The 4 Second problem (HD100+FCP5.0.4)

[Alex Bowles]

Hi all,

I've been having a chronic problem with 4 Second gaps in the footage I import from my HD-100 into FCP.

Basically, it's impossible to capture an intact clip from the camera. There are all these mysterious dropouts that cause the imported scenes to subdivide into shorter clips *with 4 second gaps between them!!!* This happens on virtually every clip I try to work with.

The problem is tied to the footage, as reimporting the same clip will cause the problem in virtually the exact same place time and time again. About 50% of the time, I can get material from these trouble spots to import into FCP, which is scary.

However, the tapes themselves playback just fine in the camera. You don't know there's a MASSIVE DROPOUT until you're capturing, and your clip (say, 5 min) gets subdivide anywhere from 5 to 20 times, with these deadly four second gaps between each one.

I understand this has something to do with a scene detection feature (which I've disabled in FCP) and am wondering if there's something I should be doing in Camera as well?

A

[Bill Ravens]

have you set the menu preference in the camera from p-Tape to P-1394? This definitely affects the time lag when writing to disk instead of tape.

[David Knaggs]

Hi Alex.

There is something else you can try with the camera. You didn't say what frame rate you were importing but, as you are in NYC, I'm guessing it's HDV 720p30.

In the sticky thread at the top of this forum (about FCP 5.1.2) there has been a LOT of discussion about gaps in the footage when capturing. This has been a chronic problem with HDV 720p25, but I've now seen 3 or 4 reports (here and in the FCP forum) of similar problems with 720p30.

What has solved the "gaps" problem in 720p25 is to set the TC GENE switch to REC (rather than REGEN) when shooting your footage. Then capture with Capture Now (Capture Clip might also work, depending on your firmware).

I'm not "happy" having to shoot with REC. I'd much rather always shoot with REGEN. But it has totally eliminated the gaps when capturing.

I suspect that this would also work with 30p footage.

[Joe Goldsberry]

I had this problem shooting 30p. My solution was to import using the Apple Intermediary Codec (AIC).

Joe

[Chad Terpstra]

Originally Posted by David Knaggs

What has solved the "gaps" problem in 720p25 is to set the TC GENE switch to REC (rather than REGEN) when shooting your footage. Then capture with Capture Now (Capture Clip might also work, depending on your firmware).

I suspect that this would also work with 30p footage.

What about 24p? I just recorded a play in HDV24p with the TC in "REC" mode and still have random gaps in the captured file(s) resulting in split files in spite of no visible dropout. I had about 6 gaps in 40 minutes and each one means a devastating 4 seconds lost. Then when it reached the end of the tape, Final Cut just stopped, gave an error and lost everything from the last dropout to the end with no trace of the footage in Capture Scratch or anywhere. It’s like I’m running version 3 or something…

Bill, I can't find the setting for "P-Tape" or "P-1394." Is this something for recording direct to disk?

I guess I'll have to import with DVHSCap and transcode to AIC. What a pain. I bought the $9 JVC tapes to avoid dropouts and now I have tiny unnoticeable dropouts that cause FCP to break the capture... Does anyone have better experience with other tape brands? I don't see the difference between the $3 and $9 JVCs.

I really hope Apple addresses this issue in the next release.

[Jiri Bakala]

Originally Posted by Chad Terpstra

I guess I'll have to import with DVHSCap and transcode to AIC. What a pain. I bought the $9 JVC tapes to avoid dropouts and now I have tiny unnoticeable dropouts that cause FCP to break the capture... Does anyone have better experience with other tape brands? I don't see the difference between the $3 and $9 JVCs.

You might see the difference between the $9 JVC and the $20 SONY PHDVM-63DM. I don't care what anybody says, the Sony tapes are just simply better and that's what you are paying for.

[David Knaggs]

Originally Posted by Chad Terpstra

What about 24p? I just recorded a play in HDV24p with the TC in "REC" mode and still have random gaps in the captured file(s) resulting in split files in spite of no visible dropout. I had about 6 gaps in 40 minutes and each one means a devastating 4 seconds lost.

That's disappointing news (concerning 24p). I haven't tried native 24p capture yet, but even if it had worked in REC mode it wouldn't have done me any good. I've got about 26 tapes in 720p24 (on a feature project) which were all recorded in REGEN. I'd already edited it into a 2 hour rough cut in AIC before FCP 5.1.2 was released and have been contemplating recapturing in native HDV 720p24. Obviously the theoretical best quality would be to capture in native HDV 720p24 and later export the final sequence as Uncompressed. (Even though AIC quality is very, very good.)

This recapturing would, in itself, be onerous enough - i.e. because you lose timecode when transcoding to AIC, so I don't have the option of recapturing using a batch capture (where the only effort involved is to change tapes every hour or less). Fortunately we slated everything with scene number, shot number and take number - so it can be done (eventually). But if FCP is also going to break each take into several clips with 4-7 second gaps, that would make the recapturing idea unviable.

