HELP!!! Dropped frames capturing

Please help...Dropped frames while capturing from Canon XL2 to FCP!!!!

Hi
Can be many things but - as it is a miniDV tape Camera
• connects via IEEE 1394 also called FireWire
A. is it recorded by the same Camera ?
B. is it recorded in SP or LP-mode ?
If recorded in LP-mode - Then You must use same Camera as recorded the tape - That's why I recommend to NEVER use this - when Camera dies so does the tapes.
I used iMovie HD6 as intermediat tool to capture (as it's not so sencitive to drop-outs as FCE/P) - and this I set to NOT import as individual clips. Then I Copied back to a new tape - BUT this time Camera was set into SP-mode.
Eventually one can do a Camera to Camera Copy with receiving Camera set to SP-mode (but I'm not sure it works) (the new tape I pre-record with just any thing of no importance to get a full continuous Timecode - then I use this to take the Copy)
Why I'm not 100% clear is due to that it is about 10 years ago I had this dilemma.
Yours Bengt W

Similar Messages

Warning Drop Frame Capture

Alright, here's my scenario: I captured some HDV footage and now I want to capture the same clips, but I want to do it in regular DV. I've gotten the drop frame capture warning and have tried to capture them without luck. Is this even possible because of the drop frame DV and the non drop fram HDV?
Thanks

If you set the camera to downconvert to DV, you can capture HDV as DV just fine.
It is a camera setting.
Shane

Non Drop frame capture causing out of sync clip?

Hi, All,
I've been having trouble with sync issues on an hour long tape capture.
The material was captured from a Canon consumer DV cam (z80) using firewire into my powerbook g4. (The material on the dv tape was originally recorded in Video 8mm and transfered to the Canon via firewire from a modern Sony Digital 8 camera.)
The sync on the DV tape looks fine when I play it back through the Canon camera. So I'm guessing that I might be losing sync because the camera is dropping frames that don't want to be dropped. I tried to change the video capture settings to non drop frame (in the device control tab of FCP5's audio video settings preference window,) but as soon as I start the capture from the canon, the settings on my log capture window automatically revert back to drop frame. (I don't know this for a fact, but I do notice that the ":" in the timecode box turns back to ";" every time I start the capture.
Does this sound like it is, in fact, a drop frame problem? And if so, is there any hope of getting a canon consumer camcorder to capture at non drop frame rates?

Well, after trying most of the suggestions here, I did find a reasonably hassle free workaround to capturing the hour and fifteen minute footage of 8 bit 32 kHz video to FCP with minimal sync slippage over the length of the footage.
I finally gave up on capturing the material in FCP and instead hooked the canon z80 up to an old version of Toast Platinum 6 I had on my computer. Toast creates a raw quicktime movie file with the extension .dv. Toast then allows you to edit that quicktime file, add chapters, button pictures, etc. thereby making a new file to replace the raw QT it first created. After some experimentation, I discovered that the original raw QT file Toast creates can simply be dragged intact to the FCP browser window, where it becomes a clip with minimal sync problems. I would caution against trying to use the second improved QT file that Toast creates after you've edited your file, as this second QT movie seems less stable than the raw one it first creates.
A final caveat for Toast users. Make sure you set the preferences so that they don't DELETE the original file it creates. There are settings that will tell Toast to do just that either After a Day, After a Week, When You Close the Program or Never. I'd set that to Never, since it can be highly unpleasant to discover that your program has deleted the very file you were planning to work with.
Hope this is of some help.
Thanks to all who pitched in and offered suggestions. Your help has been invaluable!
I now mark this issue Solved. Or at least as Solved as I plan to get it!

