Media Composer 5: Exception error while digitizing HDV

[Kris Anderson]

If the error is happening when the camera buttons on or off then there is a discontinuity in time code occuring, which will cause Avid to stop, based on your capture settings.

You can go to your capture settings in MC and select “capture across timecode breaks”. See if that works. Also, try toggling the “Enable detection of small timecode breaks” button under DV&HDV Options in your capture settings. Might help?

There should be no problem with the 30p format.

[Michael Chirgwin]

Have a look on the Avid Media Composer forum and you’ll see that sadly this is a major AVID fault and so far no fix has been offered. Quicktime 7 offers easy HDV capture but no deck control. QT.mov files thus produced still have to be linked via AMA for editing or Imported into MC and the import happens at play speed!
Avid should be shot!

[Daniel Steiner]

Hey yall. I seem to be having the same problem….and it’s so frustrating! I’m a newcomer to Avid and am running MC5 on my macbookpro (which I should mention is more than robust enough for my everyday editing tasks in FCP with Prores422 HQ material…no problems to report).

So, I’m having some serious quirks involving batch capture of HDV clips from my JVC BR-HD50 in MC5. I go through my HDV tapes, log them, and then try to batch capture the offline clips. MC5 will run the clip, look as though it’s capturing the whole time, and then at the end of the “capture”, drop the whole thing and prompt an error message reading:

“HALTED ON CLIP [X]

EXCEPTION: DIG_VDM_OVERRUN”

Now, I’ve been using FCP for over 10 years, and I know all the tricks with dealing with tape: fast forward, rewind, run it for a few seconds, click on the “ignore time code breaks”, etc etc. But I’m positive that this here is a software issue with Avid, and I know it’s with Avid or the dialog between Avid and my JVC deck because, A) I’m able to capture on the fly just fine, and B) I’m able to batch capture these tapes flawlessly in FCP.

I also know that this is by no means the first instance of people having problems with Avid and HDV. The only thing I can figure is that maybe, and just MAYBE, my Lacie RAID that’s hooked up using esata via ExpressCard34, and the firewire800 port which is controlling the JVC deck, are both giving the motherboard a run for its money. But then why does it work perfectly in FCP every time?

Ay help would be greatly appreciated. After shelling out so much money on this great new system, it’s indeed frustrating to find out it can’t batch capture HDV…

[Michael Chirgwin]

Which version of MC are you using Daniel? Things seemed to get even worse with the transition from 5.0.2 to 5.0.3. I could capture on the fly before but not after. I’ve reverted to capturing in iMovie and cutting AIC in FCP5. I’m afraid you’ll probably have to wait for a fix from Avid or capture on the fly. I seem to remember something about the codec JVC used not being supported in HDV capture but I wasn’t paying 100% attention to other cameras in the MC5 guide last time I read it.
Sorry i can’t be of more help. You could try the Avid forums…

[Daniel Steiner]

Thanks for your response, Michael. I’ve already been to the Avid forums and I have a feeling their users aren’t as active as us Cowboys.

So, to answer your question, I”m on MC5.0, haven’t updated yet. And after running a bunch of tests, it seems I’m unable to capture more than about 15 seconds of HDV on the fly without getting a whole range of errors – in fact it’s exciting to see which one will pop up next and crash my machine. But for now I’ve got a deadline and don’t have time to deal with bus thread errors and dig or video overrun nonsense. I’m giving up for the time being and going back to my trustee FCP 7 for this one, though I was excited to use avid on a real project for the first time. C’est la vie.

I’ve never seen a program so buggy as MC5 with regard to HDV – it could just be a JVC problem, but I have a feeling it runs deeper than that, something to do with latency and busses and not testing MC5 on actual macs. granted I”m not on a “supported” machine, but the whole idea of “supported machines” I would have hoped would be dead by now to really open Avid up to the consumer market. Anyhow, that’s a whole other discussion altogether.

Please let me know if you hear about any workarounds as I’d love to get this working but I’m afraid I just don’t have time anymore :\

[Michael Chirgwin]

Yeah your experiences are similar to mine. Don’t update beyond MC5 for the moment. I’m sure its not a qualified machine issue because my Macpro 8core captures HDV perfectly using Quicktime 7 and iMovie.
With your obvious experience with FCP now that I’ve had to capture my HDV footgae in iMovie and edit in AIC I’m ready to export, but it only needs to go to SD DVD (Toast 10), what are the best settings? Compressor doesn’t seem to offer an MPEG2 down conversion though it says it does. I’m now trying just a straight Quicktime export at 1220×760 using the default H264. Will this work? The estimated time is growing about a minute every second…

[Daniel Steiner]

All I have to say is that it’s tremendously irritating. You spend so much money on software that “is the industry standard” and it won’t work with I’d say 50% of the footage that’s given to me. Then there’s the typical thoughtless response that “well Avid is too big, too professional to work with HDV, and not meant for film students or low budgets. Stay with Fina Cut” What a huge cop-out.

Anyway, sorry for venting. To answer your question, I always just send my sequences to compressor, and use the DVD Best Quality 90 min. It will convert it right to MPEG2 data stream. If you’re working in HD, one way to safeguard against any potential screw ups with aspect ratios etc is to create a new 4:3 SD sequence (I use prores 422 SD). Take your HD sequence and just plop it into the new SD sequence, and it will letterbox it automatically. Take that new SD sequence and send to compressor. Everyone wins.

[Michael Chirgwin]

Couldn’t agree more Daniel. Avid Forums aren’t too tolerant of venting from “non-professional” film makers- who ever they are. HDV is the de-facto standard for Inde film making and for a hell of a lot of television stations around the world. We are definitely being treated as beta testers a lot of the time. By the way I have worked “professionally”in film and television all over the world for fourty years from film, tape to NL and because of constant proprietary wrangling there’s no longer any standards except those imposed ad hoc by the big hardware manufactures, It really is a nightmare for small and independent content producers.
Thanks for the tips re HDV export. After 5 unsuccessful, HDV squeezed 16:9 exports with compressor, I finally remembered the trick of dropping the HDV cut into an SD timeline, I set it to Anamorphic though that just sets the monitor dimensions in FCP. I finally got a QT .mov that Toast has burned into a tolerable DVD. Saturation has been wrecked but it doesn’t have motion artefacts (PAL remember) and it plays and sounds okay also. Thanks for the tips Daniel and I hope your path to upgrade nirvana is a peaceful one…
Just one more thing! I exported from the SD timeline using QT conversion, I was so pissed off with compressor by that time, you’re saying always use compressor for SD exports to DVD?

[Daniel Steiner]

Hey Michael, sorry to just get back to you…I’ve been totally swamped (and still working with FCP…Avid really has dropped the ball on this one).

I usually capture and transcode HDV to prores 422 simultaneously, or record straight to prores or transcode before editing. I more often that not go FCP -> compressor, but you just have to make sure you’re settings are all correct (square pixel, 16×9, etc etc). I have found earlier versions of compressor to buggier than all hell, but it’s goten noticeably better in the past few years. ALSO, if you’re using DVD studio pro, make sure your preview settings are set 16×9 and NOT 4:3 which is the default It took me years of pulling my hair out in frustration to find that one out

[Michael Chirgwin]

Thanks Danielle, really useful advice. I now have FC Studio3 so the Prores option is now available. I too have lost faith in Avid. Amazing really as I’ve spent the last twenty years working with Avid churning out hundreds of hours of prime time television without a glitch, and I’m stunned at how suddenly this loss of function has occured. Its not just the timeline disasters either. It’s the way they seemed to have dumped HDV also.
Thanks again.