So I have 2 hopes:
1/ That Apple bring out a new FCP update which fixes the problem for capturing HDV 720p (at all frame rates). It seems to me that they need to disable the way that FCP "perceives" the HDV 720p footage coming over the FireWire (and which has been making FCP "think" that one clip is actually several different clips) and program it to simply capture by timecode settings alone. That is, you log your in and out points, then FCP is completely guided by those timecodes and NOTHING ELSE.

2/ I've been eagerly awaiting Tim Dashwood's report on the workflow he's been using in editing a current feature project in 720p24. Tim earlier said that he was expecting to post this around the end of November (and I hope he makes it a "sticky"). He might have some useful tips for successfully capturing 720p24 natively.

[Bill Ravens]

alex...

i have an hd110. on page 2 of the "OTHERS" menu, there's an item called "Backspace" that allows this selection I referenced. It's possible the older hd100 menu doesn't have this selection option....P-Tape/P-1394. It may have been included on the formware update. Perhas Carl Hicks can tell you.

[Chad Terpstra]

Originally Posted by Bill Ravens

i have an hd110. on page 2 of the "OTHERS" menu, there's an item called "Backspace" that allows this selection I referenced. It's possible the older hd100 menu doesn't have this selection option....P-Tape/P-1394. It may have been included on the formware update. Perhas Carl Hicks can tell you.

Got it. Yes, it's on the original HD100 as well. I just didn't know where to look. Mine is set to P-1394. Does this make any difference when not using a direct-to-disk recording system?

Jiri, are you saying that you are able to record and capture a whole tape continuously with no dropouts or capture breaks? In 24p or 30p? If so, I might consider switching back to Sony, but without concrete evidence I don't see the point. By the way, you’d expect tapes made by the same company as a camera to work better together. I guess I was stepping out too far on an assumption there. In any case this camera is extremely picky when it comes to tape brands so I’d like to be sure of a good brand before I make the switch. Thanks for offering up your experience.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Jiri Bakala

You might see the difference between the $9 JVC and the $20 SONY PHDVM-63DM. I don't care what anybody says, the Sony tapes are just simply better and that's what you are paying for.

I've been using the Sony HDV tapes and feel it really does make a difference. A $9 tape doesn't feel right for serious work in HD.

Also wonder, do you have these DO caused gaps it you capture whole tape using Scene Detect?

Since upgrading to 5.1.2 AND working with 1080i -- I've had tons of FCP capture errors using Batch Capture. I can't tell, because I haven't tried 720p with 5.1.2, whether its the new software or 1080i. But, FCP simply claims every few clips it can't get data.

Same tapes capture fine in Vegas, EDIUS, and Liquid. With a MBP 2 -- I've simply stopped using FCP for editing.

I'm also fairly certain Liquid will have no problem with 720p50 and 720p60. The only thing it's missing is inverse puldpwn and pulldown for working with Sony V1. But, FCP doesn't support these either. Plus all the tools for HD DVD and BD are running under XP.

[Robert Castiglione]

As a matter of interest, Alex, what tape where you actually using?

There seem to be just so many different thoughts on what could be causing the difficulties.

Rob

[Steve Benner]

Originally Posted by Chad Terpstra

Got it. Yes, it's on the original HD100 as well. I just didn't know where to look. Mine is set to P-1394. Does this make any difference when not using a direct-to-disk recording system?

I believe this has to do with which gets the prioity, either the Firewire out (Firestore) or the Tape internal when recording.

[Bill Ravens]

according to a previous post by Carl Hicks, the JVC rep, setting P-Tape when you're feeding a 1394 device, will result in a data loss of around 4 secs.

[Robert Castiglione]

I just want to confirm that what David says above concerning break free capture in 25P is right. As long as I stick to rec and capture now I can seem to capture without any issues at all. Chaning tapes from JVC to panasonic and then back to JVC again seemed to make no difference at all so I question whether it is a tape issue. To my infinite relief my good luck in this regard is holding which is very timely as I am in the middle of a project is holding.

Rob

[Chad Terpstra]

Originally Posted by Robert Castiglione

I just want to confirm that what David says above concerning break free capture in 25P is right. As long as I stick to rec and capture now I can seem to capture without any issues at all. Chaning tapes from JVC to panasonic and then back to JVC again seemed to make no difference at all so I question whether it is a tape issue. To my infinite relief my good luck in this regard is holding which is very timely as I am in the middle of a project is holding.

In some small way I can share in your relief. I have no use for 25p, but if I know it works for that, then there's a light at the end of the NLE tunnel in that the Final Cut team will get it together and fix this problem accross all the framerates of this format (720p24 & 30). Hopefully sooner than later...