Capture Problems
 

I'm having problems capturing some of my footage. For example during capture in the middle of a shot FCP says I have a timecode break? I've tried different options on timecode break like make new clip and warn after capture but that dosen't seem to help. Before I used the tape I used the edit to tape to put black and continuous time code on. Any suggestions? I'm also wondering if there is some kind of workflow that could use iMovie to capture, it seems to work fine all the time. *sigh*

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Nate,

Can you tell us a bit about your setup? Which Mac? Are you logging to an internal or external disk? How much RAM? Have you done all the performance chores:Turned off AppleTalk? Fast User Switching? How is the camera connected to the Mac: Direct or daisy chained through the hard drive?
Does the break happen at the same point in the tape each time? Or move around? (Same place? It may be a bad spot on the tape. Moves around? Could be system problems, but I'd also clean the heads.)
...

I'm running a dual 1.8 GHZ G5 with 1.25 GB of RAM. I'm capturing to a second internal hard drive through my camera which is directly connected via firewire. I've done the "performance chores", I'm running FCP 5.02 on OS 10.4.2. The TC breaks seem to be in the same spots, but they're happening on multiple tapes in the middle of shots. I've also tried with two differnet sony cam's to capture. *sigh*

anyone.....?

I have seen a similar problem, but it was an incompatibility problem with Canon cameras, not an FCP software issues. FCP4.5 gives me the same errors sometimes when I capture footage shot on a GL1, XL1 or XL1s using something other than the camera for playback. I have been able to get around it by using the tedious method of recapturing lost sections (sometimes twice before I could get it to play through) and splicing the footage together later. Is it possible that you are seeing a similar problem? I know you tried capturing in two cameras, and if one of them is the camera used to shoot the footage then this post probably won't help at all.

If this only happens with the tapes you are trying to capture now and never with other tapes using the same deck and computer then it's fair to blame the tapes. Have you played back the problem spots to check for continuous timecode and dropped frames?