Captures are wildly out of synch

At first I thought this problem involved just one reel (where a strange freeze frame appeared at the head of the clip), but now it appears a number of captures in my project are about 15 seconds out of synch. It seems to be a randomly phenomenon, and one that occurs somewhere in the middle of the clip rather than throughout its duration. It does not seem to be the result of drift; the synch just suddenly goes way out after being in.

I don't know this is relevant, but these are the first 60-minute (entire tape roll) captures I've ever done. Presumably, that shouldn't make a difference, should it?

Also, is this one of the symptoms that precedes the need to trash preferences?

Is it HDV? Can you give us more detail?

Go to the Capture Scratch folder on your media drive and open those captured files with quicktime. Still drifting?

> It does not seem to be the result of drift; the synch just suddenly goes way out after being in.

That doesn't sound like problems with your hardware; sounds like a problem with the tape itself.

> I don't know this is relevant, but these are the first 60-minute (entire tape roll) captures I've
> ever done. Presumably, that shouldn't make a difference, should it?

It does make a difference.

First thing to do is to log the tape as shorter pieces (eg. 15 minutes per chunk). Even better if you could do five minutes or 10 minutes per clip. Capture them one at a time. See if those problems appear at the same spots.

If they do, then there's likely some intrinsic damage to the tape, either the physical tape or the data on there. In those cases, you may have to simply log your clips around the problem spots and start capture a new clip past the damaged portions.

If the problems appear at different spots, clean the deck and try again.

Under no circumstances should you retain the 60-minute clip when you have problems like these. With shorter clips, then every time you do get a captured portion that doesn't have issues, then you're that much closer to finishing. If you insist on capture 60 minutes at once, then any little issue at any point in that stretch of tape could junk the rest of what you have. Plus it's more taxing for drives, deck, computer and software alike.


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