How to capture with broken time code?

[Walter Biscardi]

Two options.

Simply do a Capture Now at the head of the tape, and turn on “Create New Clip” at Timecode Break in your prefs. FCP will automatically stop and start digitizing again at a TC break.

If you don’t care about the TC, Turn OFF Create New Clip and simply Capture Now. You can simply hit ESC where you want to stop each capture and FCP will essentially ignore any TC breaks along the way.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Sophie876]

Thanks very much Walter.

I had hoped to avoid using Capture Now because in the past, footage has always looked soft when I used it.

Do you have any advice for me on that? I’m still using FCP 4.5.

If I copied the tape onto another DVCam, would the new tape have time code in proper sequence?

Sophie

[Rafael Amador]

Sophie,
This that happens to me a couple of times that i used cheap (SONY Premium) tapes. If you Print to Video the clips that you “Capture Now” the desk will generate a fresh TC.
Cheers,
rafael

[Sophie876]

rafalaos….

okay… so you’re saying use walter’s technique of capture now, then print to tape to generate new time code…

the question is, if I do that, will the soft footage stay the same or will it magically revert to how it would have looked if I had done a batch capture?

Thanks!
Sophie

[Rafael Amador]

There is not any techtnicall reason for getting any difference in the picture whether you make a batch capture or a Capture Now. As Walter says, just arrange the clips in a time-line keeping the same settings whichs you have captured. Just print to video. As long as you don’t go to render the clips, they will be not re-compressd so you will get exactly what you had in your original tape but with a new Time Code.
Cheers,
Rafael

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

[Sophie876] “I had hoped to avoid using Capture Now because in the past, footage has always looked soft when I used it.”

There can be NO difference in the quality of the footage captured in “Capture Now” or “Batch Capture” or any other DV-transfer.

Its simply a “file-transfer” from the tape to the hard drive.
Anything else would not appear as the footage from the tape.

That said, I strongly recommend that you dub the errant tape to another new DV tape with units connected via FireWire.
The quality of the dub will be identical to the camera master, and it will have new, continuous TC that can be very valuable during your total edit process.

[Sophie876]

Okay then, thanks very much for the advice!

But I will reiterate that my experience with Capture Now is very different from the way it’s supposed to be.
I can’t help it… it’s true.
And that’s why I was reluctant to just do that from the start.

I know what I have to do now, good people.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

[Walter Biscardi]

[Sophie876] “I had hoped to avoid using Capture Now because in the past, footage has always looked soft when I used it.

Do you have any advice for me on that? I’m still using FCP 4.5.”

I have never seen or heard of this before. It’s impossible for Capture Now to capture “softer” than any other form of capture. It’s all the same information no matter how you capture something.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Steven Gonzales]

This is similar to filling a bucket.

If you take the hose, turn it on, turn it of, turn it on, turn it off you will fill the bucket.

Or you could just keep the hose on to fill the bucket.

However, the same water is coming out, and it won’t be murkier just because you left the faucet on continuously.

If your footage was soft, and you used capture now, then capture now was not the reason.

This is a basic fallacy that many people have in their logic: coincidence is not causation. Just because two things occurred in relation to each other does not mean one caused the other.

[Sophie876]

Well Walter, it’s happened more than once. It might be the exact same information, but when I do any sort of speed manipulation, the footage gets soft. Capture Now footage also responds in a less than optimal way to other techniques, but it’s been so long since I’ve used it, I can’t remember what they were! I crossed it off my list a long time ago…. but hey…I’m here to learn…. and I’ll try it again on the advice of this forum….

Sophie