Drop-Frame vs. Non-Drop-Frame Capture question

Hi,
I'm using Final Cut Pro 5 capturing 16:9 anamorphic video and removing an advanced 24 frame pulldown from my Canon XL-2. This is for a documentary for which I have captured over 30 full tapes of footage. I've been logging in the clips FIRST, then going back and batch capturing everything afterwards.
My question is this: I have logged everything the same way with seemingly all the same settings. However, when I capture some tapes I get the warning that I'm capturing Non-Drop frame media to a Drop-Frame clip and it could cause problems in the future with relinking. Then some tapes don't give me that message at all. Is there something I'm not noticing about how I log some tapes but not others? Would it have to do with the presets I have Final Cut set to when I'm capturing a tape? I'm fairly positive I've always setup FCP to the proper capture settings before logging anything...but could something else be causing this? Thanks for your help.
-JD

The thing to watch out for, both in logging and in capturing, is when you log or capture multiple tapes with mixed NDF & DF timecode.
There are three or four things that can affect this:
FCP5 and later allow you to set the TC format of the capture preset, such that the Log & Capture window would default to NDF if you are working with NDF tapes.
Otherwise, Log & Capture will still auto-detect during playback when logging, but you have to be sure to play the tape some before logging the clip. If you capture multiple tapes using capture now, You could easily start recording before the time code format updates. This kind of error results in a clip whose in point is the correct "number", but the format is wrong.
During Batch Capture, the device control is not always able to change the time code format. I'm not sure about FCP6, but I am in the habit of grouping my clips in batches according to the TC format. You ma be seeing this alert because you are switching the TC format of the tapes in the batch capture, but device control is "stuck" in DF mode, for instance. This is not an issue during logging, only capture.
I think it may also be possible to override the clip's logged TC format at capture by unchecking "use logged clip settings".
Capturing clips with the wrong TC format can really mess up recapture later. The offset that happens as the format gets converted back increases as the starting hour of the timecode gets bigger.
So basically you can have clips that get logged wrong, and clips that were logged correctly, but captured with the wrong TC. It's easier to miss it when logging, since there's no alert message to pop up. But the other alert is there to tell you there is a mismatch somewhere, preventing you from making the second kind of error. Your only error may only be that you had both DF and NDF clips in the same batch.
There is a trick to get the TC format to switch to the non-default for batch capture - Open Log & Capture and play the tape until you see the TC format update. Now start the batch capture with Log & Capture still open - device control will stay in that TC format now. Otherwise, I think device control switches to the format of the first clip in the batch, but stays there until you cancel and start a new batch.
Hope this helps -
Max Average

PLEASE HELP (Dropping Frames

Alright bare with me I know nothing about the program seeing how I just downloaded it. I'm using a Canon Rebel T1i as my video camera and am currently trying to shoot a music video. The video files come in as .mov files and when I edit them in Final Cut the dropping frame window would come up every second.
After several attempts I converted the videos to Mp4g and when I played the file in FCS it actually played until I added an effect and rendered then the frames would drop again pleaseeeeeee help me.
I have a Black Macbook 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
ATAPI
but Im running FCP off of an external hard drive with 900G free
Im new to this whole professional editing and any help would be greatly appriciated

Ok, I think I can tell you what the problem is:
Im running FCP off of an external hard drive with 900G free
Bad Idea. You want FCP running off your system drive because it's going to be much faster and you don't want to be both running FCP of that drive AND trying to process data. Basically you are telling your external drive to work twice as hard and that's going to kill FCP performance. You just won't have enough connection bandwith to push your application data AND your video data through. You are lucky you aren't crashing the program, to be honest.
FCP should be installed and running from your internal hard drive. Move other, less critical apps and data to your external drive.
Second, what type of external hard drive are you running? If it's USB 2.0 it's probably not going to be fast enough. USB 2.0 has about a 400mbps connection speed (400 million bits ber second) and firewire 400 has a similar data rate.
You want a Firewire 800 external hard drive plugged into your firewire 800 port and the drive should only be crunching video data.
Fix these two problems and it should work a LOT better, but still expect long conversion/compression times if you are running a Core 2 DUO.
One other note: If you are connecting your camera to your firewire port and can't connect your external hard drive at the same time (like me), just dump your captured video data to a folder on your system drive, then disconnect the camera, plug in your firewire 800 drive, then copy your video files and projects to the external drive. Yeah, it takes 2 steps and is a bit of a pain, but it should work a lot better.
Hope this helps!
Louis
Oh, a couple of other notes: I am new to this too, but I have learned a TON over the last month. You don't need an excessive amount of internal hard drive space to capture SDV video. I can capture 60 minutes of SDV video and it takes up about 8GB. Figure 16GB for a motion picture's worth of data. This you can work with on your internal drive (make space if you have to!!!). However, when you go to turn your project into uncompressed frames for DVD authoring your files are going to get HUGE. Make sure your ouput directories in FCP are set to your external drive (your "originals" can stay on your system drive). Unconpressed files can reach 50-100GB or more. 900GB is plenty if you want to do a feature length film.
However, if you are working in HDV (high def) you can expect files close to twice the size on both drives. I am not sure if a core 2 duo can do HDV to be honest, but it's worth a shot. I know nothing about HDV because I am working solely in SDV.
One other note that just saw: You are doing this on a MacBook? You really want the video card of a Macbook Pro for rendering. You should still be able to do it, but it's going to be slow. Snow Leopard (theoretically) should make better use of your hardware, but I can't prove that.

