newbie help capturing footage from someone else
 

Hi Guys

sorry for asking for help again! i'll try and be quick.

filmed an awards ceremony last night - I did interviews in a corridor outside main room - but for the awards themselves gave MiniDV tapes to the AV guys who were shooting and recording for the big screen.

Now when I try to capture their stuff in FCP firstly it just came up black with 'awaiting timecode message' so after some research i changed the device settings to 'non-controllable device'(where you have to press play manually) this seemed to work, but only for about 3 seconds when FCP says something like:

"data capture encountered a problem reading the data on your source tape - this could be a problem with the tape"

but the tape seems fine when I play and view it in the camera - all though the engineer recording it did mention that the tapes could only fit 40 mins on each when normally they take 1hr footage.

any ideas/solutions or even if you can work out what the problem is would be much appreciated. my deadline for this is literally "ASAP"!

It's not recorded DV. It's recorded DVCam. Get a deck (or camera) capable of DVCam playback and voilá. Sony Z1, PD150/170 cameras will do the job.

thanks shaun - do you know if canon XM2 is capable of this? google not being much help and dont have the manual with me

as a side note - manged to get most of it captured after numerous restarts - but the sound and picture jumps - i expect this is due to problem already identified by Shaun above.

DVCAM is a sony proprietary thing. The good news is that any cheap sony 1 chip mini dv camera will play it back proper. Canon will not. You'll need to find yourself a sony camera.

great thanks

if anyone's interested you can see the finished article here LocalGov.co.uk - Your authority on UK Local Government > LocalGov.co.uk - Your authority on UK Local Government > The 2009 MJ Achievement Award Winners (without the DV cam footage sadly)