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Out of sync audio capturing DV tapes on FCP7
Hello there,
I seem to have a common issue, but the common solution doesn’t seem to be working for me. I have miniDV tapes that Im capturing via firewire 800 and Sony DVCAM decks using FCP7. Im capturing onto an external HD connected with USB 2 connection and onto the internal drives on two other computers. I have no info on the tapes; not what camera they were shot with, what the camera settings were etc. These tapes definitely have timecode breaks (the only info I do have on them) so I’m using the capture now function. I’ve added a screen shot of the info on the computer that I’m using for more information on my setup.
Now I had the original capture settings in FCP, with the audio set to 48kHz, once I got the audio error message, I duplicated the 48kHz setting and changed the audio capture setting in FCP to 44.1 and I even restarted FCP, and double checked the capture setting info just to be sure that the setting was on 44.1. That one didn’t work, so I used the same process this time changing the setting at 32kHz. I still have audio out of sync. I tried looking at the QT file in my capture scratch and the audio is out of sync. So how do I fix this? Is there another setting that I’m missing? Is it because I’m using firewire to capture? I really have honestly tried to find a solution but generally when people have this problem, it’s an audio rate issue so then when they change the settings, the problem is fixed. Please help!! Thanks everyone!!
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3 Replies
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Hi Candice
I assume when you look at the DV tapes themselves they don’t look out of sync – just to eliminate any odd issue there.
Given that they are DV then you should be able to simply use a DV easy set-up. However when you drop your first clip onto your sequence FCP should you know if the settings don’t match and say do you want to change the sequence settings to match. Say Yes or Enter at this point. Your sequence should then match so that will tell you the original settings.
In any event you should be able to see the source audio properties in the audio rate column of your project window. So that will tell you the sample rate.In general I would avoid using USB drives or internal OS drives for media. Even though DV is not really taxing on the system those drives are generally too slow and you may get issues there. Go for Firewire 800 drive as a minimum for your media that will easily handle the footage.
Firewire is the correct way to capture DV so should be no issue there.
You are correct about sample rate incompatibility giving sync issues but if you let FCP do the settings as I describe above that eliminates setting mismatch.
Your Mac spec is totally up to the task.
Might be worth doing a prefs trash – can help when odd things happen use this https://www.digitalrebellion.com/prefman/
Hopefully that might help you diagnose your issue.
best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv -
Neil,
I just want to first say thank you so much for taking the time to respond back to me. I tried all of those solutions, changing the sequence settings to match the rate that I captured at, initially using a firewire to capture to my hard drive. The only thing I didn’t try (which is such a bonehead move on my part) was to trash my preferences. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that since that is the first thing I usually do when I have an issue. I unfortunately had to give the tapes backs and I rarely work with DV personally, so I can’t test this out. Even when I checked the QT’s in the Finder, they were out fo sync as well on all 3 computers. So I feel like I was missing a setting or perhaps had a wrong set-up. It could have been a preferences issue, maybe FCP was reading the old list for capture settings, although I don’t know if the preferences list would have information on capture settings. I will definitely keep this in mind in the future in case I run into this again. Just because I don’t usually work with DV, doesn’t mean that people don’t still use it! Thanks again for your help.
Candice
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Thats a shame – well if its a constant sync error hopefully you can easily slip the audio back into sync and not have to keep working out different offsets.
If the raw captured QTs are like that on 3 computers its a pretty safe bet it went wrong in capture rather than anything your FCP is currently doing.
What a pain – hope its not too much grief for you.best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv
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