Canon XL2 & Final Cut Pro Capture Problems
 

First off, my DV deck is at Sony repair in NJ. Therefore I am capturing my 3 reels of 24p 4:3 aspect ratio DV footage with my Canon XL2 and Final Cut Pro 5.0.4 on my Quad G5 (10.4.6) Unfortunately Final Cut continually freezes up and it stop capturing my footage throughout the tape. I am capturing with DV 48k preset with 2:3:3:2 advanced pulldown conversion to a Firewire 800 Lacie Drive. Unfortunately I cannot get this video off of the tapes and into Final Cut Pro successfully, did I mention I need to capture 4+ tapes by today. Help!

2nd Question,
Can I capture these tapes with my consumer Canon Optura 20 and still maintain the 24p frame setting? Do I risk lowering the video quality by using this camcorder, which probably doesn't support 24p?

3rd Question,
The Canon XL2 works fine while capturing with iMovie, but refuses to work successfully with Final Cut Pro 5. What do I need to change in my system or user settings to allow the XL2 and 24p footage to work seamlessly with Final Cut Pro 5?

This is my first post at DVi and I have searched this forum and haven't found the answers I need. But I am very impressed with wealth of knowledge and professionalism in this community. Please help me with my questions and I will work to share my knowledge with this community in the future.

Thanks

Gregory Wilson
412.398.3656
wilgory.com
reel.wilgory.com

For the second question, I would expect the consumer Canon to work. I use a Canon ZR100 to load 24pa footage into Final Cut. It delivers it as 29.97, and it's up to Final Cut to remove the extra frames as it comes in.

Try this for some tips on capture and sequence settings:

http://www.mandarinpictures.com/stephenzinn/

Greg,

I don't know if this is the same issue as I had capturing with FCE or not. I had a problem caused by capturing through the firewire port on my external drive rather than the Mac's native Firewire port. Once I started using the native port everything has worked flawlessly. The problem I had was with a message saying "Allocating Disk Space" that would never go away.

Good luck,

Colin

Colin, I appreciate your quick reply, unfortunately I am using the Firewire 400 port on the front of my Quad G5 and the Lacie disk is plugged into the back of Tower in the Firewire 800 port. So that probably isn't the problem. Do you have much experience with capturing 24p footage from the Canon XL2 into Final Cut Pro 5? Thanks for trying to help, I really appreciate it since I am new to this online community.

It was worth a shot.

I haven't much experience other than when I first got the XL2 a month or two back. I tried regular 24P capture and it looked interlaced to me. I also had double images of small fast moving objects that moved horizontally. Like a bird flying by. I haven't had that problem in 60i. I plan to do time lapse stuff mostly and it seems that the 60i works better for me.

If you are lucky you will get a response from some of the other members. Ash is always knowledgeable. I have learnt a lot from him in the last month or so.

Ash, if you are reading this, thanks BTW. And thanks to all others who contribute.

Colin

actually, I remember running into issues similar to yours when I first got my G5 - since the firewire800 port on the back is on the same bus as the firewire400 ports, it doesn't really work very well with FCP.

There are 2 solutions:
1. switch off the external drive, capture to an internal drive and then drag the files and edit off the external

2. What I did was I bought a PCI firewire800 card and I connect the drive to that instead of the onboard connector - you could try that.

Andrew is right. You should not try to capture from the firewire port to a firewire disk. Capture to the internal drive and then move the files to the firewire disk afterwards. You should then be able to edit the files just fine from the firewire disk.

Since the FW800 and FW400 are on the same bus internally, when you plug in that 400 device, the bus has to slow to that speed so your FW800 device won't be 800 at that point.

Also a good idea if you don't want to capture to the internal disk is to do what Andrew suggested and buy an additional firewire interface that will separate the devices onto different busses.

Good luck,

-gb-

p.s. It doesn't matter what type of video you shoot, it all comes down the pipe in a 60i stream. That's why your NLE has to be able to recognize and apply the proper pulldown before you can edit.

Thanks for all of the replies, everyone has been extremely helpful and friendly. I really appreciate all of the help. Right now I just want to take these 4+ tapes back to work and start logging and capturing right now. I really found the link that Curtis Cates posted to be extremely helpful in getting a complete, one stop understanding of 24p. I'm sure I'll still have a question or two, but that was an invaluable resource. I'm pretty sure that when I change the capture scratch from the firewire to my internal scratch drive I won't have any problems. Thanks for reminding me of these system limitations Greg Boston!

The only question that is still somewhat of a mystery to me is, "Can I use a consumer camcorder as a deck to capture reels that were shot at 24p?" Would FCP automatically understand that the reel was 24p if I set it in the Capture preset? I'm just curious, because I would like to be able to capture on my consumer camcorder when possible, but I cannot risk quality loss.

I've always shot at 29.97 fps and I've never had to worry about any of these settings. Does anyone know of a reason not to just use 60i and make the sequence in FCP 24p or 23.98 if you want that 24p look in the end?

Thanks again for all of the help, I really appreciate it. Hey Colin, I think your photographs and technical resources are top notch also!!

Gregory Wilson
412.398.3656
wilgory.com
reel.wilgory.com

See the p.s. in my previous post. Yes, you can use a consumer camcorder for playback. No matter what you shoot, it always comes out of the camera in 60i.

You could shoot 60i and then de-interlace and convert to 24p but that would be a waste of your camera's talent for making 24p images. FCP will recognize and apply pull down to 24p 3:2. You'll also find a menu selection for 'Advanced Pulldown Removal' if you shoot 2:3:3:2 which allows a full recovery of 24 complete progressive frames from 60i encoding.

-gb-

GB, That's some excellent information, sorry I must have read over your p.s. in your previous post. Thanks again for your help. Since all of the decks will send the video out as 60i, could I shoot 60i and capture with the 24p video sequence setting in FCP and get the same results as shooting 24p on camera, correct?
But this would be unnecessary because the camera can do it for me in the first place! Horray! If I was stuck having to mix multiple clips with different frame rates, I could syncronize the playback rate and look by recapturing 60i footage with 24p 2:3:3:2 advance pulldown?

Are their any pros or cons to using 24p footage in a 29.97 fps sequences with no field dominance? Or should the sequnce match the clips frame rates of 24p or 23.98 fps?

I'm sorry that I have 20 questions in this thread, I just want to ensure I won't have any more questions regarding the Canon XL2 features and editing 24p in FCP in future, or any incertaincies. I really appreciate everyones help and friendliness. Everyones answers and contributions have be extremely knowledgable, this forum is the best!!

Greg,

Would that explain why my 24P footage looks interlaced? I have tried capturing in both iMovie and FCE and the results were the same. Is there a setting I need to make in FCE to get it to do the pulldown automatically?
Also do you know why I get the double images in 24P? See my post above.

Colin

Yeah, I don't know about FCE and am pretty sure iMovie doesn't understand progressive, let alone 24 frame progressive. I do know that there are plug-ins available for iMovie but don't know if any would perform the de-interlace and pulldown for you. You might have to go the plug-in route with FCE as well. There are capture and sequence presets in FCP but I don't know about FCE.

-gb-

Thanks Greg,

I will do some investigating. You may be right I may have to go the plug-in route. I think Nattress will work in FCE.

Colin