Dropping frames capturing to external hard drive

When I attempt to capture video from my Powerbook G4 using my Lacie External drive as my Scratch Disk, I get the 'dropped frames' error message. However, when I capture through my IMac Desktop G5 onto the very same Lacie External drive I have no problems. Both the Powerbook G4 and the IMac Desktop G5 have about 20G of free space on each of their 80G Hard Drives. Any suggestions? Many Thanks!

There is a good chance that your problem is caused by
using the HD in USB 2 mode.
Most people consider USB 2 is unsuitable for video
editing.
DV needs a drive capable of a consistent high speed
that can only be provided by FW.
Although the claimed speeds of USB 2 appear to be as
high, they are not because they are the MAXIMUM
speeds achieved and are not sustained. In the real
world USB 2 is barely half the speed of FW.
When using your PowerBook you could try
daisy-chaining your camera to the HD to the computer
- by FW of course.
Ian.
Thanks! Great Advice!

Drop frames capture

i have a macpro 2.0 xeon 3 gb ram and the last final cut and quicktime. during the capture i have drop frames (i trying to edit a concert with multicam 4 cameras) importing from a dvcam deck i have drop frames, from a samsung minidv i have drop frames, i am using a internal SATA drive for scratch only for fcp. what's wrong?
(with a old vaio with vista and vegas 8 i have made a cature 4 hours of video entire tape at once to internal hd and edit of multicam with no problems....this is ridiculous....)

Don't know how new you are to FCP so have a look first at one of Shanes Stock Answers
Shane's Stock Answer #12: Dropped frames on capture/playback
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58640
1) Do not capture to your main system drive. Since it is busy reading the operating system and application files, it will intermittently drop frames during capture. Capture to a separate internal drive, or external hard drive (firewire and eSATA for example).
2) Deactivate any anti-virus/filesaver software, including Norton and Virex. For some reason these programs think that the large files created when you capture media are in fact caused by some sort of virus, and they try to prevent this.
3) Check the format of the drive you are capturing to. It should be Mac OS Extended, journaling off. If it isn't, copy your files from it and re-initialize it. If it is any other format, you will encounter problems. If not at first, then eventually.
4) Trash the FCP preference files. Use FCP Rescue available here:
http://www.fcprescue.com
5) Make sure that the hard drives you are capturing to are fast enough to handle the footage being captured to it. A regular firewire 400 drive cannot capture uncompressed HD, or even uncompressed standard definition. A RAID array of drives might be in order for these formats.

Deleting Quicktime 7.3/dropped frames/capture ceases

Dear Knowledgeable Folks,
I've spent more hours on this than I've wanted. I have searched the discussions (here on the Apple site, as well as others web sites) and can't seem to find an answer.
I've had the same problem others have had re: capturing onto FCE HD 3.0 after "upgrading" to 7.3. I have gone to "Library/receipts" and have trashed Quicktime receipts (there were originally three "Quicktime" icons), but when I try to install QT 7.2, a red exclamation point covers my hard drive icon preventing me from choosing it as a destination for the software. The message I get is that a newer version already exists. I've tried deleting other "Quicktime" related items that I've found (using the "Find" menu") in "Folders," "Applications," "HTMLs," etc. I have reinstalled Quicktime 7.3, then again trashed the Quicktime items in "Receipts,"(this time there was only one "Quicktime" icon), but to no avail.
I am wondering if the "Receipts" solution doesn't work because I am running OX 10.4.11, instead of an earlier version.
With the set up that I have--iMac G5, OSX 10.4.11, FCE HD 3.0--do I have ANY other recourse other than "Archive and Install," (which I have never done and seems somewhat time/labor intensive) or is there some simpler fix (NOT upgrading to FCE 4.0), which would be less invasive/expensive?
If anyone can answer this, I promise that I will never, ever, ever to download an update when my FCE is operating correctly.
Thanks,
Gary

