OK I have been looking through the archives using the search fuction for the last hour and I haven't found it but I know I'm not alone.

I captured a tape last night on my way to bed and when I woke up it was 361 clips. When I re-captured it, I got the 4 or 5 clips I expected.

Well I'm down to the last tape from yesterday's shoot and I have captured it three times and each time I get a different number of clips and I know there should only be two. I recorded 30 seconds of bars and one 40 minute scene and that was it.

I'm using Vegas 8c and a Canon XH-A1. My date and time on the camera are set (and were yesterday). Any ideas?

I've finally had it and I think I'll just turn scene detection off and capture the tape at once, for now, but I'd really like to have a clip per scene.

Possibly related to tape dropouts?

uh, I guess I'll hit the search feature again. I've read a lot about "oh, no, dropouts" but I have no idea what they are, how to prevent them, how to detect them, or even if I have them on clips that are in my timelines.

Sorry, didn't mean to be overly mysterious. Properly, "tape dropouts". They can be caused by bad tape, damaged tape, dirty tape, dirty heads, heads with magnetic oxide deposits on them, other deposits or dirt in the tape path that tends to keep the tape from having full contact with the heads.

As camcorder users there isn't much we can do, other than run a cleaning tape through when we have problems. Follow the instructions on the cleaning tape.

A repair tech can do a more thorough cleaning.

However, dropouts are just a strong possibility when you find more clips than you expected. You might capture the whole tape without scene detection and see if Vegas reports dropped frames when the capture completes.

This is more of a problem with HDV than it used to be with DV. One bad frame was just one bad frame with DV, but with the group-of-pictures approach in the HDV codec, one bad frame takes out 15 frames (the whole group).

I recaptured it to one big clip, I forgot to check the status bar on the capture screen to see if it reported dropouts, but, I set "fail on drop frames" on and I set "when capture fails, stop batch capture".

I'll find out in the next day or so if the other tapes also got random clips, but, now I suspect this has been a problem all along. I had another shoot where I thought somebody bumped a pause button right after slating the shot but my guess is now that it was a capture error.

I use an FX1 and have been having somewhat the same problem. But what I noticed was that when I was capturing and would watch the LCD on the camera that occasionally the picture would freeze for a short time including the time code then it would jump ahead.

In my capture program I would notice that I would have a new scene at that point when I know the camera was not paused. I have been trying to figure out is it was a drop out problem or a camera problem (though I guess they can be one and the same.) Actually I was trying to figure out if it was a tape problem (I have used Sony Premium exclusively) or a camera mechanical issue. Have not been able to figure out how to do that yet. If its a tape drop out problem may have to go to tapeless, if its a camera problem may have to (gasp) send it to Sony for repair.

Dave & Terry, are you guys using new tapes each time or are they used ones?

I'm using new tapes, the Sony HD ones that go for around $9 a pop.

The camera is new and has less than 20 hours on it.

I recaptured a tape this afternoon while I was doing other things, with scene detection off, and it Vegas *still* gave me two clips. I have my screen saver set for 90 minutes so it shouldn't be that either.

I recaptured a tape this afternoon while I was doing other things, with scene detection off...

If "other things" means things like surfing the net, that could be your problem.
My personal rule is that when a tape is being captured, nothing else is happening on the computer.
This means disconnect from the net and make sure other resource-hungry apps such as anti-virus aren't running in the background ( as some like to do).

Dave & Terry, are you guys using new tapes each time or are they used ones?

Mike,
Once with a new tape, once with a once used tape. I have captured a lot of footage with the cam in SD with no problems, but they are MUCH harder to see when not dealing with the GOP system.

Yeah I only use the computer for capture when I'm capturing, close down other apps etc.

I am now getting more than one clip EVEN IF I turn off HD scene detection. Tomorrow I go on a string of shoots that we either get on tape, or, it will be a whole year before I can try again. I seriously hope we are getting proper data on the tapes.

Does anybody still black tapes like they used to do on VHS? What's the procedure, just leave the lens cap on and record the whole tape?

Interestingly, I've had this issue as well but I haven't tracked down the source of the issue as yet.

After my Brit Panto in France shoot, I captured the 7 tapes to disc, with scene detection, no problem. However, following VISTA managing to "update" my nVidia RAID drivers to the KNOWN broken drivers, somehow - despite my having disabled auto-update - and losing the captures following corruption of the drives, I had to recapture the tapes. This time, I captured them to my G-Tech external RAID.

The first 3 or 4 tapes captured fine (using NeoScene) but the next one ended up at 485 scenes and still counting when I came back to it (there was only one scene on it because it was continuous shoot). Bizarre, I thought, it captured fine the first time...

Rewound the tape and it started then same sillyness again, so I cancelled the capture. I knew wasn't the tape or camera (Z5) as it had previously captured fine. Hmm.... OK then, try a different tape... Same issue... Q£"$^%$^QERY RIGHT THEN! $%%$% VISTA!

