re-capturing clips did NOT go well. please help

[Adi Head]

i'm depressed.
i edited a 1 hour movie about 2 weeks ago.
i needed the disc space for a new urgent project, so my plan was to delete the media files of project A in order to make space for project B. once finished with project B, i intended to then re-capture the media files of project A and continue editing. i thought this would be a piece of cake since the tapes were captured in their whole using scene detection and clips are titled "tape 1 clip 001", "tape 1 clip 002", etc. there are 3 tapes in all.

i re-captured the clips of project A and then promted vegas to search for the missing clips in the file where they had been re-captured. vegas found the first missing clip and then asked if to replace all missing clips with the re-captured ones. i, of course said yes and vegas went to work. so far so good.

but suddenly vegas found a missing clip and could not locate it's re-captured twin. "tape 2 clip 080" could not be found. i checked and found that for some reason the re-captured clips of tape 2 only go up to clip 079. that's when i started worrying. clips 081 and 082 were missing as well. i tryed playing the timeline to see what it looked like.

most of it seemed ok. but there were definately events there that shouln't have been there and events that should have been there that were missing. it seems as though somehow clips from tape 2 got messed up.

what could be causing this? can scene detection miss cuts? any suggestions on how to fix my little problem? i'm a little confused and tired (it's been a long night) and am not sure what to do next.

thanks

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Any chance you had a break in TC that was related to a dirty head? That would account for extra clips that didn't detect on recapture, amongst a few other possibilities. This seems most likely.

[Adi Head]

when editing the clips captured the first time around, i didn't notice anything that looked like one clip split into two. but i can't be positive.
if what you are saying is correct, this means that the primary capture is the defected one and not the re-capture. is there anyway to go about fixing this? or will i have to replace "bad" events with new ones (basically going back to editing the project - ahhhhh!)?

just a thought: is there a way to open the project while leaving missing media offline and then replace each offline event individually with the re-captured material? at least this way i can see where the problem begins and fix the "bad" events from there on.

thanks.

[Edward Troxel]

<<<-- Originally posted by Adi Head : just a thought: is there a way to open the project while leaving missing media offline and then replace each offline event individually with the re-captured material? at least this way i can see where the problem begins and fix the "bad" events from there on.

thanks. -->>>

This is probably what I would have tried FIRST. It should be able to batch capture all of the individual clips based on timecode (unless you have a break in the timecode - then it would become confused). This also requires that you kept the SFVIDCAP file.

[Adi Head]

hi edward. that's actually what i did. i batch captured the tapes giving the clips the same name they had before. but suddenly clip 081 isn't the original clip 081 and so on...

i want to try and recapture the tapes one more time. hopefully the cause of the problem was something minor and this time it will be ok. but if not. how would you go about sorting things out?

when i open the project vegas warns me that i have missing files and asks what to do: search for file, ignore and leave offline, etc.
i want to leave the clips offline and then replace the offline clips with the recaptured clips one by one, checking them as i progress to see if the replacement clip is the right clip or not.

if i find the problem (for expample: if the original clip 060, was split into two clips for some reason - clip 060 and clip 061) i'll be able to easily progress and replace the offline clips with the new ones.

is this kind of a procedure possible? i'm not sure how to do this.

[Randall Campbell]

Adi,

Here are a few thoughts. When you open Vegas and it detects an offline file, the prompt has an option to specify the location of a replacement file. You can just replace one file at a time with this.

Another option is to copy or move the recaptured clips to the location (and file name) of the original. Vegas will find the clips when you open the project and not reprompt.

As for the original problem, it may be that scene capture did not pick the same split points the second time around. If you still have the project file from before you started replacing clips, open it and tell Vegas to leave everything offline. Then go to the media pool and right click in that window. Then select "Recapture all Offline Media..." from the popup menu. This will launch Vegas Capture with a list of the media files using the original timecode in the media files. Turn scene detection off in Vegas Capture and recapture using the list provided by Vegas.

This should hopefully work since it is not relying on scene capture, but instead is using the original timecode of the original clips.

Hope that you get this straightened out.

Randall

[Adi Head]

randall, your suggestion sounds like a good idea. thanks! just one question. my tapes haven't exactly been recorded with the standard time code. all i did was set the date and time in my pd150 and this is the information which was used by vegas scene detection to split the clips.

will this do? or do i need SMPTE (or however you call it) time code to do what you suggest?

[Graham Bernard]

Every time you turn your ON to record it creates a combined unique timecode START and when you turn OFF it creates another UNIQUE OFF point. As long as you've got any set time and date AND you've got OR have taken your shots without any breaks, meaning you hadn't rolled forward without shooting OR previewed your tape in camera and LEFT "gaps" .. . you will have got "laid" down timcodes for all your INs and OUTs - this is what your capture programme uses and likes to have - uninterrupted timecodes without breaks. Sometimes people go to long lengths to ensure that they have this uninteruppted timecode by FORCING a complete time code by filimng "BLACK" - that is with the lens cap on for the whole duration of the tape. This is called "laying down black" OR Timecode. So, what this ensures when you come to USE this blackened tape, that if you SHOULD introduce a break between one take or shot and another, you have at least the "blacked" timecode, with its numbers, already there! Neat eh?

However, if you just ensure that you not left breaks between your shots OR have introduced them inadvertedly by reviewing your work in camera and have NOT got the previous overlap properly, you should be okay. You don't need anything other than your VidCap programme that came with Vegas. Now, if you HAVE got broken timecode, all is not lost because there are further ways - as you would think - in being able to capture these broken timecode sequences that you have on your tape. Firstly deselect the option for Device Control, then Secondly just let your lett your tape roll and hit the Capture button. Anything that appears within the Preview Capture screen will be captured to the drive and folder you had selected.

Grazie

[Randall Campbell]

Adi,

Grazie covered the timecode issue pretty well, you should be Ok if there are no breaks.

If there is a beak in timecode on your tape, you can try the following:

Let's assume that there is one break at timecode 00:20:00:00. If you look in the list of clips in Vegas Capture, you will like see what appears to be clips with overlapping timecode. For example, a clip after 20 minutes will have a timecode of less than 20 minutes.

You will need to manually figure out which clips are on which side of the break by either remembering, or reviewing the tape.

Now, if you want to capture the clips that are after the break at 20 minutes, manually advance the tape to just after the break. Enable just the clips that are after the break for batch capture and run the batch capture.

If you have a clip that starts very close to the break, this method may not work and you will have to do a manual capture of that clip as Grazie described.

Randall

[Adi Head]

ok. i'll try and let you know how it went. thanks for the help!
adi

[Patrick King]

I've got a question about tapes with a broken timecode. Tell me if this would work:

Capture the entire tape to HD. Now Print-To-Tape on a new tape the same footage. Won't the new PTT version have a continuous timecode? Couldn't you then run a batch capture without the break in timecode?

If this works, it still wouldn't help the original question on recovering a batch capture performed on a tape with interrupted timecode.

[Edward Troxel]

It would have new timecode but it would also have new date/time code as well. You *might* be able to get around the date/time changing by printing back using the CAPTURE program. Another option would be to use something like Scenalyzer Live.