You can shorten the gap to about 2-3 seconds if you adjust the pre roll & post roll in the Audio/Video Settings. Select the "Device Control Presets" tab, then click on the HDV firewire profile and hit the EDIT button to change the settings.

After saving the new profile, make sure it's selected with a check mark next to it.

I think we're talking about the same thing - the video is rolling the entire time, right? I'll certainly give it a shot, but I'm not talking about Batch Digitize - I'm referring to Capture Now where the tape just rolls in and clips are made at each stop/start mark...

Yes, shortening the pre/post roll to 1 second works for "capture now" as well to help shorten those gaps.

Well, that *will help things a bit, but it does leave some room for improvement....

So have you tried it yet?

It helped to make my gaps 2-3 seconds instead of 5-7 seconds.

I don't even capture in HDV anymore anyway. I use AIC simply because it gets rid of that GOP, and gives faster rendering times.

JagYouAre
 

I should have just done it, but I plain forgot! I just put together a short piece on a '67 black Jaguar on a mountain road. I've got a lot of work to get to Top Gear, but it was pretty cool. I shot it 24p again, but tortured myself using DVHS and Streamclip...for some reason.

I actually have no desire to use HDV - it was chunky in the timeline, in fact, the only reason I wanted to was because it was "native" and I wanted to test and see if there was any reduced artifacting - which I'm not sure AIC introduces. I can't tell much of a difference.

What's interesting is that the transcoded footage is marked 59.94 - yet plays fine in the timeline. When I capture HDV 24p via AIC, the footage gets marked that as well, but plays super fast (hm, like 60pfs!) and when it captures, it stutter/spurts the entire time....so there's a correlation and some other problem...

I'll post that video on the Jag tomorrow.

I finally got around to changing that preference - it helps - it's probably going to work for me. Not perfect, but it is much better.

Here's the thread on that '67 Jaguar (test) shoot. Here's a link to page on the site.

Just out of interest, what gear are you guys using? I'm new to FCP (Avid in the past) but I just finished a 90-min documentary with about 3000 edits (including audio) in native HDV1 and then 10-bit uncompressed. Everything was incredibly slick and responsive on a single timeline. The project became a bit sinister in size but editing performance was just fine. Also, aside from the shot-change breaks I had no issues conforming the timeline moved over from the Avid offline.

I'm running a MacPro 2xdual2.66 with 3GB RAM and a RAID0 eSATA stripe. I realise this is a pretty new and fast set-up but it's by no means cutting edge.

I'm FCP as well, Dual 2.5 Power PC. What was your frame rate? I would expect it to go smooth...

Did you bring the captured footage from Avid as well, or did you conform it recapture in FCP?

It was conformed from an Avid offline, so shot breaks presented no problem because I was just recapturing decomposed clips from the Avid, none of which ran up the ragged end of the shot. It's also worth mentioning that during the shoot we deliberately left ourselves an extra 5 seconds head/tail on each shot on top of the usual head/tail margins, based on advice from JVC and others. With a new fast Mac, plenty of RAM and under these controlled conditions there were no problems at all. I can see how trying to capture an entire tape in one hit is a pain but this is something we would rarely try to do from something like HDV or DV - from DigiBeta yes but not from a purely acquisition format. I do understand that others choose to work differently and capture an entire tape for whatever reason. However, many other NLEs that support HDV have this sort of problem on shot breaks - Edius is a good example. Liquid seems to behave much better on HDV capture than any other NLE I have used FWIW.

We were working with 720p/25 HDV1.

Delay in capturing
 

YES!!! I am getting the delay as well, and it stinks. I have the 110u and at 1st thought it was my Mac slowing down but its not. JVC help!!

leaving at least 5 secs of preroll when shooting is video 101. I've been shooting for 20 years and would never dream of intentially shooting without preroll, thats just bad shooting and asking for trouble. my personal habit is that if I am shooting HH, I hit the trigger before even getting the camera up to my eye. by the time I've framed, focused and irised 10 secs may of rolled by and I never miss a shot.

what I have found is that if you do mark a real I and O in capture, you can capture the entire clip. its when you simply try to capture the tape without marking IO that you get the 5-7secs break.

Steve Oakley

Shooting pre-roll is simply not always the best option. I shoot candids on incentive trips, usually rolling 6-8 hours of tape in a 3-4 day period. I pull hundreds of shots from every tape. If I were to pre-roll 5-10 seconds, not only would it add dramatically to my digitize time, I would spend an extra few hours every day sifting through material. Time that I don't have on a quick turnaround edit.

I have to be able to capture tapes in their entirety and then sort through shots. Trying to mark I and O with the speed of firewire is not an option when you're pulling hundreds of clips.

Also, when you're shooting for people's actions and reactions, you have to be able to pull the trigger as you see it occuring. The other option is just to always be rolling.

So while shooting pre-roll may work in certain shooting instances, it does not work for all.

Has anyone had the chance to test out this update yet? It would certainly help with timelapse shots. We were doing a bunch of those, rolling 10-20 minutes at a time. When using HDV in FCPro, the shots would be broken up. I think that's what this addresses, not the clip start delay in FCPro.

That is the real killer problem for us as well. We can't use AIC or MPEGstream Clip because they don't support HDV Timecode. We do documentary and the sound bites from the tapes are transcribed and logged into the scripts for the editor. We need to maintain TC throughout the production process to stay in sync with the script. When hundreds of clips are in the bin, having TC is a god send.

I don't know that everyone has that same need for timecode, but because of it we are suffering through the clip start delay and trying to shoot on Firestores on each shoot.

Totally. Just to be clear, I'm advising an EXTRA 5 seconds pre-roll on top of the usual 5-7 secs (or whatever) margin that people are used to. Also, it's not such a bad idea to let the camera roll on in short breaks between takes since DV tape is pretty cheap.