Buggy DV-tape = poor quality capture in FCP! Or does it?

Hi all!
I'm in a bit of trouble. The thing is as follows: I've shot some video of my 5 month old son, two 60 minute FUJI tapes. My wife and I would like to make a DVD as a Christmas gift for our parents. The first tape is good, no problem what so ever capturing it into FCP 5.2.1, it just runs like a charm! However, right around tape two, is where my life becomes less funny. FCP simply refuses to capture anything beyond the first 25 minutes. It claims that something is wrong with the tape, and then it stops. If I try to carry on, FCP will continue for about 3 seconds, then 11 seconds, then 1 minute and so on. So I kinda gave up on that approach.
I also have iMovie HD, and just for the fun of it, I gave the same tape a spin in iMovie ... It went for it - the very first time. The quality leaves a lot to be desired though. The image quality is buggy as if frames are being skipped or dropped, the sound is poor, it keeps breaking up, in the same spots as where the frames goes bye-bye! However, it is now on my computer. It should be mentioned that I DID NOT extract the audio in iMovie HD
Having a huge amount o faith in FCP + Soundtrack Pro, I did the unthinkable: I imported the iMovie clips into FCP, and there they are, just sitting there, lauging at me!
I think I have some of the breaking-up sound issues under control with the ambient sound footprint-thingie. It sounds a lot better now that I have been able to fill in the "blanks" in the STP editor.
Here comes my real question... Finally:
Is there a way to (as easy as possible) fix/cut out the video problem areas as well? In STP the sound is represented in a visual, very easy to understand kind of way, where I'm able to spot the gaps as flat lines in between the sound. Does FCP have a similar view, or anything as usefull?
Is it clear at all what I'm trying to say, or is it just plain garbage??
Anyway, thanks in advance!
BTW: Can you guys recommned any DV-Tapes as being superior to others. I'm not really too keen on FUJI right now, and if there is a problem with the tape, you only find out when it's too late: at the editing table!
DP 2GHz G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8) 3G Memory, BlueTooth, Aiport, 20" Cinema Display

You should use the head cleaner every 100 hrs. or so and ideally you would take it in once every few years to get a professional cleaning, depending on the camera.
There's also cleaning of the lenses and light dusting of the camera body every week or so, depending on how often you shoot. Make sure you use a microfiber cloth that's safe for use on camera lenses, since other subtly-abrasive cloths that may appear to be acceptable may scratch and subsequently damage the lens.
Start out with a head Cleaner. The ones that look like a tape that you play in the camera for a few seconds. That'll probably fix your problem in the future. It it doesn't you might want to think about sending the camera in to be cleaned.
For now "capture now" using the non-controllable device setting to avoid any errors
Hey Jim, was this the kid you were talking about?

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Quality capturing with FCP & an analog converter?

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A few points: [cliff notes version: get a monitor]
1. Without a TV (aka NTSC/PAL Video Monitor) to see your footage sent out via Firewire, you have no way of know what your footage looks like. QT may do a better job of representing DV stream files, but it in no way means they are of higher quality.
2. Capturing in Final Cut Pro IS computationally intensive. Here's why. DV stream, (the stuff iMovie uses) is a direct write out of the muxed (mixed audio & video) as it is written on the tape by your camera. FCP (or more accurately Quicktime) takes that Muxed stream and separates the audio and video into individual streams IN REAL TIME. If the computer can not keep up, dropped frames or corrupted files are the result.
3. This demuxing does not change the QUALITY of the video. The file started as ones and zeros and remains as ones and zeros. There is nothing to convert at this point - it still is a direct digital transfer - just pulling apart the strings.
4. Playing these more complex Quicktime files places greater demands on your system than iMovie's DV stream.
5. The people who wrote FCP recognized that displaying a high data rate file on a limited computing platform may overwhelm that platform. So, in response, they designed FCP to create a low resolution proxy for the display.
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Now, the limited ram, video speed, hard drive capacity and frontside bus speed of your computer is being tested by this process and is not holding up well. A second hard drive to be a dedicated media drive will help. More RAM will help. A faster CPU will help. A machine that is configured from the beginning to run these kind of applications will help.
I'm not trying to be mean here, just trying to explain the complexity of the situation. I really do hold the Apple marketing people responsible for over selling the program. It is NOT rocket science, but does demand a much greater understanding of technology than most people I know to able to actually grasp.
good luck,
x
[cliff notes version redoux: get a monitor]

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Shane's Stock Answer #2: Blurry playback
ONLY JUDGE THE QUALITY OF YOUR MATERIAL ON AN EXTERNAL NTSC MONITOR, OR AT LEAST A TV.
The canvas shows you what happens after the codec you are working with has been applied. The viewer shows you the material in its native format.
1. Disable overlays on the canvas
2. Make sure you've rendered everything (no green bars at the top of the timeline
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=24787
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Melfice,
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function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
The frame rate is 1038 X 882
That is a very odd frame size, and one that probably won't work well no matter what workflow you use. You asked:
function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
how could he better capture and export to match my workflow?
Have him capture and export to match your desired export frame size for the finished project.
function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
How would you suggest I change my workflow to handle the interlaced and progressive issue?
I can't answer that until I know exactly how you intend to deliver your finished video. Any answers to your other questions will also likely depend on your intended delivery format and media.
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Hiya everyone!
I've taken some work home from the macs at work, but can't open it on my PC.
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http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7753066#7753066
and
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8159317&#8159317
My problem is almost identical to these 2...
No one in the whole world seems to have an answer...
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HEy, I have been looking into this problem... i also wanted to play quicktime files using my pc... The last thing i tried was downloadiing these codecs
1)apple pro res *for pc
2)mpeg 2 codec for pc
I have HDV files captured on a Mac G5 they are 30p 720,
I think i am close to solving the problem because: before installing the codecs i couldn't see the video and only audio.. but now i open it and i can see the video partially... here are my screen captures....
anyone interested in getting this solved???,... i would also like some help in importing m2t files from VLC player to HDV split where they can be read and edited. Thank you.
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A client gave me 14 home-made DVDs containing video of high school basketball games and asked me to create a highlight video. I edited the VOB files in Premiere CS4 (4.1.0) to pull highlights and compile them into a single highlight DVD.
It is very likely that the double MPEG-2 encoding is degrading the material too much. Is it possible to get back to the client's original tapes? That would save one MPEG-2 compression. Otherwise, what you have is probably as good as it will get.
Good luck,
Hunt

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You can not see which programs have been involved in each compression, but as far as I know, at least some programs store information about both themselves (last edited by) and the compression level in the exif/iptc data.
The right way to work is to get as much data as possible off the colour capture in high bit and do the exposure correction getting into a normalised colour space either still in high bit or in scaled down 8 bit to save space.
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As interchange file format for corrected colour captures stored in the normalised colour space, either use a linearised RGB space or high-bit CIELab. The file format should be lossless TIFF and not lossy JPEG (the way JPEG works internally is lossy by definition).
Live Picture and Apple Aperture are alike in the way they work. Rather than taking the pixels into memory for correction, which is they way Photoshop worked, they construct a colour managed proxy for manipulation and then provide for a rendering that is non-destructive.
Live Picture required ColorSync 2 and Apple Aperture is unable to work without colour management for the same set of reasons. Apple Pages is unable to work without colour management for the same set of reasons, although there are additional reasons for Apple Pages.
Just my ten cents,
/hh

Buggy DV-tape = poor quality capture in FCP! Or does it?

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