Sony Memory Recording unit plugin shortens clips

Question

Hi all
For months I've been tearing my hair out during editing when countess clips shot on our Sony Z5's all stopped short of where they should have. I blamed the camera operators, including myself, but after I found a dozen 5 second panning clips in a row all stopped short before the pan ended, I knew it wasn't camera operator error and turned my attention to Log and Transfer.
Within FCP 7.0 we capture HDV footage from flash cards using Log and Transfer with the Sony memory unit plugin for FCP installed. A look at the backup files (a simple direct copy from the flash card) shows the clips run their full length as filmed. Something is obviously happening during the FCP import.
Has anyone else seen this problem? Can't say I've noticed this on our EX1, but then again that uses a different plugin for log and transfer.

Answer 1

My No.1 editor's complaint "too much footage". Also, with our move to EX1 cameras on the high
end weddings, AU$800 32Gb SxS cards are too valuable to fill with overshooting. So now we try to
shoot more economically, but it appears I have to tell the team to ignore that and just let it roll
like a madman when you use a Z5.
When I was a kid shooting 16mm for news, I shot like a madman, insisting the B-roll was precious and film was cheap. My boss informed me, "in this business, shooters are cheap and film costs real money." So I learned to shoot a 2-minute story on four minutes of film by carefully preplanning the story with the reporter and editing in my head in the camera. Reduce the number of choices and you reduce the editing time, simple math. The real problems with any type of field production arise when the producer cannot function as a decision-making machine and assumes spraying everything from multiple points of view will yield a tight edit.
bogiesan