I'm trying to capture footage from Sony camcorder into FCP HD express, but every tape I try, the footage stops at about 15 secods and then FCP says "dropped frames were detected last capture attempt"
The software then shuts down and pauses the tape.

This happens with every tape, and all tapes are brand new tapes.

Is there a DMA mode on the hard drive that's disabled perhaps?

I know that happens sometimes on XP and older releases of Windows. The hard drive would feel super slow though, and your mouse pointer may get stuck any time you access the hard drive. That's a sure way to see if there's a problem.

You might want to run a drive speed test program to see if it's running super slow or not. And then track down the problem from there.

Eric

Don't think so, I'm on Mac, brand new drives. Don't utility test on them, never heard of drive speed test.

Now on issue of capturing.
Without fail, at 15 sec mark, the all captures abort and sign that dropped frams comes up. This is across many tapes, that are hardly worn out. So I thinking for first time, of unchecking the preference to abort if there are dropped frames. I don't like doing that, but what else can I do? The software seem to think that at 15-20 seconds in, of every tape I have there are dropped frames.

Has anyone else seen this?

Without fail, at 15 sec mark, the all captures abort and sign that dropped frams comes up. This is across many tapes, that are hardly worn out. So I thinking for first time, of unchecking the preference to abort if there are dropped frames. I don't like doing that, but what else can I do? The software seem to think that at 15-20 seconds in, of every tape I have there are dropped frames.

Has anyone else seen this?

Based on what you've said, it sounds like your hard drive might be the issue instead of the tapes. What kind of disk are you capturing to... speed, interface, formatting, etc?

(Note: I have merged your two threads here. Please don't post the same thing in more than one forum, it's against DVinfo policy.)

New drives or not, Mac or not, it does not matter.

My point is, the computer may have trouble talking to the hard drive at a high enough speed to write the data before more gets backed up, causing a bottleneck and causing a dropout.

I replied to a similar thread on here a couple of months ago. Just search on Google for hard drive speed test mac and you'll find plenty of stuff. You basically need to see if your drive is able to achieve a decent speed and sustain it.

You need 3.5 megabytes/sec to capture HD/HDV video, which by today's hard drive standards is nothing. But it IS a problem if there's a DMA (Direct Memory Access) controller problem. If that's turned off for some reason, the CPU needs to help out with all the drive activity and that slows things down.

The fact that it's right at 15 seconds is odd. That seems too far in to be a drive writing problem. But maybe it's writing earlier, and then when it attempts to write again, it gets backed up.

Try this: Turn off the abort on dropped frames option and recapture. Then see how many dropped frames you get in say 60 seconds. If it's a drive writing issue, the # should go up exponentially each time it attempts to write to the drive.

Let me know how you make out.

Eric

you might want to listen to eric, instead of dismissing his suggestions. i had a similar issue once with FCP, and the problem was that my hard drive was too slow.

Thanks Meryem :)

I've come to realize more and more that Macs and OSX are not perfect and impervious to weird random troubles, the same as every other computer/OS EVER made. The sooner everyone else realizes this, the sooner everyone can get back to work. ;)

-Eric

Is it too obivious to mention the OS 4.9 issue? Did you recently upgrade to that? I know dropped frames are a prob with that. Just a suggestion

Would that be 10.4.9? I hope? ;)

Thanks guys!
Yes I did upgrade to 10.4.9
When you said,
" know dropped frames are a prob with that."
Did you mean to say that the problem is the OS "thinks" there are dropped frames when there are not, or that says there are dropped frames where in 10.4.8 it would not say that?

I hope it's that cause I don't want to think my brand new Seagate 750's are defective, but I will test in next day or two on my older Lacie D2's.

I just put a post on Mac Fix it about speed test. Google search did not bring up anything useful. anyone know how to test drives? I have several mainteneace apps, not sure if they have that test. I have tech tool pro, It does a drive test, but I don't "think' it gives you some number perforance, I just think it's probably a ok or not ok, right?

Try this one out, it's free :)
http://www.xbench.com/

This may also reveal other info about your system. I'm not sure if it will work with the latest update or not. There was an older post on another that linked to this, from an older OS update and said it previously hadn't worked with that, but was now fixed.

