Currently I shoot HDV 720p25 directly onto my MR-HD100 hard disc which is Firewire linked to my GY-HD110E camcorder. No problems.

Reason I bought the MR-HD100 hard disc was to eliminate drop outs caused while capturing the JVC tapes onto Avid Liquid, or via HDVSplit onto another computer. These drop outs are very annoying because they are only seen while playing back the computer NLE timeline. The capturing software doesn't indicate there has been a drop out from a HDV tape, while it immediately does if the source is a DV tape.

If I play back the HDV tapes on the camcorder and view them directly on an external screen - no drop outs.

I have a bunch of HDV tapes (best quality JVC made for ProHD camcorders) recorded both in 720p25 and 720p30. And I'd like to get this stuff into my computer drop out free. The drop outs never occur in the same place, so my workaround is to capture to computer twice and edit in a fix - very time consuming.

Just to test, I captured one of my tapes by playing it on the camcorder and recording into my MR-HD100. To my amazement, it produced these 'invisible' drop outs, again only seen when played back on the NLE computer.

Conclusions:
1. It's not the computers or NLEs that are at fault.
2. It's not the tapes, as they play back faultlessly when simply viewed in playback mode. And drop outs never appear in the same place when captured to NLEs.
3. It must be the camcorder itself that is producing 'skips' only while the tapes are being captured either by a computer or a standalone hard drive.
4. Dirty camcorder heads are not the problem, since picture quality is perfect.

If anyone has come across this problem and has a solution, I'd love to hear about it. I contacted JVC in the UK and they never heard of the problem!

My only temporary solution is to play my tapes in a BR-HD50 and capture from there...

Thanks in advance,

Seamus Byrne.

You cannot discount number 1. from your list so easily. It could be a driver issue; it could be an OS issue, who knows? But my first port of call would be in this field. It is curious that you are experiencing problems both with Avid Liquid and HDVspilt (which is very robust). Have a look in Device Manager under Sound, video and game controllers to see if your camera is recognized correctly. Try CapDVHS (free internet download) and see if the same happens.

Alternatively if the issue resides with the camera check your firewire cable (and port-is it clean?) from the 110 (especially if recording to the MR-HD100 from your tapes produces the same result). The fact that the BR-HD50 deck seems fine with the same tapes lends credence to this scenario.

Nonetheless JVC's HDV1 has been problematic since its inception for ingest to NLEs. The main reason is a very weak timecode implementation together with the closed gop structure across shot changes/timecode breaks. This is not to say it cannot work, I use Avid Media Composer and I have developed various work rounds, within a very problematic NLE for HDV1, that now produce a seamless workflow.

Thanks John,

I'll have a look at the points you mentioned.

Interestingly, I've upgraded to Media Composer, but not yet installed it since I'm waiting to buy a faster computer to handle it.

I might check with you again, once I clear through the points to be looked at and have installed MC.

Regards,

Seamus.