[Kyle]

Ben and Graeme,

Wow, those posts have some great information. I had already tried capturing a clip on my external to no avail although I had not tried saving the footage on another part of the hard drive. I was interested to know more about the process of what you meant by “alter the clip linkage.” Do you mean save the same clip in two different drives or areas of the same drive and combine them together on one sequence to see whether it’s a hard drive or software problem? And also you mentioned pre and post roll changes, what are your special presets you mentioned? Is more pre or post roll better to handle timecode breaks or do you want to lessen the time for it to have less of a chance to find a break? Also, I believe IMovieHD worked because of the automatic scene detection breaking each section into individual files and bypassing chance of the breaks from happening. I was told by an audio editor at work that IMovie does not work directly with timecode as FCP does so it doesn’t care that there may be timecode issues ( I believe where Graeme was going). He also mentioned that I could save each section of each tape in Imovie and then import them into FCP as a quick time file and edit it from that although it would be a painfully long process.

Anyway, I tried your idea of turning the option of timcode breaks to wait until after capture to warn and I adjusted the pre and post roll and viola it works!!! No timceode breaks to stop the camera and no freezing of the hard drive or dropped frames on playback!! I’m very surprised that clicking that would solve all of this but so far it’s completely fine, I was able to capture an entire mini-dv tape with no problems and playback with no problems either!!! I’m not sure if I need to now bring it into Cinema Tools if it seems to playback and edit fine but If I get problems on output I guess I can try that but unless I shot it in 24P advanced I thought I wouldn’t need to touch Cinema Tools since FCP4.5 does certain needed pulldown on the fly? Anyway, it seems to be working fine by keeping a standard 29.97 timeline, clicking warn on dropped frames after capture and changing the pre-post roll , although I guess I should have subtracted the pre/post roll and not extended them but no matter it works fine…all that by clicking an icon telling you when to warn you about something….amazing!!
I did have it set to either stop capturing or to start a new clip but it always had problems until now!!! I guess eventually I would have tried that too. Thanks for all your help everyone and if I have anymore questions I know who to turn to now.

Sincerely,

Kyle

[Kyle]

Let me reply to myself again,

I rented the camera I shot the footage on and yes it still has the timecode breaks at the same time as before, no big deal. I then decide to make a new sequence based on the 24P advanced mode of the DVX100A. Without rendering it seemed great, no clicking of the hard drive no dropped frames, until I rendered and same old problems!!! It seemed to work better with drop frame turned off???? and the sequence set to standard video which is all that’s needed if you shoot in 24p normal, unfortunately I don’t remember what preset I shot on but no matter what settings I use in FCPHD it doesn’t seem to help. So, as a last result I decided to try and import into IMovie HD just to see, upon digitizing and not playback (as in FCPHD) I hear the hard drive click and see the video freeze. Remarkably, upon playback there are no dropped frames and the hard drive does not lock up and everything seems fine….ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!!!! IMovie can figure this out but FCP can’t???????? I haven’t gone further into this but this seems like a quick fix to at least get the raw footage out before the holidays, which is my goal. Anybody out there who has had similar success with Imovie being less finicky or picky than FCP when it comes to digitzing and/or playback????? It seems the camera just recorded with glitches or the tape stock was bad because no setting I come up with on FCP helps although somehow Imovie has no problem with it and it has kept everything in sync!

Perplexed

[Kyle]

Thanks I might try that,

But, I wanted to know any and everyones ideas on some specific problems now that I’ve tried a few things: I originally digitized the footage with someone elses DVX100 other than the one I shot it on. After everyhing, I re-formatted my drives and started over, this time digitizing with a nice consumer Panasonic DV camera (and it was recorded with Panasonic stock). The footage seems to freeze the hard drive now in different spots than it did when I initially captured it and I’m having a hard time even getting the client (luckily just my brother’s friends…although it is their wedding) a rough edit of everything to DVD. It seems to me that if I try and keep capturing the same spots over and over I might be able to get a “good capture” once in a while, although I can’t feasibly do this with 4 hrs. of footage though. I have tried what FC and other sources tell you to do as a troubleshooter such as: lowering real time audio tracks, closing open sequences, not having the viewer, canvas windows overlapping, turning off journaling, making sure sequence and capture setting are for the same and correct frame rate, lowering real time rendering to safe etc. etc.

