[Shiloh Heyman]

6 hours =6 tapes. Some better, Some worse. All similar results. = Crap camera or crap brand of tape.

[Shiloh Heyman]

Make sure that your camera is in VTR mode. Verify that FCP’s device controle is set properly. In the final cut pro menu choose Audio/Video Settings. Click the device control presets tab. For HDV in FCP6 select HDV Firewire, HDV Firewire Basic or HDV Firewire Basic NDF. In FCP5 you may have to choose Firewire or Firewire Basic. In capture tab select HDV.

Also simply selecting the proper easy setup should give you the appropriate device control and capture preset, but it never hurts to check. Remember that easy setup should be done before the project is created. Easy setup will not change an existing project or sequence. A new one must be created after easy setup.

Please post your results.

Shiloh

[Shiloh Heyman]

System drive is stock 250GB western digital. Scratch disc is the WD 500GB with 200GB Free Space, described previously (Internal SATA. Not USB or Firewire).

However when I use to do allot of audio recording (on my G4 with OS X) I would have to use a separate partition on my system drive (I only had one drive at the time) for recording audio only. Before every recording session I would delete every thing on the partition, empty the trash and restart. If I didn’t follow this procedure I would get write errors and Bias Peak Pro would stop recording(I don’t care what apple says their hard drives get fragmented just like windows, and because they say that they don’t need to be de-fragmented, It seems there aren’t any methods to de-fragment an OS X hard drive apart from the for-mentioned method). So I guess the best method would be to start with an empty drive (what a pain) for video capture as well.

Back to my current problem. Some of the dropouts are definitely errors on the tape that cannot be recaptured properly and sometimes a couple frames wont even play back from tape properly under close inspection. However some can be recaptured with a second pass as for-mentioned. My cheap old DV camera with the cheapest and sometimes reused tapes has never even given me one of these problems after years of use. My brand new $3,500.00 camera with high end tapes = Un-acceptable performance in its most basic function, recording video to tape. I hope that someone can feel my frustration and share a resolution before I try to administer a HX A1 enema to Canon or the same to Panasonic with their “Master Quality” tapes.

My next logical step in the troubleshooting process would be to try the cheep brands of tape I use to use with my old camera but I am still concerned about the horror stories I’ve heard, about clogged tape heads from switching tape brands with different lubricants. Does anyone have any input on this subject? What brands of tape use what type of lube, and which ones can be safely switched between?

Thanks.

Shiloh

Mac Pro 2.66, 3G Ram, X 1900-XT, Kona LHe, FCP6

[Shiloh Heyman]

Hi Hugh,

I am not much for reading manuals, but you can access FCP6’s manual from the help menu at the top of your screen with FCP active. I generally only use it in conjunction with it’s search feature as a quick reference.

I have found lynda.com to be an invaluable resource, and is the way I learned final cut 5. I recently switched to FCP 6 which functions mostly the same. Lynda.com offers video tutorials taught by industry pros who show you step by step how to use the program and explain the features in human terminology. You can subscribe for a modest monthly fee and access all the tutorials online or purchase specific titles.

Good luck.

Shiloh

[Shiloh Heyman]

Internal 500G SATA 3.0 Western digital 7200 RPM 16MB buffer. Have had similar reults capturing to an external USB 2.0 IDE enclosure with a 400G 7200 RPM 16MB buffer. If the drive were to blame it would not explain the sections of tape that cannot be recaptured after multiple attempts, However most sections can be succesfully recaptured on the 1st attempt wich is a big pain. Also I have tried capturing full tapes using “capture now” as well as logging and capturing sections. Both give dropped frames at times.

Thanks.

Shiloh

Mac Pro 2.66, 3G Ram, X 1900-XT, Kona LHe, FCP6

[Shiloh Heyman]

Dear Tom.

I was under the impresseion that Mark>Audio>Show Peaks only worked within a clip and not a eddited sequence of clips. If it is possible to mark all the peaked audio in a sequence, can you please tell in detail all of the steps in this process? Everytime I try, the function is greyed out unless i use it on a single clip in the viewer.

Thanks

Shiloh

[Shiloh Heyman]

I just wanted to say thanks for all the replies.

I got much better results from using the 7 GOP setting but I was wondering if this setting could adversly affect the playback compatibility for set top players?
I need to burn a disc for a replication house to make a glass master for commercial distribution.

Thanks again for discussing a subject that I’m sure has been beaten to death.

Shiloh

[Shiloh Heyman]

Thanks again David

Have a great weekend.

Shiloh

[Shiloh Heyman]

Hi David,

Thank for replying.

I neglected to mention that I eddited and rendered from a ProRes HQ timeline and exported using compressor. there are Massive amounts of artifacts even when no text or graphics are present.

Do you feel that an uncompressed timeline would yield better results?

Is it a bad idea to export using compressor?

I have gotten decent results using the 90min best qual preset but it would be nice to be able to fit the film on a DVD-5. I have never authored a DVD-9 and I am unsure about the playback compatability of a 9 from DVDSP or if its even possible.

I was also wondering if software encoding is capable of producing studio quality. Maybe, but I’m realy hopping not to have to, I sould look for a hardware encoding service?

Thank You for taking the time to answer my questions.

Shiloh

[Shiloh Heyman]

yes DV.