Log and Capture from a JVC Deck

[Mark Suszko]

If you are using a breakout box like the AJA IO, those are connected to the firewire bus, and so plugging into the tower’s firewire port does nothing because the breakout box is commandeering the bus.

If you don’t have a blackmagic or AJA breakout box on this machine, and have done previous captures from DV camcorders using the firewire cable in the front, then I imagine you have a settings problem in the JVC somewhere. Try setting the FCP Log and capture > Device settings to “Uncontrolled Device”, and manually playing the JVC deck, while trying different capture/input settings. The JVC deck probably has a switch or menu setting on it controlling or selecting output, which you’d want to check as well.

All that said, I don’t remember ever using the firewire input on the front of my tower for HD tape ingest; only ever for standard-def, DV tape ingest. It may be that you actually can’t do an HD import without a break-out box. I haven’t looked at the specs for a long time, but it would make sense.

[Shane Ross]

Start with the proper EASY SETUP. This will tell FCP what kind of deck to look for. You need HDV 720p and then either 59.94fps, or 29.97fps. But I suspect 59.94 as 720p is a 60 frame format. So HDV 720p60. Choose that first, THEN you should be able to communicate with the deck.

Shane
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[Rory Keenan]

I’m now running through an AJAioHD box.
(no luck going straight from deck to CPU).
Unfortunately I’m still having problems.

Physcial Connections:
The JVC deck is connected to the AJA box via HDMI cable.
I then have a Firewire 800 going from AJA box to CPU.

AJA Control Panel:
On the AJA control panel application, under “inputs” next to the HDMI radio button it says “720p 59.94”
“Format” tab- I select primary video 720p59.94
“Digital Out” I select Primary

FinalCut-“Audio/Video Settings”:
Sequence Preset – AJAIoHD 720p59.94 Apple Prores 422
Capture Preset – AJAIoHD 720p59.94 Apple Prores 422
Video Platback – AJAIoHD 720p59.94 Apple Prores 422
Device Control – Uncontrollable Device

I manually press play, and it plays normally for a few seconds in the preview window; but then the video scrambles to green flashing lines for a few seconds, then plays video normally for a few seconds again. It continues to go back and forth between normal play and green scramble.
FinalCut will capture this and create a clip that plays back exactly the way it previews (back and forth between normal video and green scramble).
Has anyone seen that before?

I have tried a number of different settings in AJA Control panal and FinalCut, and that is the closest I’ve gotten it to working.

Any ideas??

[Mark Suszko]

Two guesses: Hard drive is “tango Uniform”. Second guess: the tape isn’t recorded in the format you think it is.

Bonus guess: the software that controls the IO is set wrong or borked. Did you update to the latest firmware, and run the AJA system diagnostics program? In the software app that AJA uses to control the IO, are the inout and output settings THERE matching your timeline, capture, AND project settings?

Run AJA’s speed test on the target hard drive and see if the drive is really up,to snuff.

After that, I’m fresh out of ideas.