Long shots broken-up into small files when captured.
 

Long shots get broken-up into small files when captured.

Sometimes I film interviews, special events and other subjects which require continuous shooting; 5 minutes, 10 minutes or even longer (of continuous recording). Here is the problem I am running into:

When capturing with the HDcapture utility supplied with the camera 99% of the time the shot will lose synchronization and will be chopped up into many files. This presents some problems when producing final material. The files can be joint together in KDDI but then when played back there are jerks and visible discontinuities in the video, because of thoes few frames lost..

I have used many different top quality tapes with same results. The tapes were rewound before recording, recorder with dummy signal before recording, recorded on brand new blanks, etc... same issue.

When capturing with HDVCR capture utility the file seems continuous but KDDI gets confused when editing at the points that apparently have lost synchronization (they give me some weired packet errors). Video jerks are still noticable.

If anyone has any suggestions how to solve this problem, it would be great to read about it.


Cheers.
Christopher.

This the first reply I got from JVC
 

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Subject: HD Capture
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Thank you for your inquiry. There are 2 possibilities for the file
segmenting. First, make sure your head are clean and that your firewire
cable integrity is not compromised. Second, ensure that your file
system is Not Fat32 as it has limits to the size of a single file.

=20

Dwayne Kersey

Professional Products Support Specialist

JVC Americas Corporation

1700 Valley Road

Wayne, NJ 07470



*****************************************************
And here is my reply to Dwayne Kersey of JVC
*****************************************************

The camera is brand new and there is not even 10 hours of head time on it so I don't see how the "dirty" heads could cause this? In addition I did not see any guidelines for cleaning the heads in the manual or the type/grade of tapes that should be used (I use the best grades anyhow)
ieee1394 cable is not the issue. As I have mentioned in my initial inquiry when recording directly to the hard drive (through the firewire) the file never loses synchronization.
The file system is not Fat32 (I know about the 2GByte limit), so this can't be an issue.

Please advise further.

-Christopher.

Re: This the first reply I got from JVC
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Christopher Winnicki : First, make sure your head are clean. -->>>

Take JVC's suggestion.

Try cleaning your tape heads for about 10 seconds.

Certainly try the head cleaning tape first and if that doesn't work I would try one of your tapes with a different HD10U camera. I'll bet you will find you are able to capture without problem.

The troubles continue, more when warm
 

I don't have another HD10U (or HD1U) to put the tape into, for sure this is the first, best, most logical and easiest troubleshooting method to determine what is the problem.
It seems that when the camera is first turned on (from cold; meaning: the cameras has been off over night) and the capture is started then it captures the longest segments. I was able to capture 1.7GB continues and then the whole thing fell apart and started segmenting.

I tried to capture again from the beginning (once the camera was warmed-up and tape rewound) and the segmentation started almost immediately, 200MB, 110MB, 50MB, 17MB....etc.



Here is the reply to JVC:

I did clean the head with the tape supplied with the camera (JVC M-DV12CL) following the instructions supplied with the tape. There was no improvement to the capture of long takes.
On the first iteration a clip of 43min (take) was broke up into 37 files, here is the breakdown:
1 file at 2.4GB
1 file at 700MB
4 files at 200MB
5 files at 100MB and the rest of the files where all below 100MB. (I think you get the idea)

The second time I captured the same clip (after 10 more seconds of cleaning) the result was even worst. There was no file over 300MB and a total of 43 files. During the capture every time the lcd turned blue another file as written.

It is impossible to work with this kind of video segments because even after "gluing them up" in the KDDI studio there is a very noticeable jerk at the segment junction point. When working with interviews or speaches this makes the material essentially un-salable

Please advise further.

Christopher Winnikci.



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Sounds like a camera problem to me.

We had a customer with a similar problem though not as bad as you are experiencing.

If you have a tape that you want checked on a different camera you can send it to me care of CineForm (address on website) and I can run it through one of our cameras.

I noticed it did the same thing to me a couple of times, then I free'd up lots of disk space on my av drive, defragged it and 'wow' problem solved, I think there is a problem with capture to average consumer 7200rpm HDD's once data is being put onto inner sections of the platters it seems like its not quick enough to capture and files get split up into progressively smaller chunks, might help it did for me.

Regards,
Sam Sharpe

The problem continues
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Phil Wright : Sounds like a camera problem to me.

We had a customer with a similar problem though not as bad as you are experiencing.

If you have a tape that you want checked on a different camera you can send it to me care of CineForm (address on website) and I can run it through one of our cameras. -->>>


Thanks Phil, I think I will take you up on that offer. If I send with return postage paid will you send the tape back?
I just took a look on the www.cineform.com site and the address was not exactly "jumping out" at me.

The hard drives can not be an issue. I have already said that when I am capturing directly to the hard drive the fragmentation never happens. Speed of the drives can not be an issue either (I don't think). I have a two 160GB drives with 8MB buffers setup in RAID 0 configuration (lots of free space) (defragged or not, the same thing happens)
I should also mention that when the fragmentation happens it always coincides with the “blue” screen on the lcd display on the camera.

Chris,

Will certainly ship the tape back to you after I've run it through a camera here.

Here's the address:

CineForm
Attn: Phil Wright
5315 Avenida Encinas
Suite 230
Carlsbad, CA 92008

The tape is in the mail
 

Phil,
I just mailed the tape to the address you have listed.

Please let me know if/when you (if ever) receive it.
Canadian mail system is "best effort" at best, like everything else in this Marxist wonderland.

Is this an error correction problem on the JVC?
Looks to me like it is dumping the whole data stream with certain types of errors on the media read.
-Les

I'll keep an eye out for it.

Phil

I think it's the capture s/w that came with the camera
 

Hi Phillip.

I have tested out my camera (HD10U) with different capture software and the breaking up of continuous clips does not happen like it happens with the capture software that came with the camera.

In particular I have tested it on a computer that had adobe premiere installed on it along with the MainConcept HD plug in, the capture process worked flawlessly not a single frame was dropped.

Another time I tried to capture the whole tape with DVHStool software and there were no brakes in video.

I don't know to what other concussion I can come other than blaming the capture software that shipped with the camera?

-Chris.

While the included software is prone to detecting scene breaks that aren't there and other issues I have never seen it do what you described.

But as long as you are able to capture now that's all that really matters. :)

Phil

My observation...
 

..with the included capture utility, is no discontinous interruptions of the stream. It properly creates a new file at each scene break.

P4 2.8ghz HT
512mb ram
5400 rpm HDD