HV30/XH A1 compatibility problem
 

Here's a crazy riddle. I have three jobs, all of them shot on the XH A1 (24f) and digitized on the HV30. No problems.

Last week I did a job (same camera settings) and now the HV30 will not digitize the XH A1 footage. All I get is a "Searching For Media" dialogue in Final Cut Pro. The job was shot with two XH A1s, and none of the tapes from either camera can be digitized.

The previous jobs, the ones that digitized just fine, still work in the HV30. In other words, I went back and re-digitized footage from those projects and the footage ingests just fine. But when I pop in a tape from either of the two cameras on last week's job, the footage will not digitize. Instead it will capture one frame, then begin "searching for media" and never find any. This makes me think that something, and I have no idea what, changed in BOTH XH A1's on the last job. For the life of me, I can't imagine what that would be, since I set up both cameras myself. Not only were the settings the same as they've always been, but they were the same settings and the exact same two cameras that I used on the previous jobs whose footage still works fine with the HV30.

Another odd detail: The footage that I cannot capture using normal settings (HDV) was able to be digitized in ProRes 1440x1080 24p. This is how I am making it through last week's job. But the file sizes are too big to continue this way, and again, all my previous footage still comes in okay as HDV.

Does anyone have any ideas what could be going wrong?

Did you check your FCP HDV capture setting? Is it still on HDV 1080P24?

Yes, I have exhaustively manipulated the settings, and the maddening part is that the correct settings work with older footage, just not with the brand new footage.

But I did check that. Good idea though.

Can you digitise the footage correctly using the XH A1 as the player

Very good question, and it is a missing piece of this puzzle. We did try to digitize with the XH A1 on set, and it didn't work. However, we didn't fiddle with settings very much so I don't feel like the result we got on set was definitive.

Immediately after wrap, both of the XH A1's were sent to Irvine for cleaning, which is something I usually do after a string of jobs. So I don't have those cameras at my disposal until next week for testing or digitizing. The results will be telling.

But hypothetically, even if the footage were to capture just fine once the cameras come back, it wouldn't explain why older tapes from those same cameras and the same settings digitize just fine on the HV30, while last week's tapes will not.

Also, a Head Cleaner was run on one camera prior to the shoot, nonetheless, footage from both cameras is behaving exactly the same.

In the last hour, we have also discovered that the footage in question will capture from the HV30 in HDV - Apple Intermediate Codec. But still no luck in its native HDV format.

Hi Michael...
 

Assuming I'm reading this correctly, the HV30 will transfer (hopefully NOT digitize) the 1080p24 contents of the new tapes to the NLE using ProRes (whatever that is) and Apple Intermediate Codec (whatever that is) but not FCP?

If I'm right so far, and the HV30 will play the tapes correctly to it's internal LCD screen and an external LCD screen in HD (not via Firewire to the NLE) then surely this points the finger pretty squarely at FCP?

Why FCP can read tape A and NOT tape B can only, presumably, be a settings mismatch of some description, however, not being a Mac, FCP, 1080p24 etc etc bod I wouldn't even know where to begin.


CS

Your logic is quite sound. Laboring under the same assumptions as yours I have been tweaking settings for two straight days to no avail.

I had a very similar situation with an HV20. It was only capturing one frame at a time from a particular set of A1 tapes. I was shooting a concert and was using some different audio settings from my usual. I had to manually set the minimum and maximum clip capture settings to import the footage.

I'm delighted to hear that someone out there has had the same experience. Yes, when digitizing in HDV, Final Cut Pro only digitizes one frame. Can you tell me what those new audio settings were that caused this problem? I just tried limiting the file size in Final Cut's System Settings menu and that did not seem to help. Any more specifics on either what caused the problem in your case or how you got around it would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Blieden

Yes, I typically use a Sennheiser lav setup but for the live music i used the XLR's with Sure mics. I adjusted them on the fly to get the best sound at the time, so I can't tell you the exact settings. This was the only "different" thing I did and got those importing results. It imported fine from the A1 but the HV20 was grabbing single frames and only from that tape. It may just be coincidence..but it was the only time I used the XLR’s and it was the only time the “single frame” issue ever happened over importing literally hundreds of tapes.
By adjusting the minimum clip cap duration in Vegas to its max, I was able to import the whole tape with the HV20 as one single file.
Also, it wasn’t just 1 frame and blue screen. It was actually grabbing the video as single frames.