AJA LA

Hi Guys,

Having trouble with my AJA (SD version), running with my 2.5MHz G5|2,5 Gig RAM, FCP 5, QT 7.0.3| OSX 10.4.2 .. I get a message when capturing that goes along the lines of 'VTR Stopped. Check VTR. Do not continue... etc..' I downloaded the uninstall software from AJA and ran it. Then reinstalled the ver. 2.2 driver and was able to continue... now a day later, the same problem appears. This means I can't capture off BETACAM...

any thoughts..?

Ta...

<<<BETACAM>>.

Which one? BetaSP or DigiBeta, not that it makes that much difference, and does your capture profile match the deck?

You do have a good quality 422 cable between the decks and the I/O, right? How far apart are the machines? Dfferent rooms? Different floors? Are they plugged into different power?

View, Refresh A/V Devices? Close and reopen the capture panel?

Is there any reason to believe the Remote/Local switch on the deck may be bad?

Koz

<<<I get a message when capturing that goes along the lines of 'VTR Stopped. Check VTR. Do not continue... etc..'>>>

We have experienced this problem once on a similar system (but running FCP4.5) during the batch capture of a dozen clips from a Sony DSR80 (SDI video/audio). The material had no timecode breaks and when the error message came up on the screen for a second time we checked the output of the deck on a second monitor during capture with the error message displayed - the tape seemed to be playing perfectly OK even though the capture window had frozen.

Having experienced numerous problems with capture and video output from the AJA box ever since we bought the gear (we have two identical FCP systems), we shut down FCP switched off the AJA for 30 seconds and restarted. The clips digitized perfectly.

By coincidence, we could play no tapes in the DSR80 the next day due to a head clog and had to give it a clean. I'm not suggesting this is a solution but it does seem odd that it happened at the same time, and the problem has not been seen again.

Richard Thirkettle
Sunflower Post Production

Yhanks for the tip Richard, it does seem to be Timecode related...

M

Oh, there is one other important thing.

The AJA I/O takes up all the machine's FireWire ports. All of them. It is *necessary* to add a FireWire card to the machine to connect anything else FireWire like an external drive.

Before we got the FireWire PCI card, we used to turn the I/O off to use external drives. They do *not* coexist.

You can also fake out an I/O. Reboot by turning off the power and back on.

Koz

Hey Greg,

Not sure I understand, I run an external Firewire drive as well as the AJA, concurrently with no hiccups (mostly). I have reason to believe that the timecode on these few Beta's is poor, and that's why the problems...

Thanks anyway...

M

<<<Not sure I understand, I run an external Firewire drive as well as the AJA, concurrently with no hiccups (mostly).>>>

We separated them with no hickups ever. The AJA, expecially in the uncompressed modes takes up 1-1/2 FireWire services.

Yes, if your captures only fail on one tape, then it's possible there is TC damage. Can you dub the tape to another machine? When Beta machines dub timecode, they do it in regen mode which can patch up damaged TC. They will free-wheel over holes and damage--assuming the original was OK.

Some of the Beta machines can edit Time Code.

Koz