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JVC FCP Woes
I’ll try to keep this short but also try to keep it detailed.
We have had experience of using the Sony Z1 and other Sony HDV cameras, when we captured off these we connected via firewire and used the FCP log and capture window, and basically hit capture now and let the whole tape capture.
The end result was a series of clips with the each new clip each beginning the frame after the last one ended.
Perfect, not a single frame missing, Lovely.Since then we have purchased a JVC GY101E,
The recording format we use is HDV 720p25 (PAL)
We’ve been using Sony HDV tapes, model DVM63HD
We thought things would work the same as with the Sony, however this is not the case.
When a clip comes to an end, instead of beginning the next clip on the next frame, it starts 7 seconds later.Also, when shooting long takes, such as time lapse the clips get split, even though there was no break in filming, you can probably imagine how good speed up time lapse looks when at random intervals we loose 7 seconds. This recently caused a right head ache when we did an interview, the answers where all broken into two clips with 7 seconds missing in between. When we tried to recapture it, it constantly breaks around the same point. Some clips, I had to capture over 10 times before I got a clean clip without any breaks.
While he have sent the camera off to JVC for firmware upgrades (again and again and again) it made no difference. It is fully up to date and we have kept the Mac up to date both in OS and FCP.
We have played around various settings both in the camera and in Final Cut to no avail, such as making sure things like “abort on capture on dropped frames” was off and “on Time code break” is set to “warn after capture” No difference.
We recently borrowed a JVC GY100E,
The reason for borrowing this was the firewire port on the 101 got physically damaged.
Capturing with this is even worse, the random breaks occur more often. We checked the firmware, it is NOT the most up to date.
We noticed older tapes recorded on the 101 capture normally on the 100, by normal I mean with 7 seconds missing and the occasional random break. Tapes recorded with the 100 and just terrible, one 10 minute take was split into over 14 clips of various sizes some 3 minutes long and one was just 14 frames. Arrgh!We bought a JVC BR-HD50 Tapes deck (latest firmware)
We still the same freaking problems, anything on the 101 looses 7 seconds and breaks randomly on occasions.
Tapes recorded on the 100 are just terrible constantly and vary much randomly breaking.
We noticed the 100 tapes when viewed on a monitor plugged into the tape deck flashes to blue and green randomly.We assume the GY100 some hows records things differently then the 101, and thus during playback, breaks are detected where none exist.
So a summery of the major problems are
Problem 1.
We loose 7 seconds off the beginning of each take/clip. This is crap on short movies etc where you now no longer have the clapper! Also the camera man now has to let the tape role for about 10 seconds before he can start his shot.Problem 2.
Long clips get split for no reason, but seem to always split on same part of at least around that part on the 101 and just crazy random breaks on the 100.JVC answer to this is too send the camera for “repair” where they upgrade the firmware. Or to use another editing system such are their recommended Pinnacle, however the whole idea of using Pinnacle makes me sad.
I hope you might have some ideas, or might know someone who might be able to make this mess work.
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5 Replies
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Have you done a search on this forum? Issues with JVC HDV cameras abound and is one of the reasons I turn down any job shot with those cameras. Doesn’t help you in this situation, but something where I definitely would have done more research about that camera and FCP before making the purchase.
Sony Z1’s perform really well with FCP, though we always convert HDV footage to DVCPro HD or ProRes before editing.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Ben, I use the HD100 and its workflow with the BRHD50U deck and
have not ever had this problem, but I have heard of others having it.My suggestion at this point (so you can get back to work) is to download the apple firewire sdk that includes DVHSCAP.app
ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Development_Kits/FireWireSDK22.dmg
With it you should be able to capture (no batch) the entire clip with no breakup (as far as I know)
you could then use mpeg stream clip to batch convert those captured .m2t files to whatever codec you wish to edit in.You can do a google search for dvhscap and final cut pro to get an idea of how its used.
I feel sorry for all of those folks having problems with the JVC cameras, they really do capture some great, progressive ,full raster imaging
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This occured with FCP 5 and early versions of 6.
I have recently finished a HD project shot with JVC HD110 and FCP 6.0.4. Capture was flawless into ProRes, with or without scene detection.
But maybe I was just lucky. You can edit in Premiere (on both PC and Mac), it talks to JVC without any problems and it’s very similar to FCP (it was designed by the same person).
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Did you capture it with a JVC deck, through the camera, or with another manufacturers deck? I’m getting JVC footage on Sony tapes and was wondering if I could still capture with my Sony HDV deck.
Gray Wilson
realgraycreative.com -
[Gray Wilson] “I’m getting JVC footage on Sony tapes and was wondering if I could still capture with my Sony HDV deck.”
no its not the tape stock, though Sony HDV tapestock is the BEST
tape to use (the $ 10 per tape stock) I get zero dropouts with
it yet get regular drop outs if I use JVC Pro-HD tape formulated for their cameras and decks.The sony deck CAN playback JVC HDV footage but there is no timecode and you can only capture it over the component outputs (from what others have said) through an aja or black magic capture card.
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