I thought OSX didn't break stuff when upgraded like Microsoft does? :)
*looks around, confused, then hugs PC*

I don't run 10.4.9 myself but I have read a lot of posts that, after upgrading to that OS, people were having probs with dropped frames they did not in the past. As in, they were getting dropped frames when they were not before.

Not sure if there is a fix for that, maybe troll around and find out more about it

Head over to aja's website under the download area for their speed test tool.

http://www.aja.com/html/support_kona3_swd.html

ok, tested all drives with those great softwares and they are all coming in at:
28/mb write and read 30mb or better.

what is DMA and how to look for that.

10.4.9, is this it. I mean this upgrade can't drop frames right? it can only misinterprate that no?

I don't run 10.4.9 myself but I have read a lot of posts that, after upgrading to that OS, people were having probs with dropped frames they did not in the past. As in, they were getting dropped frames when they were not before.

Not sure if there is a fix for that, maybe troll around and find out more about it

I had a kind of similar issue.

Everything "used to work" SD and HDV, no problems over firewire.
This was with FCE 3.0

"upgraded" to 10.4.9, and HDV still worked but SD I had the exact issue -- dropped frames after 15 seconds or so.

Eventually I shelled out for FCE3.5 as the issue was supposed to only be with FCE 3.0 but I haven't gone back and tried to pull in any SD footage yet (HDV works fine)

Ok , guys, appreciate all this for sure, but what should I do?
Maybe uncheck preference to abort on dropped frames?
Also, I don't have to capture with the FCP express -- I just backup up the footage to hard drive in full, so what else could I use? (mac) or any other ideas?

ok, tested all drives with those great softwares and they are all coming in at:
28/mb write and read 30mb or better.



Something is not right.
The Seagate 750 has much better performance than your test speed.
A single internal drive should see speeds around double your results.
For example, I just ran a speed test on a 2 x 750 RAID that only has 488 Gigs of free space left, and my write speed was 131.9 MB/s and my read speed was 129 MB/s.
What type of Mac, how many drives, how are they configured & connected?

Eric's suggestions are good from a very top level view, but the problem is that OS X doesn't give control over transfer modes on an ATA device. DMA is a Windows thing.

These days when FCP throws dropped frame errors, it often has something to do with errors in the DV stream. I realize this makes no sense, but it's true.

Try capturing with a different camera/deck. When a deck can't read a tape perfectly, it throws errors in the stream which in turn makes FCP behave this way.

Ok , guys, appreciate all this for sure, but what should I do?
Maybe uncheck preference to abort on dropped frames?
Also, I don't have to capture with the FCP express -- I just backup up the footage to hard drive in full, so what else could I use? (mac) or any other ideas?

Yes, turn it off. I work with FCP since version 3, whenever I upgrade it's the first thing I check out. And usually it's the first thing I turn off, because I've had so many troubles with it.

David: I don't know anything about speed and what they should be, but all my externals, lacies and seagates say about 30mb, and the one internal, the mac HD comes in at 44. Everything is pretty new.

Nate, I only have my two new brand new Sony HD camcorders I just bought. that's it. They are not good? they seem to play back these tapes fine (looking at lcd)

thanks you Theodore! So Theo, by unchecking this safegaurd are you giving up any great thing there?

1) BTW, we all agree that the is not about any real dropped frames correct? this has not be clearified, yet it's an important point.
2) Theo, others, or..should I expore other software, or is unchecking this way go?

You could try other capturing software and see if you get the same errors. Then you'll know if there's a problem with just that program or system-wide.

You could turn off the abort option and just watch it look for glitches as it's capturing. Most likely the errors are false. :)

Eric

I come across this problem on occaision myself. What I do is go to the Capture Settings drop down menu and change it from Basic Firewire to non-controllable device and just push play from the camera and then Capture Now button. It then brings in the whole tape with no problem. I have done this a dozen or so times over the past several years. I'm running 10.4.8.

