First I'm still a neophyte regarding NLE and Apple. I've got a G5 2.0 with 1.5 GB Ram with an external hard drive. Here's my problem. I'm experiencing dropped frames when capturing. I've tried FCE and then iMovie with no success.

Following the direction in previous posts, I changed the preference regarding "dropped frames"..... I also might add that a friend shot the footage using his camera. When I have tried to view his tape, I notice what looks like large pixels appearing on the monitor.

Now I'm wondering if there was a tape or video head problem. Can anyone provide any assistance? Can I save the tape?

Thanks.

Steve

You could try playing the tape on the camera it was shot on. That might help.

If you feed final cut bad signals, it will drop frames even if the computer is fine. You can check this by capturing from a good tape. If that capture works fine, then your friend's tape is bad.

Yes, those "large pixels" sound like classic tape dropout problems. Like Glenn said, you may have better luck capturing using the same camera it was recorded on. The tape heads on that camera may be out of alignment such that it won't play correctly on other decks/cameras.

How long a segment are you trying to capture? I experience less problems when I limit my captures to shorter segments.

Thank you both. The segments are fairly short....less than a minute each. The total length is about 10 minutes. After the tape was shot, my friend tried to capture using iMovie and his video camera. That 's when we realized we had a problem.

Then I thought I'd give it a try to no avail. Now that my friend had is video camera heads cleaned and aligned, I have an awful feeling the 10 minutes he shot is lost?

Higher end decks may be able to cope with dropouts better.

Glen,

Thanks, I'll try that. Appreciate your help.

try to make a copy on a new tape