[MacDV] Capture Stops Due To Missing Data On Tape

[James Asherman]

On Sunday, December 26, 2004, at 01:28  PM, Richard Brown wrote:

> With the right deck, like a Sony DSR25, Final Cut will search the tape 
> after a data dropout, find the next scene, cue up, and digitize the 
> next scene as a new file. This will happen until the tape is done. 
> I've had a few DV tapes which resulted in 10-20 digitized segments.
>
> This is an issue which disappears as the video camera itself gets more 
> sophisticated. A Sony PD150/170, for example, properly inserts the 
> next recording with frame accuracy to the end of the last piece. 
> Essentially, in old analog terms, the camera assemble edits as it 
> records each new scene. The resultant tape has clean time code from 
> beginning to end.
>
> Richard Brown
>

That's all very nice and true. But even though my decks do exactly as 
you described, when confronted with a blank section or timecode break, 
or even an average glitch, there are these
other classes of tape problem that crop up . Again, my stuff will pause 
cue itself up and start a new clip, very well, but when this other 
class of glitch comes it just stops with a message saying " Final Cut 
has detected a problem with the data on the tape". Sometimes this may 
be due to some  mechanical misalignment but often it seems to be 
dropouts on the cheap tapes themselves, possibly exacserbated from the 
heat of using DVCam speed on small cameras for a 1/2 hour or more 
continuous..

I also wanted to say that Alex' suggestion of turning off machine 
control is in fact a good first option and even before that I change 
the timecode from DV to LTC or whatever, it is an incremental way of 
ferreting out and dealing with this, with the least damage done to the 
process.
Jim