Hi Gary.
Please take a look at this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1243747&tstart=0
I started the thread because I had, what sounds like, the same problem that you are having. I received lots of great suggestions, but, for whatever reason, nothing seemed to fix my problem. I finally did the "archive and install" (My first time, too) as a last resort, and it took care of everything. If you go to "Finder" and look up "archive and install" there are good instructions. If none of the other suggestions in the above thread work, give it a try. It is easy to do. It takes about 1 1/2 hours, but that is mostly computer "crunch" time.
Brian

Help Please? Dropped frames during capture!

Hello everyone, I am capturing from a mini DV camera to FC Express HD using a fire wire. I've been doing this for a year and all the sudden I'm getting a "dropped frame during capture" message.
I have read many many discussion boards and tried all of your suggestions...
Using different camera's, different tapes, different firewire cables. I've uninstalled and reinstalled FC EX HD and Quicktime. I tried turning off my external drives and using the internal drive to capture to and created a FC project within the internal drive. I have plenty of space on all drives.
Does anyone have any other ideas? Nothing seems to be working. I appriecate your help!!!!!
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9) final cut express hd

maybe you switch off the warn dropped frames during
capture option... after that watch your clips... is
there any problem still?
I'm really worried now. I turned off the "warn dropped frames" option. After capture, when I playback, I get a warning that there are dropped frames, and then picture freezes. Help! I don't know what to do!
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

HELP PLEASE!! Dropped Frames while capturing....lots of them!

We're running Final Cut 5.1, Quicktime 7.4, and OS 10.4.11 on a Dual 2 GHZ PPC G5. We're trying to capture whole tapes with no timecode breaks. However, more often than not :30 to 1:00 min into the capturing process we get a window that pops up stating there were dropped frames. How can we fix this? We are using a Canon XHA1 as a deck, and we've tried capturing to 3 different drives. Two internals, both 7200RPM and an external 7200RPM via firewire 800.
Any ideas? I would really like some help.

QUicktime 7.4 might be the culprit. Many people having issues.
Gotta do an archive and install and get back to QT 7.2.
Shane

Help! Frames Dropped During Live Capture

I am trying to switch over to Adobe Premiere from Final Cut Pro, but am having a serious problem with frames being dropped during capture. When I do have frames dropped, it doesn't even save the video that it was capturing. All that I get is a corrupt file that won't open.
I'm using a Mac Pro with 3.0Ghz Dual Core Xeon Processor, 9GB 667MHz RAM, and a BlackMagic Decklink SDI card, and am trying to capture 720p 59.94fps video over SDI. I am capturing to an interal 1TB 7200RPM dedicated scratch disk that is not used for ANTYHING but live capture. The OS is 10.6.8.
I only have 3 capture options in Premiere using the Blackmagic card: 8-bit, 10-bit or DVCHDPRO. I want to use 8-bit, because DVCHDPRO is 960x720 instead of 1280x720. But, I have tried DVCHDPRO and it did not work either. I can successfully capture video for 5-10 minutes, but then I always get the Warning that frames were dropped and Premiere fails to save the video properly so that it can be opened.
I have used BlackMagic's speed test app and determined that my internal hard drive's data rate is plenty sufficient for both 8-bit and DVCHDPRO.
Final Cut Pro 6 has always captured perfectly fine using this exact setup. It even gives me a lot more capture options for the BlackMagic card - I'm not sure why I'm limited to only those 3 capture settings in Premiere.
I would really appreciate some help to point me in the right direction to get this resolve. Thanks!

