footage captured into FCP 6 from XL2 looks sped up/out of sync

[Josh Bass]

Hey. New one here. I wasn't sure if this properly belonged in the XL2 forum or FCP suite, so hopefully this is okay.

Still have the XL2, hardly ever use it, used it for something recently. Shot about an hour and 45 minutes. Most captured fine via fire from my XL2, but this one section on the second tape, which I have recaptured several times, even onto different external drives just in case that was the issue, has problems.

Before this footage it's fine, and after, it seems fine, but this one part, when I look it in FCP, appears to be sped up, like you're jogging through the footage at double speed. Just for this one shot this happens. Audio is totally out of sync and even when I get one part synced up, the rest doesn't match. It's very strange.

I probably don't need this particular shot so I'm not super worried in this case, but I was planning on selling the cam and now I'm worried it's got an issue. Tape looks fine playing in camera, audio is fine. It's when I try to capture that I see this weirdness.

Anyone seen anything crazy like this before from tape capture? Could it be dirty heads (last time I used the cam before this recent time was back in December, and I did clean the heads before the December gig with a head cleaning tape, didn't do it this time beforehand)?

Some details - footage shot in widescreen, 24p (2:3:3:2 pulldown mode), captured in FCP using "captured now", used DV NTSC 48 Khz Advanced (2:3:3:2) pulldown removal" capture preset. Thought about going in and making a custom specifying 16:9/anamorphic as well but it seems to know that already based on how the captured footage squeezes correctly.

Some of the other footage does have a dropped frame or two (which didn't cause FCP to abort, even though it's set to), and the issue, I'm not sure what you call it, where you get alternating "stripes" of one frame for several seconds while the rest plays correctly, and then everything resumes as normal. I captured each tape twice and this stuff doesn't happen in the same place each time so I'm guessing not the tapes, a capture issue?

Anyway, all very distressing and annoying. If it needs a pro cleaning or head repair, I'll probably just forget about it 'cause if the cam is worth $7-800 (ebay prices), and a pro cleaning costs like $100 and repairs up to $500, that's just silly.

[Josh Bass]

To add to the above, just noticed that, at least on my first tape, audio sync seems to be about 3 frames off, at least on capture.

[Josh Bass]

If anyone's watching this thread, I solved one problem.

So it seems FCP (at least v6), for some strange reason, does not want to capture footage shot in 24p(2:3:3:2 pulldown mode) from this cam WITH THAT SAME CAPTURE SETTING! That's right! Just for grins tried capturing with the DV NTSC 48khz anamorphic setting (which is 29.97 fps, no pulldown applied), and it's fine! Does that make any sense?

The first tape I shot that night, I ran color bars at the head in 30fps mode, only remembering to switch to 24p after the bars. So I guess that footage got "flagged" as being 29.97 even though it only was at the very beginning (item properties on that file confirms FCP thinks it's 29.97), so didn't have this same issue on that tape. 2nd tape was all shot 24p.

Anyway, I hate tape.