unable to capture with Final Cut Pro due to jerky image

[John Fishback]

Are you capturing from a deck or camera? Do you capture with Firewire or through a capture card or device? Have you tried to capture the tape using a different camera or deck?

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.2, Motion 4.0.2, Comp 3.5.2, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.2)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Santiago Acera]

Thanks for being there, John.

I capture with a Firewire cable from my Sony HDV1080i deck to my Mac OS X 10.4.11 computer. I never capture from the camera directly as that functionlity of my camera stopped working long time ago.

As I wrote, it is very strange, I might be able to start capturing a few minutes if I am lucky and suddenly the image in my FCP log and capture function starts with these short stops (while in the small screen of the deck the image keeps running smoothly) and then I can’t capture any more, except maybe a few seconds and leaving out big chunks of footage.

When the problem is there, it is nearly impossible to get rid of it. I close and open again the project, the computer, turn off and on the deck, fiddle with the cables, the settings… but as I said, without changing anything at all, it could work fine for a short while and then there is the problem after a while without me changing anything at all.

I capture “manually”, using the “capture now” funcionality, (so I go clasifying the clips) because in my deck the time code is always zero, I don’t know how to set it back again (but again, this might be totally irrelevant I have been doing that for years without a problem)

Thanks for trying to help me, John. I do appreciate it;-)

santi

[John Fishback]

Have you trashed prefs & repaired permissions? I’m also thinking the deck’s heads may be dirty or out of alignment. Cleaning isn’t hard. You can use a cleaning tape, or you can do it manually if you know how to open the deck and clean the heads. But, don’t try that unless you know what you’re doing. If you can borrow a deck or camera, try capturing that way as a test. If that works, and your deck still has problems after being cleaned, you probably need to get the deck serviced. Heads and the guides in tape path are mechanical systems and do go out of alignment with use.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.2, Motion 4.0.2, Comp 3.5.2, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.2)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Santiago Acera]

I think, John, you might be in the right track when you mention that the heads of the deck might be dirty. I have been using that deck quite often now for five years and it has never been serviced. The problem for me is that I live in rural Australia, in the middle of nowhere, I don’t have the possibility of borrowing a camera or deck, even to service that deck I’ll have to send it away a few hundred kilometres.

Anyway, I’ll try to find a cleaning cassete and give it a go. If you are right and it works I am going to put an active link of your CreativeCOW.net in a corner of my little internet empire, I feel very grateful for your quick answers and being there. I’ll try the cleaning thing and will get back to you and let you know;-)

(I will put your link in the description of one popular video of one of my YouTube channels: MarginalMedia)