1) Call me Ted
2) I wouldn't think you need any other capturing software although I'm sure someone will point out that there is something better.
3) Marty Reinhardt is right, the "uncontrollable device" option is usually the best fail-safe. I have a friend in Australia who edited weddings on a G3 667mhz iBook and that was the only way he could successfully capture with that machine.

This is no guarantee that there are no actual dropped frames, it's just my experience that it's usually somewhere in the capture pipeline that the frames are being dropped.

Kevin,

Are your drives formatted HFS or HFS+ journaling?

I have a friend who bought a new USB2/FW400 hard drive and started using it without formatting it himself. It was pre-formatted for FAT-32, which the mac can read and write to, but is no where near as fast as HFS "Mac" format.

Anyway, my friend was having similar issues with dropped frames and speed problems. We formatted the drive as HFS+ and all the problems went away.
Some people think HFS+ causes its own problems and just use HFS, but I've never had a problem with journaling turned on.

INteresting Marty. What does this method do precisely? (as opposed to the normal route)

Eric: other software suggestions?

same to you Ted, what are doing when choosing 'uncontrollable device" -- thanks on the dropped frames analysis

thanks Tim, I have 6 drives or so. 1/2 are extended and 1/2 extended Journaled. I don't see where to find if they are hfs or hfs+ (looking in disc utility)

Hmm, I don't know as I don't own a Mac. :)

But apparently not many people know about the Google Mac search. Go to Google and then click Advanced Search. Then at the bottom, click Apple Macintosh.. Or just go to www.google.com/mac But at least you know how to get to it.

Just search for something like free dv capture software or something like that, I'm sure it'll turn up something. :)

Eric

all my externals, lacies and seagates say about 30mb,


You don't happen to have a few external firewire drives chained together on the same firewire buss as you are trying to capture from the camera are you?

David:
they are not daisy chained, but all go into one belkin hub right now, except one that is FW 800 that is going direct to back of computer.

I believe you can daisy chain the 800 bus, just put the slower drives past it in the chain.

I get about 34-35 megs/sec on my Maxtor OneTouchIII 300 gig Firewire 400/USB 2.0 drive. The Firewire side is usually a few megs/sec faster than the USB 2.0 side from benchmarks I've done. I can capture from my camera daisy chained to it without problems.

I read about Firewire hubs a couple of months ago. I think they're more of a convenience thing, but don't actually improve performance over daisy chaining if I remember correctly, because you're not increasing the bus speed on the computer, but you're not running through multiple devices, so it might be a little more efficient, I forget though.

Eric

Eric, all of the G4 and G5 Macs (laptops, towers, etc) only have a single firewire bus inside. FW800 (if available) shares the same bus with FW400. If you have a laptop with a PC card slot or tower with PCI slots you can add a firewire card to increase throughput.

I'm not positive, but I think the new Intel Macs are like this as well.

How would they share a bus at different speeds? There must be 2 separate controllers to achieve this, no? Maybe one chip can do it, but 2 buses to get separate speeds.

How would they share a bus at different speeds?

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/HWTech_FireWire/Articles/FireW_implementation.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40003892-DontLinkElementID_21

The Mac Pro provides two FireWire 800 IEEE 1394b ports and two FireWire 400 IEEE 1394a ports. The four FireWire ports are on the same FireWire bus

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/HWTech_FireWire/Articles/FireW_concepts.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40003893-SW1

FireWire 800 is backward-compatible with FireWire 400. When a FireWire 800 device is properly connected to a FireWire 800 port on a Macintosh computer, the two communicate using 1394b protocols at 1394b speeds. When a FireWire 400 device is connected to that same port, the port conforms to 1394a specifications to communicate with that device. FireWire 800 ports with this capability are commonly known as bilingual.

Interesting. They don't really explain it in technical terms, but I think it might be a 3 port FW800 hub, with basically 2 FW400 adapters, so you get 3 ports from the motherboard directly that way, all running on one bus.

The uncontrollable device setting is almost exactly what is says. It means the device is uncontrollable by FCP. The you cannot shuttle through the footage in FCP, you have to play or scan through the tape with the camera.

The other situation you would used this method is if you wanted record to tape and capture in FCP simultaneously. I do this all the time with my new (old) G4 powerbook and a Z1U. I down convert live to DV into FCP while simultaneously recording HDV to tape for archiving and back up.