Randal,
It might be a bit tough on a fast computer, especially if the BIOS are not set to show POST at boot-up, a common setting nowadays. As Steve says, the exact key will differ by your BIOS brand.
You may not actually see the particular logo screen, that Steve is talking about. I'd do a cold-boot and immediately tap the ESC key. If this does not get you into your BIOS Setup, then repeat, but tap the F1 key. When I say "immediately," I mean immediately upon hitting the Power On button.
With older computers, you had about 5 sec. to get into Setup, but not anymore. On my laptop, I still have trouble hitting the F8 key fast enough to boot Windows into Safe Mode. I miss it, more than I get it. Could also be that I've been away from gaming for too many decades, and my gunfighter reflexes ain't what they used to be, but I'll just blame it on faster computers. I have the same problem with trying to flush my Preferences in Adobe programs, gotta' hit the Shift-Ctrl-Alt key at precisely the right time. [Exact key combo does differ with some Adobe programs]
Also, if you can give us the name of your BIOS, say "Award," we might be able to give the exact key to hit for Setup. If you have the MoBo manual, it will be in there, plus the correct key. You still have to be quick, however.
Good luck,
Hunt

Dropped Frames During Capture! Please Help!

I have tried capturing numerous tapes and I still get the same error message. "Dropped frames were detected during last capture attempt". I have only recently had this problem and I have read other threads saying that QuickTime could be the problem but I am running on QT v7.3.1 and Final Cut Pro HD 4.5
I have my capture scratch set to a G-Raid 750GB external hardrive and I don't know what else the problem could be. Can anyone help

could be the problem but I am running on QT v7.3.1 and Final Cut Pro HD 4.5
That is your problem. QT 7.3 and FCP 4.5 are incompatible. The best version of QT for that version of FCP is QT 6.5. Unfortunately you cannot simply revert to the older version, as components and system files are installed all over. What you'll need to do is an Archive and Install of the OS...and DO NOT upgrade to QT 7.3.
Shane

Unable to capture files into external hard disk because of 'drop frames '

I haven't been able to capture footage from my DV camcoder thru firewire to an external hard disk in FCP because i get a message saying 'drop frames were detected'.
This happens when i selected this external hard drive as the scratch disk in FCP.
When i deslect it and select my user hard disk as the scratch disk, the capturing works perfectly. But i just want to capture all my capture files into the external hard disk, not my user hard disk.
The external hard disk's speed is 3500 - could that be the problem? Is it too slow? Its connected thru USB and it is Mac Os Extended Journaled. Its got 250gb of space, so that's not the issue.
Can anybody help me?
Thank you.

No, its a Panasonic gs180, a really good camera.
The camera itself is connected to my computer through firewire. Its the hard disk enclosure that is connected to my emac through USB. Anyway, i'm sure that's not the problem, casue like i said, the capturing works fine when i use my user hard disk as the FCP scratch disk.
The problem i have is when i try to capture footage from my camera to the external hard disk enclosure. When i press 'capture now' and press play, the playback stutters and a messsage appears saying, "drop frames detected" and the capturing stops.
I feel like i need to adjust something in FCP itself - like a preference or something - just not sure what.
Thnx for your suggestion though and if you know what i should do, please let me know.

When i am logging/ Capturing my mac is telling me that i am getting dropped frames. would i need to get a LaCie Hard Drive?

When i am logging/ Capturing my mac is telling me that i am getting dropped frames. would i need to get a LaCie Hard Drive?

