[Patrick Bronte]

thanks everyone,

i’m no pro like you guys which begs the question:
what would be the best way to dub an HDV 1080i mini DV tape? i only have the one camera? what extra equipment would i need?
i need to be able to do it on the cheap…..

[Patrick Bronte]

Cheers Ed,

thank you so much for offering to help. here goes…

my problem is FCPs problems with timecode breaks and preroll points. i’m an oral historian with a basic knowledge of online editing and have 100s of hours worth of DV and HDV media. Its talking heads of war veterans. The tape length i use range from 1hr to 135 minutes. i really just want to use a program to start capturing without stopping all the time due to time breaks etc. i’m far more fimiliar with the capturing process in Avid but what i am trying find out is: i would like to capture in Avid then bring over that media to be edited in Final Cut Suite without loosing any image/sound quality or corupting files in anyway.

When i try to capture in FCP and a TC Break occurs it stops right there unless i set it to start capture again from TC Break. But the problem is that FCP requires a 5-6 second preroll. I started to learn editing with Avid Xpress HD 5 and if there was a TC Break during capture it would still continue capturing and tell you at the end and gave you the choice to either keep or discard. At least 99% of what i do capture [that does have TC breaks is still usable]so i would keep it then use it.

FCPs 5-6 second preroll really blows this out because i cant set the camera and leave it or i miss 5-6 seconds due to FCPs preroll.

what do you think i should do….???

[Patrick Bronte]

Thank You so much Brad!!!

[Patrick Bronte]

Thanks David,

your anwser makes more sense….the apple forum all agreed journaled is the way to go.

Cheers Mate

[Patrick Bronte]

Thanks Carl. Thats good advice.

[Patrick Bronte]

Thats oakmozart! Its a hard job doing it all yourself, especially being so disabled but you cant let it slow you down. Your advice is really appreciated. Its really hard over here in New Zealand to find good help/advice/teachers when your just a little fish starting out on your own. It may appear that this little country has a “booming” film industry with lots of people working within it but it is still hard to be taken seriously.
With the help of caregivers, I’ve interviewed over 140 war veterans over approximately 400 hours of DV. Despite all the encouragement from our Cultural and Heritage department to collect such material, they still don’t want to help me. If I could move my arms I would have torn all my hair out. So I say bugger them and keep recording new interviews with our veterans. This is my main focus and the doco comes a very close second.

I really hope you don’t mind helping me sort out a few things? I can use DV Xpress so I’ve decided its best to upgrade to Xpress Pro 5 because the interface is similar to DV Xpress which, will allow me to get into it without a whole heap of extra stuff to learn. And (as your advice recommended) I will be working with other people [for sound and effects] and I will need to have the project go through an online edit. Liquid may be something to get once I’ve mastered.

I’ve just blown all my savings to get some decent hardware for the whole editing and DVD burning process. I bought a new laptop with a fair bit of grunt (I still need to get the RAM up to 1.5G) and a new desktop that’s not to bad (I need to upgrade the RAM from 1 to 2G). The plan is to set up the desktop along with an old DV Cam deck to create an editing suite/workstation dedicated to the editing process and burning DVD copies of the interviews to the respective families and use the laptop for everything else while still having the ability to use Avid to edit stuff while on the road etc. These two machines will no doubt need some additional hardware to get things running smoothly but because I’m so ignorant I’m not sure what?!! I’ve search help files etc from the Avid website but it would really help if someone just told me straight.

So far I’ve tried loading Xpress Pro onto the laptop but I get the error message:
Exception: ADM_DSOUND_MIXER_OPEN_ERROR
turning up and killing it. I don’t get this because my old laptop that I bought three years ago ran Xpress Pro 4 no problems. It was a 2GHz Toshiba with 512MB of RAM. Although my new laptop is only a 1.8GHz it is a new generation “mother board” that is supposed to be just as, if not faster than the old 2GHz Toshiba Laptops. The RAM I have is also supposed to be faster.

Here I’ve listed all the hardware I’ve got to create my “own ULTIMATE editing suite”. Can you please tell me what else I need to purchase to get both my laptop and desktop up to standard to run Xpress Pro 5.

The specs for the laptop are:

Toshiba Tecra Series – Intel Centrino Duo
MSATOTOAIV10
Genuine Intel[R] CPU
T2400 @ 1.83GHz
1.83 GHz, 521MB of RAM – I have more RAM coming to get it up to 1.5G
Graphics by ATI
Sound Device: Realtek High Definition Audio

The desktops specs are:
HP DX7200
P4 630, 3GHz
1G RAM – I have more RAM coming bring it up to 2G
XP Pro
Graphics: Intel 945G, 128 Dedicated.
Sound Card:

The DV Cam is a Sony DSR-11 with Firewire connections. We use PAL over here.

So apart from the extra RAM what else do I need? This is really getting to me because I need to get into it. DV Xpress was great, just plug in the dongle and away you go. That was on my old laptop which feel off my knee and died. Insurance did help with the replacement but 3.5 isn’t compatible with this new laptop, it comes up with an error message going on about how the audio wont work. This proved to be true. So I really have no option other than upgrading.
My hair may still be in place because I cant pull it out but my finger nails are getting a beating.
Your help would be extremely appreciated.
Best Regards,
Patrick.