Duplicate files when capturing

I've been capturing footage shot on PanasonicDV100x mini dv camera.
I am using another very inexpensive Panasonic camera as a deck connected w/ Firewire to a MacG5. My scratch disk is an external hard drive, a 400GBSeagate with a USB connection. My captured clips run from from 15min to 30min.

For any given clip that I logged in Final Cut, two corresponding quicktimes appear in the capture scratch, except the clip names were modified.

Example: I logged a clip and named it "M_A dialogue 1" Once captured, that media appears in my final cut browser as one clip with the same name, as it should. But in my capture scratch there are two files. One is called ""M_A dialogue 1-v" and the other is called "M_A dialogue1-v-1"

When I try to watch the quicktime movies independently, the one with "-v" at the end plays fine and looks and sounds just like the clip that I have in Final Cut. When I attempt to play the quicktime movie that ends with "-v-1" I get an alert message from quicktime that says it cannot open the file, it is not a file that quicktime understands (-2048).

So my thought is that I can just delete the file that is not recognized by quicktime. It's considerably smaller than the one that actually plays ("-v" is 2GB vs "-v-1" is only 89MB). But if I attempt to delete/trash the smaller, unrecognized file, suddenly my first clip will not play anymore. Is this a problem with the external Seagate drive, the FCP prefs?
Thank you

> I am using another very inexpensive Panasonic camera as a deck connected w/ Firewire to a
> MacG5. My scratch disk is an external hard drive, a 400GBSeagate with a USB connection.

Here comes the question again for the 50,000th time...

First, USB drives can't be used for capturing and playback -- they're not fast enough. Secondly, if you just bought a USB drive from Best Buy or Circuit City and so on, chances are you didn't format the drive properly. Select the drive in OS Finder and press APPLE-I. The format of the drive needs to be Mac OS Extended. If not, you have to use Disk Utilities to format it. You will lose all data on the drive. A drive you buy from retail is usually formatted for PCs, and when used on Macs there will be a 2GB upper limit to file sizes, which is why your media files are split up.

If you're a beginner, you should do some research before you attack an editing project.


www.derekmok.com

Your main issue is that your drive is formatted with a PC format...FAT32. That format has a 2GB file size limit, thus it is breaking up your capture into multiple files. You'll need to reformat the drive MacOS extended (HFS+) in order to capture the files as one.

Your other issue is that you are capturing to a USB drive. It isn't designed nor recommended for video editing. Not enough sustained throughput to handle video. It might work for a while, then drop frames, then work, then not. The minimum requirement for video editing is a Firewire 400 drive.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

FCP is dividing the capture into 2 files.
the first file is knid of like the "master" file
and the second file contains media.
it can only be accessed through FCP.

it's perfectly workable in FCP,
but *may* cause problems if you start moving or re-naming the files manually in the finder.

there's 2 reasons FCP would be dividing the files like that.

1) one is your drive is formatted incorrectly.
some drive formats (Mac OS for instance) don't like files over 2 Gigs, so they split them.
the correct format for your drive is Mac OS Extended.

re-format the drive using Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder - Shift Apple U)
a re-format will wipe your drive clean, so you;d need to move the captures (and anything else) off, then back after formatting

2) FCP System Settings (Shift Q to open)
at the bottom of the 1st page "Scratch Disks" there is a check box:|
"Limit Capture/Export File Size to:"
if this is on, it does what it says. Limit;s the file size.
when it gets to a certain size, it starts a new file.

turn this off.


nick

And here they come with the 1-2-3 combination...KNOCK OUT!


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Three simultaneous posts. That's gotta be a record.


www.derekmok.com

Thank you all for your prompt response. (I am using the Larry Jordan tutorials but was not able to find the anwer to this)

Just for completeness-- not related to your problem but it has caught some fellow editors, especially those coming from Avid and other formats -- another reason Quickime captures split is when you unthinkingly check the "Target video and audio to separate drives" checkbox under the Scratch Disks pane. In Avid this used to be standard strategy. If you check this for DV capture you're in for split files (with weird appendages like "-o-a , o-v," etc) and a heap o'head-scratchin.

DV wants to be a single stream coming in. What you do with it in the timeline is your business.

I think that covers all occurences of split capture files?

- Loren
Today's FCP 4 / 5 keytip:
Fast scan your clips or timeline with Control-F12 !
Go slower with lower F keys.
Go reverse with F5 down to F2

The FCP KeyGuide?: your power placemat.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com