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TC Drift on capture, J30…HEEELLLLP!!!
Hi all,
Problem has arisen with a client who is logging and digitising footage from a J30 in to their system… a little background:
FCP 4.5 running on a Quad G5, Kona LHe, G-Tech FW800 Raid. Capturing from a J30 via firewire. PAL land. Monitoring via the Kona to an external monitor. FCP is set to create new clip on timecode break, and to be fair only two out of the fifty or so camera masters have TC breaks, so I’m confident it is not an issue.
Client is logging and capturing whole tapes prior to subclipping later. Setting start and end TC, then ‘Capture Clip’.
Problem is, video is capturing fine, but an eagle eyed intern noticed the timecode was drifting… and sure enough, over a 30 min tape it drifts by about 3 min. Roughtly a minute in 10….
I’ve got them logging only at the moment (and double-checking timecode entered with that on tape) so that they can at least be productive whilst I sort this problem out, but I’m looking for clues; most of my FCP cutting has been for clients using DV or HDV (anything else has tended to be on Avid or Silver) so am I missing something fundamental? I’ve been through the settings and can find nothing awry – I was looking for a frame-rate mismatch or some such. Would the Kona be an issue? Their system is a kind of half-and-half in that they have a fully featured Kona card with breakout box, but no SPG or monitor… when I’ve used a J30 in the past it’s always been solid with accurate capture (if a little slow)
Thanks in advance as always!
Jason
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4 Replies
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One thing… it is FCP 5.12 not 4.5 as stated, OS 10.4.8 with 5.5 gigs RAM.
Any thoughts?
Jason
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Update – it seems that the default setting for log & capture was audio preview on, and FCP didn’t like this one bit. I’m guessing its a firewire bandwidth issue…
Much of the suspect footage had dropped frames, but was barely noticeable due to the nature of the footage – talking heads with little movement. Recapturing clips with preview turned off seems to have cured the problem…
Jason
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Reasons like this are why I always have FCP set to stop capturing on dropped frames or at least notify you afterwards. The option is in the user preference window in the FCP menu. What kind of drive are you using? If your footage keeps dropping frames your drive is most likely the bottleneck in bandwidth.
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Yes, I agree and normally I would have… I did a test and all was well, but when the client called and said ‘We need to monitor audio whilst logging’, because of the nature of their setup I suggested turning preview audio on… not something that has given me a problem before, but thats been with the Kona ingest rather than FW. I think it must put some kind of overhead that chokes the firewire bus – I don’t think it would happen with a seperate FW PCI card. One for the learning bank , I think!
Jason
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