the red has gone?

Thanks
Phil

[Jonathan Shohet]

Before you go along any further, you really should try capturing with HDVSplit.
https://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.htm
It’s free, reliable, and even has scene detect which CS4 doesn’t.
If the red frames/dropped frames appear also on the HDVSplit captures, then you can start the process of elimination – try capture with a different camera/deck, try capture to a different hard drive/computer, try replacing the firewire cable which may be faulty ect. ect.

[Nancy L. sutton smith]

I would like to get involved in this “red frame” discussion because it happens on MPEG files. Here is the quote from adobe Frames that are unable to be decoded by Premiere Pro will be replaced with a solid red frame.

I am a high school media teacher and we have edited very successfully with Sony HDD camcorders & CS3 for 2 years without any red frame problems. This year my program moved to a brand new CTE Academy – new computers with CS5 BUT the district didn’t realize we needed Windows 7. So with new computers they gave us CS3 temporarily and NOW we have the red frame issue. This version is 3.0.0 and I am hoping when I ask them to upgrade to 3.2.0 it will go away again. WHAT was Adobe thinking with a RED FLASH. Black flash would have been liveable for my classes but editing out tiny red frames for new media students is a nightmare!
We also now have an HD studio and are using DVCam HD tape so I expect to have the problems discussed in this thread.

Below is the Adobe link that talks about the red frame issue. BTW – MPEG camcorders work beautifully in a high school environment because students are uploading and working before the students working with tape have even hit File>Capture. I added that because too often people will bash MPEG and video editing. It worked great until this year!

https://kb2.adobe.com/cps/403/kb403179.html
Using the Event pallet
The Event pallet now lists errors found in MPEG streams during indexing and playback. This information can be useful in identifying and locating errors in your source video. Frames that are unable to be decoded by Premiere Pro will be replaced with a solid red frame.

Nancy L. Smith
President
Sutton Bay Media Company