Major JVC Issues! Please help!

I have a JVC-110 HDV camera. I've been using the normal HDV JVC tapes with this camera. I used to be able to capture A-OK prior to this past week. I am using Final Cut Pro 5.1.2, capturing the video with the JVC BR-HD50 deck.

Everytime I capture my 720p30 clips, Final Cut will capture for 10-15 seconds, then the dialogue window below the capture screen will switch from Capturing Clip - Now Capturing TO Searching for Media, Timecode break - Now when it says searching for media, the tape just keeps playing. If I leave it alone, it will sporadically decide to begin capturing again, but only for a few seconds..

I've tried EVERYTHING to fix this..

Tried a different deck

Tried using the JVC camera as a deck to capture

Tried using different computers

Tried using a computer with Final Cut Pro 5.1

NO LUCK!

I tried setting the deck as a Local device but no luck.. I tried changing the device control to non-controllable media but when I do this, Final Cut Pro won't even bring up the HDV log and capture window..

I am now capturing the footage by running it through a Canous SD downconverter..

What to do????!

Please help me..

Thanks

I've also tried using different tapes shot with different JVC cameras and still get this issue..

Do the tapes seem to play OK through the damaged sections if you just use the camcorder as a player and watch/listen to the viewfinder? Are there holes in the time in the viewfinder?

If you go as far as you went I'd be forced to assume the tapes are bad. Do they always fail at almost exactly the same place multiple times?
Koz

I'm reading this again. You know if you're in full-on HiDef mode, you need pretty talented drives to capture it, right? Firewire isn't going to work. FireWire works fine in HDV because HDV bit streams look a lot like MiniDV and are about the same size. They were designed like that. Real HiDef isn't like that. It's much bigger and faster.

You need SCSI, Fiber Channel, one of the RAIDs or something like that. I think even the normal internal Mac drives don't go fast enough.

Koz

Thanks Koz for the reply

I am capturing just plain 'ol normal HDV - I've done this many times using the same setup without any issues. It's just odd that this is happening now and with different tapes recorded from different JVC cameras.. Through the viewfinder or playing out through a monitor, the video seems fine.. Occasionally I will see a glitch between shots, like a half second scrambled piece of video before the shot changes, however, the tape doesn't drop when this happens, all of the time.. I really don't know what to do.. I feel like crawling underneath some sheets..

<<<Occasionally I will see a glitch between shots, like a half second scrambled piece of video before the shot changes>>>

Are you seeing this damage in the camcorder viewfinder?

You said you tried multiple computers and multiple players. Did you change the cable? Capturing to different drives?

You have dead tapes. Normal tapes do not dissolve into pixel garbage every so often. That's a damaged bitstream from the tape.

Try capturing a tape that has nothing whatever to do with the show. I keep a tape I shot of birds and flowers in my back yard in the bottom of my bag for this. I bet it plays and captures just fine.

I'm dancing around the fact that you may have *more than one problem*. Those are fun to find.

Wait! Wait! Are they extended play tapes? What does it say in the viewfinder? EP? Those may need to play on *exactly the camera* that made them. Extended play tapes are unstable.

Koz

Koz, these aren't EP tapes.. I just watched the footage in my JVC lcd screen out of the camera and notice some of those glitches on the tape.. however, the timecode read stays constant w/o breaks..

You think these are bad tapes?

Still makes no sense when I was able to capture just fine a week ago ..

Whats the workaround? I know if I was having issues like this with DVCAM, I would just turn the timecode off in FCP and capture direct..

thanks for all your help

>>I used to be able to capture A-OK prior to this past week.<<

Do the tapes that used to work fine still capture OK? What changed since then?