To be honest, I've had 2 Lacie drives crash out of 2 bought. That's not a good track record for me.
Your best bet (I'm a computer professional, for what it's worth):
Get a hard drive case or enclosure that supports firewire 800 and put your own PC hard drive (SATA for example) 7200rpm or higher hard drive into it.
Let me explain a bit more. External hard drive manufacturers often put no-name hard drives into fancy cases to cut costs and that's how they make a profit. I've have had nothing but problems with with these types of drives. (Like Lacie) You are much better off getting some type of decent drive enclosure and getting your own GOOD hard drive. I would highly recommend Seagate, I have NEVER had a problem with a Seagate drive in 20 years of owning PCs and Macs. Western Digital is also a good brand (though I had 1 crash). These are the types of drives you would put in your Mac Pro. You want to get an SATA hard drive.
I have owned several external cases where the case electronics fried, but the hard drives were still in good shape. Take the hard drive out, put it into a new case you're good to go!
For video you want to make sure that your hard drive case supports Firewire 800! This is mandatory.
My personal favorite, (and I own 5 of these) is Vantec's NexStar hard drive enclosure. They accept any SATA 3.5" drive (I bought mine from a company called ComputerStop). I have yet to have a single problem with any of them. They are solid aluminum casing, you can literally throw them into your backback, drop them on the floor and your hard drive is fairly well protected from impact damage (at least you won't break the case with anything short of a sledgehammer). I am currently looking at getting a second one of these:
http://www.vantecusa.com/gl/product/view_detail/173
(My bad, this is an IDE case up to 750GB)
This the one you want:
http://www.vantecusa.com/gl/product/view_detail/354
As far as the hard drive, you can get a Seagate Baracuda drive 1TB at 7200rpm drive for about $60. The case and hard drive together, maybe a few over $100 for the whole thing. With shipping, and tax figure about $150.
Don't let the price fool you. It will rock.
Story: I got an iOmega "raid" case with two Seagate drives in it and the iOemga case fried, but the hard drives were still good. Fortunately, they were in two removable trays. I put them into two "rocketfish" hard drive cases almost 3 years ago and I am still using them every day today.
Moral of this story: It's the quality of the hard drive that matters, not what case it's in.
Is it hard to set up?
Not at all. You put the hard drive into a tray, (with Vantec case), screw it in. It only goes in 1 way. Plug in a power cable to the drive. Slide the tray into the case (carefully, don't munch the power cable!) and screw it in place. You can literally do it in 10 minutes or less. There are, of course instructions, but if you are reasonably clever, you can literally see what plugs into what just by looking at it.
Sorry for the long reply, but I have a lot of experience with external drives and I hope this helps others.
Finally, when you make it to the big time you can spend $400, get yourself a firewire RAID enclosure and you can upgrade to 4 external hard drives in 1 enclosure. Figure $800 for that set up, but you can go up to 12 TB of drive space with that, or up to 3TB if you are running redundant discs. But that's a whole other ballgame...
Peace.

Dropped frames in Capture: Express vs Pro

Hi, I'd been using Express for a year and a half; last week I bought and installed Studio Pro2, partly because of the following experience which surprised both myself and my lab instructor.
I had a Standard Definition miniDV which resulted in many dropped frames while capturing at my house with Express on my iMac. Subsequently, I successfully captured the entire tape without any dropped frames on my university's computer which is a tower (G5? Intel?) running Pro (Pro6? Pro5? Pro4?). Out of curiousity, I tried capturing the same tape from the same camcorder using the same tower, except this time I did it with the tower's Express instead of the tower's Pro (yes, the tower has both applications installed). The problem of dropped frames returned, just as badly as they had been at my home. We are very surprised!
Is there a reason that Pro does a better job of interpretting potentially bad tape than Express does??? I would have assumed the Capture algorithms to be the same, but that no longer seems likely. Does Apple know that there is a difference between the two applications in the success of Capture? Should they be notified, or am I being naive to consider that they don't know the difference?
Thanks; have a great year...
20" iSight PowerPC Mac OS X (10.4.9)
20" iSight PowerPC Mac OS X (10.4.8)
20" iSight PowerPC Mac OS X (10.4.8)
20" iSight PowerPC Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I just discovered my ''subscription'' response was off:-(( couldn't figure out why nobody's answered my last 2 posts:-)) I'm not rude enough to ignore people who help me, I'm just stupid!
It cost me; two months ago I purchased Studio2 as a direct result of my ''problems'' with FCE; tonight I read your post and realize the problem was actually 10.4.9 + 3.0.1. Needless to say, I'm now on 10.4.10. Lucky for me, I get Studio2 at academic prices, and I will actually benefit from DVD Pro as I now own an HD camera, and Compressor, but I still feel stooopid.
I have not been able to verify the school's versions of FCE and FCP (lab's closed in August), but it makes perfect sense that their FCE is 3.0.1, whereas their FCP was probably one of the earlier (non-offending) versions.
Thanks, and have a great year,
Harvey

HELP!!! Dropped frames capturing

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