All I want to do is learn how to capture all that is on a tape from my XL2. I don't want to mess with timecodes or scenes. I just want to play the whole tape and record the whole thing.

1. I go to Log & Capture and the window comes up.

2. I press "play" on the L&C window, and my video starts playing the tape in my XL2, I can watch the video (no sound for some reason though)

No problems thus far except no sound. But...

3. When I click the "Capture now" button, the video freezes and it says at the bottom "Locating timecode break". After a while it says "capturing clip -cueing source material". Then the little error box pop up and says "This operation could not be completed as there is no video"


Any ideas on what to do? I did not think it should be this difficult to just press plan and record.

The reason that there is no sound is that FC expects you to monitor the sound from the deck/camera. If you want to listen, hook up your headphones to the XL2 and enjoy.

Have you been successful at transferring footage before? Using Capture Now or any other way?

As for the timecode break message, there could be a couple of reasons. When you recorded the tape did you stop and play back things and then start recording again? Sometimes this will lead to a timecode break if there is a little gap of blank tape between shots.

Also, it could be a computer speed issue. Probably not on the CPU side, but maybe having two devices on your firewire bus. Do you have an external FW harddrive that you are capturing to?

These are some things to consider. I'm not the most tech savvy on the board, so maybe some one else will lend a hand. One thing that I've have taken to with digitizing footage when I use capture now is that I hit the Capture Now button when no video is playing. I give the system a minute to allocate disk space and such, and once it's done all that (usually just a few seconds) I'll start my XL2 playing from the camera. It's been a while since I started digitizing this way, and I don't remember the exact cause, but your issue sounds familiar.

Maybe give this a shot and see if it works...

HTH...

Kevin

I have only captured one tape before and I don't remeber how I did it. I remeber having problems and I kind got it captured by accident some how. I am trying that tape, and it's not working either. Still testing..

Also another thing, in my Log and capture window the preview is "disabled" it just shows color bars and it says "Preview Disabled". When I hit "play", a secondary "Pop-up" window come up and actually plays the video off my camera, not the original Log and Capture window. Im not sure what thats about either.

Ok, problem solved, but there still seems to be a problem.

I had my scratch disk set to an exteral drive, and I could not "capture now". I changed my scratch disk to my internal drive. Now it works.

Anyone know of a reason why this might be doing this and what I can do about it?

If your external drive is firewire then is is probably a confict issue there. If you get another firewire card for your computer it should fix the issue. Basically, the firewire bus is too busy to handle reading the video and writing the video at the same time. That is, if your extermal drive is a firewire.

If your external drive isn't firewire, then I'll bow out and let somebody else take over...

Hope this helps...

Kevin

It is a firewire drive. Thanks.

Just a thought... If your drive has another interface like USB 2.0 or FW800, you might try using a different connection to your drive and see if that works. I use my built in FW Controller with my XL2 and an external Firewire drive, but I connect the drive via FW800, not FW400 (the connection you're most likely using now - square on 3 sides and rounded on the fourth). It seems to work fine, I know it would run faster if I had a dedicated FW Controller for the drive, but so far so good.

So maybe give another cable a try before sinking the money into a card, if your drive has the other interfaces...

HTH...

Hey guys.

I got an editing gig. I can view the footage off both a deck and a cam. But FCP wont log it.

Its HD footage recorded onto Mini DV's (Not HD DVs though). I assume thats the problem. I've tried several different decks, HD cameras, even tried to get answers from Adwar (they're pretty clueless). Only thing I havent tried is getting it through a PC, which windows users are telling me works fine for them.


Something I'm missing? Is it really just cuz the HD footage was taped onto a SD dv? and if so, anyway around it?

Thanks.