Do you ( or anyone) think it’s the camera having a bad alignment that only occasionally causes dropped frames althought it does it in both the same spot every time along with new spots occasionally Or is there some function of FCP that is causing this or could it just be a capture problem, ie a bad connection between the firewire cable and computer? Like I said before it plays back on the camera just fine and it always shows 29 frames before it goes back to zero and not 24. I still haven’t figured out why the camera “sees” a “timecode break” and stops digitizing when there is no apparent zeroing of the timecode, no stutter in the video and or timecode…it always seems to be smooth although most of the breaks are between shots, meaning going from the camera being turned off to on or from standby to on. I’m trying to get the camera to re-rent it to see if it’s a camera issue and I’ll try and see if I can get some help from work from a FCP editor as well. Does anyone know if Apple has any free technical support for their software or can you only talk to someone for their $800 Professional Video support fee????

Thank you all

[Kyle]

If the re-renting the camera does not help do you think changing the pulldown on the sequence and upon capture may help?? ie 3:2 or 2:3???

[Kyle]

Yeah I thought this would have been a problem from the beginning too but, just by looking at the footage it did not look like 24P which is why I shot it on that camera. Upon looking at the logging info and watching the timceode it is 29.97 so somehow that little dial did not stick on the f6 setting to shoot 24p. So I’ve used a DVX to digitize originally and it didn’t work any better than my consumer DV camera. So, I’m not sure what the problem is exactly other than a problem with the recording? I originally set up my sequence for 24p but I then realized it did not shoot that way. I guess I could try a pulldown but the footage actually is 29.97 so I wouldn’t think that would do anything!

Thanks

[Kyle]

Thanks,

I am re-digitizing now after a re-formating of the drive. I am still getting “timecode breaks” where the camera will stop and I will continue on although the sync was still fine. However, the last section of video I digitized loses sync a few minutes in and now some of the other footage is now not playing back ie freezing playback and the drop frame error. To ensure this wasn’t my hard drive failing, I pulled in some other projects and they played back fine and are now stored on this hard drive although they were not digitized on this drive. I will try and digitize some random footage in and see if it causes problems.

Other than that I have to point at the source which would be the DVX100A I shot it on and see if I can digitize with the camera it was shot on, maybe it could solve my problems, otherwise it seems like it was recorded with issues. The weird thing is that the tape plays back just fine and at no time does the timecode break or reset although the computer sees breaks and that’s when it’s stops digitizing. Any thing more I can puzzle you guys with????

[Kyle]

Let me reply to myself,

I thought on the last message it read no, reformating is neccessary but the way I read it now is, no reformating is neccessary. (damn commas!) So, after waiting all day for the drive to erase itself which it never completed,
I escaped out of it and found it had only erased 1GB in about 5 hours! I then re-tried your changing it to journaling and voula it worked finally but it did erase all prior info. Let’s hope this helps the problem otherwise it’s a camera issue I suppose.

Thanks for everything

[Kyle]

Thanks,

I tried changing the drive journaling off but it seems to always revert back to journaling once I escape out of it.
I’m using 10.39 OSX, is there a way to save the changes?

Thanks

Kyle

[Kyle]

Well I for sure won’t drink from that cup, I must look for one made by a carpenter…I hope I got your reference right!! Anyway, so basically I have to reformat my drive and start over???

Thanks a bunch

Kyle

[Kyle]

I’m using a brand new internal OEM Seagate 300GB, I don’t recall the model #. Anyway, one thing I did do is format it with extended journaling turned on. I wasn’t aware this should only be used for a startup disk until after the process began and I didn’t think I could stop it in any way. I asked an audio editor at work and he said that might actually be a bit better that it’s turned so as to help with organization etc. and it shouldn’t cause a problem but I’m beginning to wonder. I did not add a second partition or anything else and this project is the only thing on the drive. I tried bringing in some footage to FC Express and it did the same thing there. I have not tried capturing a few minutes to my external drive yet to see if that helps it. If it does I guess that would answer my question. Hope this helps.

Thanks

Kyle