I have been tearing my hair out for the past couple days. Been trying to capture some video from my last show. Tried batch capture and capture now, but dropped frames and not always in the same place. Restarted FCP, restarted my computer, trashed the preferences...nothing works. Any ideas?
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Video capturing mystery
Wed, March 5, 2008 - 12:28 PMYup. We need more info. -
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Re: Video capturing mystery
Wed, March 5, 2008 - 12:59 PMrunning FCP 4.1.1 on 10.4.11 OsX 1.67 Ghz Power PC G4 2 GB ddr Ram. 3 external OWC drives, daisy chained, the third one is the scratch disk. Trashing the preferences worked before, but not any more -
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Re: Video capturing mystery
Wed, March 5, 2008 - 1:39 PMA few tricks:
1) Capture directly to your internal hard drive. FCP sometimes doesn't like daisy-chained drives. Just move the footage once its captured. (Is the camera plugged directly into the computer or connected through the external drive? See below.)
2) Capture with iMovie -- it won't cause as many timecode breaks. Export with advanced settings to proper DV output.
3) I assume you're capturing with the same camera you shot the footage with. If not, do this.
Also, if your timecode breaks are never in the same place, then arguably with two captures you're going to have all of your footage -- that's all that matters. You can stitch it together in your timeline.
If nothing else works, then:
4) Upgrade FCP! At least to version 5.0. I have almost exactly the same system you do on my laptop, and never have capture problems with FCP 5.0.4.
I once had a similar problem you did -- as I was daisy-chaining my camera THROUGH the external drive, because my laptop only has the one firewire port and the drive has two, and I wanted to capture to the external drive. It didn't work. Now I always capture to the internal drive then move the footage to an external drive. -
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Re: Video capturing mystery
Wed, March 5, 2008 - 2:16 PMiMovie capture worked. No breaks. To get the clip from iMovie...use the "share" function? -
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Re: Video capturing mystery
Wed, March 5, 2008 - 9:06 PMYes, share is correct. But make sure you use the custom or advanced export setting so that you can set the parameters yourself. (I forget what it's called right now.) -
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Re: Video capturing mystery
Wed, March 5, 2008 - 11:12 PMiMovie works but the root of the problem is probably using a different camera to upload than was used to capture. Both are Sonys but still different cameras.
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Re: Video capturing mystery
Mon, March 10, 2008 - 9:16 AMI was daisy chaining the same was as you were. Now have the correct camera directly into my laptop. But still time code breaks. iMovie works but that is kinda tedious. Guess I will try the upgrade.
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Re: Video capturing mystery
Wed, March 5, 2008 - 5:13 PMI've had a similar problem before, and it turned out the camera I was using to capture needed some regular maintenance. Also, I'm sure most of you know, mixing Sony and Panasonic tapes often causes drop frames. -
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Mystery continues...
Mon, March 10, 2008 - 4:41 PMUsing the original camera did not work...and the Panasonic tapes on the Sony Camera did not work either...so tried another tape of stuff recorded on my camera and used it to upload footage directly into laptop and through daisychained hardrives into laptop and both worked. So now to try original camera again...
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Re: Video capturing mystery
Sat, April 5, 2008 - 1:13 AMInstead of using batch capture or capture now, in the viewer, set an in point at the beginning of the footage and an out point at the end. Now, use the clip button and capture your media as one big clip. Using the clip function (specially if you log and capture small clips one at the time) instead of batch or now buttons is always a more reliable way of capturing. -
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Re: Video capturing mystery
Sat, April 5, 2008 - 1:31 AMP.S. One should always remember never to use the words always and never. -
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Re: Video capturing mystery
Sat, April 5, 2008 - 8:52 AMYou have to upgrade. It's a problem with older FCP (actually QT) and the newer OSX. Apple acknowledged it a while back. Wish I count find the link.
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Re: Video capturing mystery
Sat, April 5, 2008 - 4:05 PMYeah, regarding your use of the word "always" ^_^ -- I regularly capture entire HD tapes using the Capture Now function, and get whole tapes without problems. There are occasional breaks in footage, but that's often because of dirty play heads on the capture deck.
I use FCP 5.1.4, BTW.
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