Thanks Theo, and would be curious if you guys have not seen this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?p=678414#post678414


on what you use as alternates to capturing other than FCP

Theo: are you saying that you simutaneously back up a mini DV to another camcorder or deck, and capture to computer hard drive? this would be great, and save me another pass, as I want to back up tape to tape, and also to hard drive. But how would it work? There is only one FW port out of my camcorder and it either has to be 4 pin to 4 pin going to other camcorder or 4 pin to 6 pin going to Computer no?

You could probably do that with a firewire hub, I would think. They're not widely popular, but they do exist. :)

This issue Eric, is not in ports, I'm saying there is only one out port of camera.

I understand the issue. If you plugged 2 cameras into a firewire hub, one could be playing back and the other recording. At the same time, the hard drive in the computer (or in the hub) would be capturing.

The port on the camera is an i/o, not just an out, but you prolly knew that. :)

Eric

Hard to understand that. yes know port out of camcorder is both in and out. so?
There is only one -- so how could I record from camcorder to another deck and computer at same time? thanks!

Right, it's a bidirectional port. That's how you're able to control the camera's playback via firewire while it's playing. The computer sends signals to the camera and tells it where to move, and the camera sends back a picture, sound and position info.

The Firewire hub works the same way a USB hub works. Or a power strip for plugging electrical stuff into, for that matter. You plug in one device (the hub) and get multiple places to plug in. If your computer has multiple firewire ports, that would maybe work too.

You know, now that I think about this, the physical connection is easy, it's making the gear behave accordingly that may be difficult. With a hub, the recording camera MAY see the video stream and record it. But it may send it into the computer without going to the other ports in the hub, and then you need to tell the computer to record as well as repeat the signal, and I'm not sure if that's possible or not. It's just a software thing, but I don't know if such a program exists.

But now you know that a firewire is just like a usb hub, or a power strip. They're just a rare piece of equipment, but they're out there and they're not very expensive..

Eric

i haven't read through the entire thread, but have you tried to capture directly from a live camera? if you still get the problem then you can eliminate timecode/tape capture issues as the culprit. and if you try capturing on another system that would also help narrow down things.

I've found its always best to leave space at the beginning of the tape, video heads need a few seconds to get the tape up to speed to start recording properly. Make sure your shooting in 16 bit audio, if you shot in 12 and trying to capture in 16 that can cause problems. Fragmented drive can cause problems. Its also best to turn off hard drive power saver/sleep modes, ie it takes a few seconds to wake up the drive and that would interfere with the beginning of a capture.

And Kevin, Theo was referring to recording live on location and recording into the camera's tape and the laptop at the same time. I do that as well, works great. No more capturing unless something happens with the computer, then you have a tape backup already in place. :)

Eric: well I see where you are going: I plug camcorder into a hub and capture to comupter, then I take cord from hub and put it into my second camroder to record at same time? has anyone done this?

Pete: I honestly have not made sure I was 10 seconds into the tape before capturing, so I 'll try remember that, but not sure that was the issue.

ERic: ok, did not know thats what you meant. Too late for that, but good info to know -- capture on the shoot.

i didn't read through the thread did you figure out the problem?

I'm not sure if he did or not.

I don't have a firewire hub, but I'd be interested if something else does to see if you can use it to record and play through with 2 cameras, and capture at the same time. :)

I'm not sure if he did or not.

I don't have a firewire hub, but I'd be interested if something else does to see if you can use it to record and play through with 2 cameras, and capture at the same time. :)

oh jeeze, he was plugging into a hub instead of going directly into the computer. lol, well thats it right there.

No, he doesn't have a firewire hub. But my suggestion was to try one, and maybe that could be used to pick the firewire stream off of, to record to a second camera while capturing.

I don't think you're reading this thread very carefully :)

Eric

Pete: I do have a FW hub, but how critical is that. I've got every periphal you can think of in FW hubs with no issue. Is capturing the ony expection to this perfect record of stability?

thanks Again Eric; yes lets see if someone has done that:
record and play through with 2 cameras, and capture at the same time.