Recording straight Hard Drive audio out of sync

[angela]

I just had a shoot where I recorded footage straight to a hard drive through a Power Book G4. I plugged the hard drive and the firwir from the cable into an inserted Firewire 800 card. The first things I shot were 1080i the second was 720p30p. Either way the audio was out of sync by 9 frames. Any ideas why this happened? I set the capture setting the same as the camera settings.

[babbesuniplex]

I've had that same problem. I had the external hard drive connected to the firewire 800 port of my powerbook G4 and the HVX200 connected to the firewire 400 port of the computer. When I log and captured, the footage was out of sinc.

I would love to find out if there is a way to fix this problem also.

[BenB]

Plug the camera into the FW400 port, as it's FW port is already only a 400 speed port.

Also, triple check your camera and Project audio settings, they must match exactly. Not matching the sample rate (most important) and bit depth exactly is the most common cause of audio drift in FCP.

And you should use the capture presets to match the camera, don't try to customize anything.

Also, you can't use a hard drive and camera on a Powerbook at the same time, using only the ports built into the Powerbook, as all of the Powerbook's FW ports, of any speed, all use the same data buss, which won't hold up to the bandwidth required for capturing from tape. You really do need the FW800 PCMCIA card to plug the hard drive into.

If it's short captures, you can capture to the internal drive, then move it to the external drive for editing. Long captures won't work this way.

[angela]

Thanks! I did have the hard drive plugged into the FW800 PCMCIA card using the 800 port but I also had the camera plugged into the 400 port on the card. I tried it the other way of having the camera plugged into the port on the laptop and the hard drive into the 800 port on the FW800 card. It was the same issue. I will do some further testing then assuming now that the problem must have been a capture settings issue. Thanks again.

Angela

[angela]

I did a test and got it to work this time and figured out what I had done. It posed another question that maybe you have the answer to.

This is where I went wrong:
Since I was shooting at 720p30p, I set my easy set up to DVCPRO HD 720p30.
The sequence setting will default to DVCPRO HD 720p60 (there is no option to set the sequence to DVCPRO HD 720p30).
So in the Log and Capture Capture Settings I set my Device Control to Non-Controllable Device and my Capture/Input to match my Easy Set up at DVCPRO HD 720p30 48kHz.

The audio was anywhere from 9 to 15 frames out of sync.

Upon testing, this is where it went right:
I set the Easy Set up to match the sequence settings at 720p60 and the Log and Capture Capture/Input setting also at DVCPRO HD 720p60

This worked.
My new question is why if my camera is set to record 720p30p does every setting in the computer have to be 720p60? Why does the sequence setting become 720p60 without any 720p30 option? If 720p30 is really 720p60 why is there the option of setting anything to 720p30 at all?

I hope you or anyone can shed some light on this issue of frame settings in FCP.

Thanks in advance for any response.

Angela

[BenB]

There is, in fact, a DVCPRO-HD 720p30 Easy Setup. In your project, delete all Sequences in your Bin. Then when you open Easy Setup, make sure the "show all" box is checked, and select "DVCPRO-HD 720p30", then make a new Sequence. Double check it, it should be 720p30. In your Sequence Settings, the QuickTime Compressor will in deed show 720p60, but that's just the "compressor" model FCP is using, not the actual setting of your Sequence, as you can see by the "Editing Timebase" setting being 29.97.

Then in your Log & Capture window, in the Capture Settings tab, set Device Control to DVCPRO-HD Firewire, and Capture/Input to "DVCPRO-HD 720P30 48Khz"

What version of FCP are you running?

[angela]

I am using version 5.1.2 on my quad but on the G4 Power Book that I used in the field for these interviews is version 5.0.4

I don't know waht happened. According to my previous email I reported and tested using the 720p30 Easy Setup and the Caprture Import at 720p30 and it didn't work. I just tried it again per your direction in the email minus the control device (i still had to use non-controllable device setting-it didn't work using the HD FW setting)
and it worked. So now I'm not sure anymore what I did before. But thank you for your response. It's working now. Is it okay to plug the camera 400 port into the FW800 card as well as the hard drives? That's how I've been doing it.

Sincerely,
Angela

[BenB]

Plug the camera into the FW400 port. Get your laptop up to v.5.1.2! I have used the DVCPRO-HD Firewire Device Control with my HVX-200 and it worked fine. Not sure why it's not working on yours.

Problem with using only the built-in ports for both camera and hard drive on the laptop is that they both use the same data buss. It can't handle both the camera stream and the hard drive stream at the same time, usually. Most folks get a Firewire card for the card slot to plug the hard drive into. That splits the sterams off onto two different data busses.

[angela]

Thanks again. Am updating the laptop today!

[esperman]

hey guys, what settings do you use in FCP when streaming 720 24p over firewire?

[BenB]

DVCPRO-HD 720p24 for both your Sequence and your Capture settings.

[esperman]

Thanks for the info Ben.

[Denis Haineault]

...
Problem with using only the built-in ports for both camera and hard drive on the laptop is that they both use the same data buss. It can't handle both the camera stream and the hard drive stream at the same time, usually. Most folks get a Firewire card for the card slot to plug the hard drive into. That splits the sterams off onto two different data busses.

I might be getting a MBP later on. Are the two FireWire ports (1x800, 1x400) from the new MacBook Pro sufficient, or would you still need an additional FireWire card?

[BenB]

I believe you'd still need a Firewire card for the external drive.