Help! - JVC HD110, FCP, and 720p24 ingest?

[Terry VerHaar]

It's really late at night and I need this answer quickly so I hope no one will take me to task for not finding a post about this (if it's out there).

For the first time, I have recorded some footage in 720p24 on my JVC GY-HD110. Now I am trying to ingest it into FCP6 but I get strange time code in my clips. I used the HDV 720p24 pre-set with a frame rate of 23.98 but the resulting clips have time code that registers frames past 24- seems like they go to 28 (weird??) but I am not sure it's consistently like that. It seems like a pulldown issue but I don't see in FCP where I can deal with it.

Can anyone provide some help as to how I get my 720p24 tape ingested into FCP?

Thanks so much.

TVH

[David Knaggs]

That's right. FCP does that for some reason (it seems to number the frames against an NTSC frame count or something). It's still giving you 24 fps, just numbering it a little weirdly. If you want to know why, I think Tim Dashwood made a post about it.

But there's absolutely nothing wrong with your captured footage. Go ahead and edit it.

[Terry VerHaar]

Originally Posted by David Knaggs

That's right. FCP does that for some reason (it seems to number the frames against an NTSC frame count or something). It's still giving you 24 fps, just numbering it a little weirdly. If you want to know why, I think Tim Dashwood made a post about it.

But there's absolutely nothing wrong with your captured footage. Go ahead and edit it.

Thanks for the input, David. I haven't been able to locate anything Tim has posted later than about 2007 but I'll keep looking. However, it does seem from looking at the tapes vs. the captured footage that I may have lost a few seconds between clips. I'll have to look more closely to see if that is a consistent problem.

Makes me wonder if I should have bought the Canon instead of the JVC? Grrr.

Terry

[David Knaggs]

Originally Posted by Terry VerHaar

Thanks for the input, David. I haven't been able to locate anything Tim has posted later than about 2007 but I'll keep looking.

Don't forget to look in the GY-HD100 forum as well.

Originally Posted by Terry VerHaar

Makes me wonder if I should have bought the Canon instead of the JVC? Grrr.

Aren't the chips in the Canon natively interlaced as opposed to JVC's natively progressive?

Originally Posted by Terry VerHaar

However, it does seem from looking at the tapes vs. the captured footage that I may have lost a few seconds between clips. I'll have to look more closely to see if that is a consistent problem.

There have been many posts (giving solutions to that phenomenon) as well, but here's a very quick 2009 summary off the top of my head:

FCP does cut a few seconds off the beginning and end of a clip if you are running at default settings. Most just allow a few extra seconds of pre-roll and post-roll when they are recording. Then it's no sweat. However, you can adjust your FCP settings down to just one second pre-roll and one second post-roll. (In the Audio/Video Settings, go to the "Device Control Presets" and adjust Pre-roll and Post-roll to 1 second by making a new preset. The full steps have been given in a couple of posts.)

Some like to capture through FCP directly as ProRes (or ProRes HQ) by going to Audio/Video Settings and selecting it in the "Capture Preset" drop-down menu.

But the most "foolproof" solution, if you're having pre-roll/post-roll problems or even experiencing mid-clip breaks, is to capture with DVHSCap and then wrap the captured .m2t file in a QuickTime wrapper using ClipWrap. There's a sticky thread in the GY-HD100 forum explaining this marvellous application.

DVHSCap is part of the “FireWire SDK 20” package and can be downloaded from this page (you have to scroll down to find it):

Apple Developer Connection - Development Kits


Another way is to capture as a QuickTime on a hard drive while you are recording, such as DR-HD100 or even one of the other FireStores (using ClipWrap).

There might be a few other methods too, but these ones are all pretty good.