Final Cut Pro/GY-HD111E capture problems

[Nigel Cooper]

Final Cut Pro/GY-HD111E import problems?

With a brand new Mac Pro and very latest Final Cut Studio complete with updates I'm having a little problem trying to import footage directly from a JVC GY-HD111E (yes I'm in PAL land, UK) via FireWire into FCP.

Footage is 720p/25p and timeline is set up in FCP that way.

I'm doing a 'capture now'. The first clip I'm trying to import is about 45 minutes long with no cuts/breaks whatsoever.

What happens is after about 60 seconds or so, it FCP automatically breaks the clip for no reason and starts a new one, trouble is, when it does this I lose about 4 seconds of footage at that point.

It continues to break clips randomly, sometimes after 40 seconds or so, sometimes after 95 seconds, but usually between 30 seconds and 2 minutes and each time it starts a new clip I lose between 1 and 6 seconds.

As I say, there are zero breaks or cuts in this clip, I have a 45 minute clip that was shot in one take, not even a pause anywhere.

Is this a JVC issue or a Final Cut issue?

It's a pain as it simply means I can't import my 9 hours of footage hence I can't get on with this project.

Any ideas why this phenomenon is happening?

Thanks guys.

[Joe Goldsberry]

Originally Posted by Nigel Cooper

Final Cut Pro/GY-HD111E import problems?

With a brand new Mac Pro and very latest Final Cut Studio complete with updates I'm having a little problem trying to import footage directly from a JVC GY-HD111E (yes I'm in PAL land, UK) via FireWire into FCP.

Footage is 720p/25p and timeline is set up in FCP that way.

I'm doing a 'capture now'. The first clip I'm trying to import is about 45 minutes long with no cuts/breaks whatsoever.

What happens is after about 60 seconds or so, it FCP automatically breaks the clip for no reason and starts a new one, trouble is, when it does this I lose about 4 seconds of footage at that point.

It continues to break clips randomly, sometimes after 40 seconds or so, sometimes after 95 seconds, but usually between 30 seconds and 2 minutes and each time it starts a new clip I lose between 1 and 6 seconds.

As I say, there are zero breaks or cuts in this clip, I have a 45 minute clip that was shot in one take, not even a pause anywhere.

Is this a JVC issue or a Final Cut issue?

It's a pain as it simply means I can't import my 9 hours of footage hence I can't get on with this project.

Any ideas why this phenomenon is happening?

Thanks guys.

Not sure whose "fault" it is but I recently had the same problem. I had to use the Apple Intermediate Codec to capture 720p footage from the JVC cams.

Joe

[Carl Martin]

Originally Posted by Joe Goldsberry

Not sure whose "fault" it is but I recently had the same problem. I had to use the Apple Intermediate Codec to capture 720p footage from the JVC cams.

Joe

I am trying to figure this out as well in the apple forum. I had to capture my 720/30p footage using AIC, and I had to manually control my deck, FCP would not communicate with it. If I get and answer from Apple, I'll post.

[Jemore Santos]

FCP sees a drop out and creates a new clip, you can change the settings.
With HDV everytime theres a start and stop within the clip it will create a new clip. Unfortunately there isn't an AIC for 720/25p because AIC does not create new clips when it detects a break.

[Nigel Cooper]

If I change the settings I'll then be stuck with a bunch of clips with dropout instead; just as bad as missing seconds really.

What if I get my hands on an actual JVC deck, would this help?

I suspect it is a JVC camera thing as opposed to an Apple thing as I never had this with DVCAM.

I'm convinced this is a JVC FireWire out from the camera issue. I noticed the JVC struggles to output a nice smooth continuos stream when viewing dailies from the camera.

JVC UK also told me that the JVC does stutter out the footage down the FireWire pipe into the computer, but once there it plays back fine on the timeline.

It would appear that it doesn't though. It would appear that each time the JVC stutters, jumps, drops a frame, whatever out of the FireWire as you are importing into the computer, FCP starts a new clip, but because of the GoP structure of HDV, FCP loses a few frames or even seconds.

[Nigel Cooper]

Won't AIC drop quality over native HDV?

[Jemore Santos]

HDV breaks the clips when there is a stop start in the recording, it's not a JVC thing but your 5 second blanks might be, as for the deck go use it and get a decklink and capture it via component and you will get drop out free footage.

[Nigel Cooper]

Jemore, I know all about the start/stop recording clip breaks.

But I'm talking about a 15 minute clip here, no start/stop/pause, nothing, simply one long clip. JVC can't output via FireWire for more than about a minute without a glitch that causes FCP to think a new clip has started, even though it has not.