Reboot system and start again! Start capture - sit and watch.... really boring this watching the progress counter... Oh, look! The whole tape has been captured fine! Wierd! OK.. Let's do the next one... Oh look! That one's captured fine too! OK. Next! WTF! Now this one's going weird - OK, I know it does have scenes (about 12 if I remember correctly - but not 364!). This is some crazy £$%$£%£$%!

OK. Reboot. Again! Re-capture... Hmmm... That one is fine again. Then the rest were also fine.

My conclusion? It's got absolutely nothing to do with the tape, camera or the phase of the moon and EVERYTHING to do with VISTA'S housekeeping system or something! This is where VISTA really does my head in sometimes!

Never had any of this sort of s**t on W2K, XP or Linux (Ubuntu).

Roll-on W8 - apparently!

Yeah my Vista box blows. I set up a capture box yesterday and I'm trying XP to see what I can do. Still with scene detection off though.

Surprisingly, I'm capturing HD on a box with an 800 MHz processor and 1/2 gig of ram. And I'm having zero issues. Obviously it's not an edit box, but I was literally going to throw this thing in the trash last week but I'm so glad I didn't. Now I can screw around on one computer while capturing on the other :D

I am going to look closely at some of the clip cuts this afternoon. I really don't care how many clips I get in the long run as long as I have smooth frame by frame transition.

Unfortunately I am finding that I lose 15-30 frames each time it happens. I'm not at all sure that mine is a Vista problem as I can see the stoppages on the Cam LCD when I play the tape back and I had it happen on an 32 bitXP machine also. Maybe the solution is going to be getting a Sony HVRMRC1 to record to with my FX1. What a pain in the pocketbook.

Dave, just a newbie here, but do you have "enable scene detection on" ???

opps, just read that you did. Did you have any luck turning it off?

OK, I have almost certainly boiled this problem down to my computer and capturing in HD.

I get no errors, no warnings, but the end product comes out with what looks like dropped frames to me (Vegas reported none, but)... 1/2 frames, etc.

I am *not* getting away with capturing on the 800 Mhz box it seems.

I am new to this, but I am having a hard time believing that the software will go through all the paces and not warn or produce any errors, yet produce erroneous video clips.

The reason I think it is related to computing power is because on the 800 Mhz box, I captured by turning my Xh A1 to SD down-convert and captured one of the tapes I have been having consistent problems with in SD. Turning scene detection off I got one large .AVI clip and I have examined frames in that clip that are bad in the HD capture and they are fine.

So now I am off to find the portion of this site to figure out how I get to spend another $1000 I wasn't planning on just so I can capture video. It seems my dual core 2.4GHz/4GB Ram 32 bit Vista won't do it either so I need a bigger box. I think. I guarantee that whatever box I buy will be returned to the store the next day if it won't capture one large .mt2 file from my HD source.

umm, I use vegas daily as my sole editing app. I USED to use tapes, and sometimes it would come in one big clip. some times not. Its a mixed bag, thats the nature of tapes, and thats why I don't use them anymore. Instead of blaming VISTA for everything, try using it to capacity. Dave, your 2.4GHz box is plenty. As I said, all in how you use it, I have my laptop tweaked and running vista 32, and it works fine with vegas 8.0C. Here are a few tips for the best results. (Try 5 first)

*my lap top is Turion TL-56 (1.8GHz X2) with 2GB of RAM, and it works fine. I used the XH-A1 until it was lost in the flood.

1) Turn off the Aero interface, it hogs RAM and slows response time. Go to the classic interface.

2) increase the size of your page file. (go to Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings (in the left hand Payne) >Performance. Change it from system managed to custom size. If you can put the page file on a drive that isn't used when editing or importing then you will get the best results. In a crunch, the C drive will work just fine. You need to use the Gamers keystone. In otherwords, if you are running 4GB of RAM, you want your page file to be 2.5x that size (so 10GB). Restart the computer.

3) In your capture settings turn off scene detection, and anything that allows for failure. (i.e. fail on loss of focus, etc.) The only things I have checked are "simulate pixel aspect ratio" and "show video when FF or Rew". Set your RAM buffer for 25% to be safe.

4) When importing, it is often helpful to dedicate 1 core to importing if you plan to do anything else while its importing, like editing for example. (its possible)

5) This one is perhaps the easiest to try if you haven't already. If you are running a 64 bit system on a 64 bit core (likely with 4GB of RAM) then try vegas 8.1 It seems to fair MUCH better on the capture side of things. For editing, I get problems, but I think that's the program not Vista.

Try getting the VISTA SP2 RC (google it) and turn off all unnecessary programs. KEEP YOUR MACHINE CLEAN and it will treat you well. I recommend System Mechanic, just make sure you tweak the auto care settings to not run while you work.


