Cannot complete capture- help!

[Christopher Glavan]

I helped my dad with a short film earlier this year, and now he's given me the tapes to edit together as part of my demo reel. We shot on both my HD100 and his DVX100B. I am using my camera as a deck.
When I fire up Final Cut and start the log and transfer, the tape plays back in the camera just fine and my computer shows that it's capturing. When it reaches the end of timecode however, I get an error message stating that Final Cut was unable to capture the footage.

Can someone tell me why I would be able to play back the footage but not actually complete capture? Btw, I've tried to batch capture as well, same issue.

I did a quick search and didn't turn up anything, please direct me if there's a thread on this already.

Thanks,

Chris

[Wacharapong Chiowanich]

I think you have to give more details on the format or codec of the footage to be captured from both the HD100 and DVX100. The DVX100 can't do HD but can record to both native and pulldown-from-interlaced progressive SD. The HD100 meanwhile can only record to progressive 720p HDV or interlaced SD (DV) formats. Also for HDV footage (if any), you need to select either native HDV capture or transcoding from HDV to Apple Intermediate Format upon capture. Other details like scratch disk specs, remaining disk space etc. would help too.

Without these basics it's hard to know where to start.

[Christopher Glavan]

The HD-100 records DV-24P, 24PA, and 60i in SD.

I have 418.6 GB available on my scratch disk and 465 GB available on my backup scratch.

I have used the following settings for attempting to capture:

Easy Setup 1
Format: DV/Panasonic DVCPRO
Rate: 23.98fps
Use: DV-NTSC 24p (23.98)

Easy Setup 2
Format: DV/Panasonic DVCPRO
Rate: 23.98fps
Use: DV-NTSC 24p (23.98) Advanced Pulldown Removal

The codec used is the DV/DVCPRO - NTSC codec.

The footage to be captured was filmed on the DVX100B, and I am using my HD100 to capture from, since I do not have access to the DVX100B. The camera is set up correctly to capture DV footage, and does transmit the signal over firewire. However, upon reaching the end of timecode (or if I stop capture prematurely) Final Cut throws the following error:

ERROR: Final Cut Pro was unable to read the movie file just captured.

So upon re-evaluating the situation, it's not that I cannot capture the footage, but that FCP can neither read the captured video, nor does it save the clip in the browser.

Hope that will help me get an answer! Thanks!

Chris

[Wacharapong Chiowanich]

Originally Posted by Christopher Glavan

The HD-100 records DV-24P, 24PA, and 60i in SD

Sorry, I was wrong about the HD100's SD specs.

As the FCP's Log and Capture was set up for both 24p native and 24p-in-60i, if your footage was in either format (you didn't mention the format of the footage from the DVX100), the capture should have been OK. Or was it interlaced 60i?

If the footage was shot in the 24-in-60i mode, you might want to try changing the capture setup from "23.98p with pulldown removal.." to a simple 60i interlaced capture. Let's say the footage can be captured and read by FCP, see how it plays back, remove the pulldown in the timeline to convert it to 24p at a later stage.

I suspect the problem may have had something to do with the HD100's compatibility with the footage from the DVX100. Some modes may be compatible, some may not.

[Christopher Glavan]

Well we were both shooting 24p for consistency's sake. I have tried capturing 23.98fps in both pulldown and non-pulldown formats. I guess I'll try straight 60i, but it doesn't make sense to me that footage shot in 24p would capture correctly that way.

Guess there's only one way to find out =)