I have a Decklink HD Extreme, what do you suggest my workflow be to get the footage in the computer?

The fault will still be at the FireWire output of the JVC so a Decklink card won't fix this.

[Robert Castiglione]

It is strange. I have been capturing in HDV30 and this has only happened once to me and it ruined my shot which was supposed to be one continuous shot. Perhaps you have a faulty camera?

As for the suggesting of capturing out of component wont this degrade your image significantly as you are converting from digital to analogue and then back again? Or have I got this wrong.

Rob

[Nigel Cooper]

Annoyed with JVC import problem; will they ever fix this?

I've shot footage on JVC GY-HD111E in the UK in 720p/25p PAL mode.

I'm trying to import lots of short clips (average 10 seconds) into Final Cut Pro (latest version with 720p/25p support) with a new Mac Pro maxed out with ram and 3 extra internal HDs.

Problem is, on a scene-break i.e. pause/stop, Final Cut detects this and creates a new clip, but it takes about 5 seconds to 'searching for media" before it starts the new clip. Because some clips are only very short, this 5 second delay sometimes means I only get the final few frames of a clip, rather than the entire 5 seconds or so of it.

JVC UK are blaming Apple and are saying it is up to them to fix it as Premiere and Edius does not have this problem.

However, Symbiosis in the UK (who do HD-Connect box) say that the JVC ProHD cameras do not wrap the shots up properly at the end, they are kind of left open and this creates problems on scene-breaks.

I've tried turning off the "create new clip on timecode break" etc, but it does not make any difference, when I do this it simply quits capturing on a scene break. Besides I have about 300 cutaways like this and I don't want to spend the rest of the year breaking them up on the timeline as this would be a futile and long workflow.

I'm importing and working on a native HDV 720p/25p timeline and this is the way I want to work. I've already imported and edited 4 hours of footage, but these 4 hours were easy as all 4 tapes had no start/stop points, they were recorded continuously from beginning to end of tape for 64 minutes each time so importing was no problem; 1 clip per tape.

But now I've come to my 5 tapes containing hundreds of cutaways I'm kind of screwed and need some advise on how I can import them natively in HDV without losing this 5 seconds off the beginning of each clip whilst FCP searches for the media each time.

Is it a JVC issue or a FCP issue, any ideas how I can get around this?

[Nigel Cooper]

Originally Posted by Jemore Santos

HDV breaks the clips when there is a stop start in the recording, it's not a JVC thing but your 5 second blanks might be, as for the deck go use it and get a decklink and capture it via component and you will get drop out free footage.

I have Decklink HD Extreme card. If I capture Component into FCP, will it still be native HDV 720p/25p footage once on the timeline?

Will there be any quality losses via Component?

[David Scattergood]

Nigel - I was holding out for news on JVC upgrading the firmware (& possibly hardware) as per your earlier post. I guess you would've posted an update where there any announcements.
Seems a lot of the excitement with this camera's 24/25p HDV capabilities (on FCP at least) has been subdued by many reported importing problems.

I've yet to capture natively in 25p but intend on doing so very shortly - I'll probably end up using David Knagg's 'DVHSCap-MPEG Streamclip-AIC' workflow should I hit any problems (and I'd now be surprised if I didn't find any such issues).

[Mark Silva]

Interesting those other apps don't have the issue, but are they actually capturing HDV and not an intermediate codec?

Its my understanding that its natural for this to occur with any HDV media as it uses GOP's instead of individual frames for compression.

I've instructed all our shooters to roll 10 seconds pre and post when shooting so this doesn't present a problem. its not a solution but a workaround that works.

It would be great if it could be rectified though.

[Nigel Cooper]

I've gone back to doing it the proper way i.e. marking in/out points and doing a batch capture. This works fine, only you still lose half a second each end of the clip; probably down to GoPs though.

So you just have to be disciplined and log and capture everything with timecode in/out points then do a batch capture.

I hope Apple/JVC between them fix the Capture Now feature though as this is handy when you only have a few clips to bring in and you know they are all good.

[Carl Hicks]

Originally Posted by Nigel Cooper

I've gone back to doing it the proper way i.e. marking in/out points and doing a batch capture. This works fine, only you still lose half a second each end of the clip; probably down to GoPs though.

So you just have to be disciplined and log and capture everything with timecode in/out points then do a batch capture.

I hope Apple/JVC between them fix the Capture Now feature though as this is handy when you only have a few clips to bring in and you know they are all good.

Nigel, I think you have it figured out. My belief is that with any long GOP format, you will need to allow a little more pre-roll and post roll.