A n00b question regarding FCE

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Hi, and thanks for the reply.

Yep, I guess I should be more careful in my terminology..... I'm a COMPLETE beginner, I literally have no knowledge whatsoever....!


When I said 24p, I was really meaning "whatever that setting is that looks a bit like film"...if that means 25p because it's a PAL camera then I'll remember not to confuse the terms.


Anyway, so far I haven't been able to import ANYTHING into FCE. I have the configuration set to PAL/Firewire but I'm still having problems.


If it's any help I'm running OS X 10.4.11 with FCE 4 on a twin processor 1.8Ghz G5 Mac with 4Gb of RAM.

When I go to "capture" footage, I get the multi-coloured "PREVIEW DISABLED" screen, although there is SOME communication between the computer and the camera, as the rewind/ff/play buttons on the screen operate the camera....although the stop button has no effect and no footage is seen in the capture window..


Is it possible that the camera itself is transmitting some sort of timecode which is messing things up which I need to turn off?


Any help would be much appreciated, and in as simple terms as possible. The DVX is clearly a kicking camera and this community is somewhere that I want to become a part of but as yet ... I can't even get started!!! :zombie_smiley: Seriously, any help would be a major good thing right now....:thumbup:

I've not setup my DVX100 for capture in quite some time. The camera I now have been using until I can afford something like an HMC 150 (or whatever is the next new thing in that class...), is disk based, so I can easily transfer clips using the log/transfer menu. But for the DVX100, I'd setup to have the camera 'play', then I would click on the 'Capture Now' button to capture everything in one pass.

FCE does allow for setup to log/transfer in chunks, but because of my horror of using tape, I'd just capture the entire tape in one shot. I'd disable the 'stop on dropped frame', and set the limits such that it would capture an entire 1 hour tape completely. Typically I'd only go through a tape twice... once to record, once to capture.

Then I'd use 'find stop/pause' marks of FCE to then 'chunk out' the captured video.

During capture, there would be some hesitation on the video that was displayed, but the DV data was correctly transfered to disk... in otherwords my iBook was not capable of reading the Firewire, transfering to disk, and updating the video display all at the same time.

Others may have different practices... so don't take this method as the only one... it may be the 'worst' one for many situations... like maintaining broadcast quality since one would have to deal with the dropouts...

However, I was able to capture, edit, and output DV on my iBook which was very convient to carry around... and run off car batteries, in the middle of the desert... all the usual places where people do video editing...

 

[Mark Marx]

I've not setup my DVX100 for capture in quite some time. The camera I now have been using until I can afford something like an HMC 150 (or whatever is the next new thing in that class...), is disk based, so I can easily transfer clips using the log/transfer menu. But for the DVX100, I'd setup to have the camera 'play', then I would click on the 'Capture Now' button to capture everything in one pass.

FCE does allow for setup to log/transfer in chunks, but because of my horror of using tape, I'd just capture the entire tape in one shot. I'd disable the 'stop on dropped frame', and set the limits such that it would capture an entire 1 hour tape completely. Typically I'd only go through a tape twice... once to record, once to capture.

Then I'd use 'find stop/pause' marks of FCE to then 'chunk out' the captured video.

During capture, there would be some hesitation on the video that was displayed, but the DV data was correctly transfered to disk... in otherwords my iBook was not capable of reading the Firewire, transfering to disk, and updating the video display all at the same time.

Others may have different practices... so don't take this method as the only one... it may be the 'worst' one for many situations... like maintaining broadcast quality since one would have to deal with the dropouts...

However, I was able to capture, edit, and output DV on my iBook which was very convient to carry around... and run off car batteries, in the middle of the desert... all the usual places where people do video editing...

Thanks man....er...or woman? :thumbup::beer:

I managed to get footage into my computer at last....even when I shot in CINE mode so that's a big thumbs up!

I took three short clips, the first in "SCENE" (I guess this is a neutral setting....it's F1 on the dial). I also shot this in 4:3. This imported with no problems at all.

Then I shot a minute or so in "CINE" mode, again in 4:3....thankfully, this also imported without difficulty so at last things are looking up! I have a nice arty look and everything is working well.

Finally, I set the camera to CINE but in SQUEEZE. This had the effect of giving me the "dropped frames" error so I took your advice and turned off the abort import setting. I don't know if the error and the SQUEEZE are connected though.

Then I tried again to import the CINE/SQUEEZE clip and it dropped frames but at least it saved it.

The audio is out of sync though on this clip for some reason....



So all in all, I'm a lot further on than I was yesterday...but there's still a few niggles left to iron out. If you know why SQUEEZE is causing the audio to go out of sync I'd be very grateful!

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Then I tried again to import the CINE/SQUEEZE clip and it dropped frames but at least it saved it.

The audio is out of sync though on this clip for some reason....

This is probably due to the dropped frames. You will need to synch up lips with sound...
And is one of the reasons why stop on dropped frames is there... but I value caputure over error message... I'll sync up the audio when this occurs...

 

[Mark Marx]

This is probably due to the dropped frames. You will need to synch up lips with sound...
And is one of the reasons why stop on dropped frames is there... but I value caputure over error message... I'll sync up the audio when this occurs...

Thanks....my whole set up seems a bit "fussy"...! but as long as I start the computer with the camera attached it seems to work fine. Is this dangerous for the camera?