Not sure whether to blame FCP, the tape, or the XH A1 . . .

Yesterday I shot HDV footage of a local Xmass parade in about 30 degree weather.

Today I sat down to capture the tape on FCP 6.0.2 running on my Dual 2 Ghz G5 PowerPC. I was doing log and capture in the normal way and all seemed to be well until about 20min into the tape when playback in the log and capture window began to freeze and then "studder" by which I mean I'd see one frozen frame, time goes by, a second frozen frame and so on. These frames did not look like dropouts . . . just frozen frames.

I decided to stop logging and try to capture the clips I had so far. While the batch capture seemed to go OK, eventually it quit and FCP produced an error message saying no data was coming from the device . . .

Confused, I disconnected the camera from the computer and attempted to play back the tape ( Sony Digital HD tape for HDV). The tape would not play back in the camera. It played back fine yesterday . . .

Tried another tape shot yesterday in the camera. It played fine.

Reconnected the camera to the computer, put the first tape in and attempted the batch capture again . . . now the tape does not play back at all and I have a blue screen in the camera's LCD. When I fast forward the tape the last two digits of the timecode bounce back and forth between two numbers but don't increment. When I push stop an incremented timecode value is displayed. Same thing happens with rewind.

I can understand that a region of timecode on a tape might become corrupted, but don't understand how it could all now be bad if it was playing back in log and capture this morning. If the whole tape is now bad it would suggest that the tape was damaged by capture process somehow . . . so it could be the software, or the camera's response to the software.

Anyone have any ideas about what's going on here?

This is somewhat similar to my experience with Sony HDV tapes.:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=780491&postcount=23

Bw
Sven

After looking more closely at some other posts, I did a camera reset and now that first tape plays back, sort of.

There was a short segment of bars and about 6 minutes of live action shot earlier at the head of the tape. These few minutes play back without any problem (and were captured days ago without any problem).

It is when the tape gets to the parade footage that I attempted to batch capture with FCP that the problems begin. As before the tape will play and then freeze. It will resume playing after a bit and then freeze again, eventually stopping altogether and showing a full blue screen on the LCD.

I note that when the tape stops the "60i" indicator which is displayed next to "HDV" on LCD display DISAPPEARS as if the camera forgets what mode it's in or as if that information is missing from the tape (just like Sven's case). This happens even when I fast forward the tape to a point beyond the last timecode I attempted to capture today. I assume that if it FCP damaged the tape, it couldn't have done so past the point where I was working earlier, so it has to be the tape or the camera . . . but the tape played fine yesterday . . . so I am guessing camera failure.

It's kind of weird. I am now wondering if it could have been related to the cold, but again it played yesterday.

Resetting the camera again allowed me to play the tape again in places I could not play it before the reset. There are, however, still playback freezes frequently, and the "60i" goes away when the freeze happens.

I am now wondering if there might be a bug in the firmware (a bug that's reset when the camera is reset) that is playing a role here.

Hello again.

As I mentioned, I bought 12 Sony tapes, and recorded to six of them before starting capturing. Two of the tapes behaved just like you described (except me shooting in 50i), two had a few dropouts, and two were just fine. (The two tapes that were really bad, were shot on different days.)

At first, it was almost impossible to have them to playback at all, but I repeatedly ran the head cleaning cassette, maybe three times, (3 x 10 sec.), and that helped for a while. (Maybe capturing half the tape.) Then I had to clean again to capture the rest of the tape.

Since you could playback another tape, (like I could), I feel certain that the problem is related to the tape, not the A1.

Try running the head cleaning tape first, then use the FireWire Basic setting, and «Capture Now», (not batch), and see if things get better.

Bw

Sven