Help... Capturing issues with Canon XL1

[Jeff Barber]

I am having some issues with capturing video from my canon XL1 camera. I shot video of a live band and the way I did it was to video each song individually, meaning I would shoot one song then pause the camera then restart the recording at the next song. I also turned the camera off in some cases as I did not want to record that particular song and to save on battery power. Well when I captured the video from my camera most of the songs were captured as more than one file. So now I have a songs that are split into 2 to 3 individual files. I tried splicing these together but I get a small jump where they meet. I am using a PC with windows 7 and I downloaded the trial version of Powerdirector 10. Anyone know why this is happening and if so what can I do about it?

Thanks!

JB

[Mark Watson]

In case it's something with your software, you can try another program to capture your video.

Click the start button and then in the search window, type "MovieMaker.exe".

When the program is located, open it and click on the first icon on the toolbar and then select "Import from device". Capture your video.

This program will capture DV or HDV, but one limitation is that it does not allow you to capture part of a HDV tape, you have to capture the entire tape.


Mark

[Chris Soucy]

Hi, Jeff............

Most NLE's will create a new file when they detect a break in the timecode.

If yours is creating more than one file per video sequence and there appears to be a bit missing, it's most likely you have had a tape dropout (with a resultant break in the time code).

Run a head cleaning tape through the camera transport a couple of times and then play the tape you shot again. If you can see what appears to be a pause at the same location as the bit that is missing it's most likely that it cannot be recovered.

[Note: Follow the cleaning tape instructions - no more than ten seconds a go, give it two or three shots, if it's going to do it, that will do it].

If you have access to another HDV camera you can always see if the tape will play OK on that.

If, however, it plays fine, simply recapture the previously broken bits and away you go.


CS

[Don Palomaki]

If the captured clips stitch on the timeline with a brief gap, sounds like a tape drop out or tape read error or similar issue resulting in dropped frames. As noted above, a head cleaning may help. Tape drop out will result in the dropped frames happening at the same places every time you try capture.

Also dropped frames could reflect an issue with computer/drive write speed, especially if AV is running or you are capturing to the system (C:) drive. In this case dropped frame locations will probably not be consistent.

Some capture software can be set to split video into bite size clips at a user set file size (leagacy of FAT file system days) not likely your issue but worth checking if nothing else is found.

If the tape looks OK on analog playback (it may thanks to playback error correction for the analog output), doing an analog capture from s-video can be a work around for the problematic portions of the taope.

[Jeff Barber]

I did as Mark suggested and used window movie maker to capture the video and problem solved. It captured without splitting the songs into more than one file. It also showed how many frames were captured and how many frames were dropped which was 0. Thanks for the help, much appreciated!