* Current Rig - Custom Build AMD Phenom 9950 Quad Core 2.6GHz 4GB of RAM and 6TB of storage. ALL drives (including C) are on E-SATA for modularity. Blu-Ray Burner Running Vista Ultimate 64. Running Vegas 8.0C and Vegas 8.1 along with DVD Architect 5.

Joe, I wasn't sure whether to continue this discussion off-line or here, but, I'll add the following and then I'll try to capture again.

1) I had no idea what you meant about Aero so I googled it... do you turn it off by changing the theme? I assume it is not called Aero, but "Windows Vista" and I want to change it to "Windows Classic"

2) page file done.

3) I turned off the "fail on loss of focus" or whatever because one time during capture I got a popup from Apple asking if I wanted to update iTunes & QuickTime and of course my capture was aborted... However, I do have "fail on drop frames" and "when capture fails, stop batch capture" checked in addition to the ones you have checked.

4) this must be some sort of computer hanky panky I don't understand: dedicating a core to importing. I assume you mean to capturing, and, I don't know how to try it.

5) My box is a 32 bit box. It came with 2GB of ram but I tried 4GB because I was tired of running out of handles to open new windows (seems to be some sort of bug with IE tabbed browsing)... anyway, it didn't solve the problem.


So besides my questions above (? turn off aero, ? dedicate one core) I will go work on making sure I have the service pack for Vista and look into this System Mechanic thing.

I will note that while capturing, I don't even touch the computer. I disable the screen saver and just let it rip. As far as drives, I have a single drive in the box that the OS/apps/capture goes to. I know that's far from ideal (and learning more about it as I read through these forums). I am currently capturing to my c: drive and then moving the clips to a USB2 drive (Maxtor One Touch III 2TB Raid 0). After dropping the clips on a timeline and building peaks, of course. I got the impression that building peaks took longer if I had to do it from the Maxtor but this last time I did it all local and didn't seem to matter.

Now it seems to me after doing some reading that I could probably benefit from the following drive setups:

c: - os, program files, os page file
eSata drive for capturing video to
eSata drive for Vegas scratch disk
eSata -OR- my current USB2 drive for simply backing up my c: and capture disks

However, if I wanted to try to do this again to resolve my issues, does anybody know if I could/should try to capture from the camera straight to the USB2 drive? I wasn't sure if the performance would be fast enough, but, since the camera is coming in firewire and the drive is plugged in as USB (it can also go FireWire 400 or 800 but I figured if I used the F-400 it would use the same bus as the camera and possibly choke; i have no F-800 interface card at this time), it might work? While not being the ideal separation, it would at least separate the OS and page file from the file writes of the capture process.

...does anybody know if I could/should try to capture from the camera straight to the USB2 drive? I wasn't sure if the performance would be fast enough...
Yes. USB2 is fast enough to cap DV or HDV. I've done both, so have many people. This should offer better performance than capturing to your c drive.

Aero is the fancy windows theme for vista with all the transparent glass and all that fun crap. When you switch to classic, it turns it off. Also under the performance tab (see page file) there is a visual effects option, change the radio button to "best for my computer". Core dedication is only if you want to capture and do something else at the same time. If your doing nothing else, you can leave it as it is, but I find one core dedicated tends to yield better results. You do this from the task manager, select the vegas instance you are running, right click>go to process. It will highlight Vegas8.0* Right click> Set affinity A box will pop up showing 2 cores, leave the one you want to use check marked. Doesn't matter which. This will set 1 CPU core for misc. crap, and leave one just for capture.

Also, Rule 1 about capture and edit...NEVER capture or edit from your C drive unless you have too. Its already pushing its read/writes just running. Any external will work since fire wire is on its own BUS. You should make sure you have your drives formatted to NTFS. Also, as house keeping, depending on how active you are, defrag and reformat often. I defrag about 1-2 times a month, and if my disk speeds are down, I reformat.

Solution to your IE problem...use firefox. Mozilla.org - Home of the Mozilla Project (http://www.mozilla.org)

With building peaks, in your preference menu, select "8-bit peaks" and "Build peaks for visible events only" and it will cut your time down quite a bit on peak building. Also, if you don't use the Dynamic RAM preview, in preferences under the video tab, set your DRAM buffer to 0 (default is 128). This will free up some extra memory.

The setup you have now is fine.

BTW, good call on not using the fire wire bus for a HDD and camera, it would most likely choke.

As for your RAM, a 32-bit OS only recognizes up to 3GB of RAM. Anything above that needs 64 bit software. You can try getting a flash drive and using ready boost, 4GB is max.

These tips won't make your editing box the prettiest, but it will coax everything out of her she can give. Ready boost memory isn't RAM, but it can free up a bit of space.

*The way to tell if its tape, or import process, green. When I was reconstructing tapes from a flood, I noticed any time I got dropout because of tapes, I would get green interference most often. Also, stuttering, and pixelation. If you see none of that...its not your tapes, or your camera heads.