Timecode Breaks

What's the best thing to do, when capturing and logging footage with timecode breaks? Is it even possible?

Yes. Go into your user preferences and deselect the button that says, "Abort on dropped frames." It will import fine after that. Also you might want to select "Warn after Capture" where it says, "on timecode break".

the defualt user pref settings are what you want for this:

no need to turn off "abort on dropped frames", if it's just TC breaks, so leave that on (default)

and leave "on timecode break" set to "make new clip"

so when there is a TC break, FCP will detect it, stop captureing, save that captured clip, and start captuing again 3 seconds after the break, giving you enough room for pre-roll should you need to batch capture again.

it does mean you do a "Capture now" on the whole tape, which has it's downside, too.
specifiaclly doing speed changes on long capture now shots can cause you some greif, in particular when you come to media manage your project.
if you think this would affect you, simply export the section you want to speed mod to it's own self contained small file (reference movie might work, too)

finaly if you do a "capture now" remember to name the clip first, otherwise the files on disk will be called "untitled" which is a very bad thing in my book.
name it with it's tape name i suppose, but any name is better than none.

cheers,
nick

To add to Nick and Eric's posts:

Your method for dealing with timecode breaks should depend on how big the break is.

The ultimate factor is: Does the timecode break affect your batch capture?

FCP does something undesireable in my book, though I'm not sure whether it's possible to have an alternative: When FCP captures across timecode breaks (when you have "Warn after Capture" on, rather than "Abort on Dropped Frames" or "Make New Clip", it will artificially retain a flowing timecode on the captured clip. At the same time, if you have a big break (eg. if your TC jumps from 01:00:00:00 to 01:30:00:00), it will calculate the duration of the clip based on mathematics -- so if you set your in point before and your out point after the break, you will have a clip which FCP will think is over 30 minutes long, because of the TC jump. Also, in your captured clip, the TC break will disappear -- FCP will arbitrarily create its own timecode to make it continuous from the first TC section.

Such clips *can* be recaptured without problems, given an accurate in point and duration, but will obviously be overlong and cumbersome. However, you should *never* use Media Manager on such clips, because the batch list created from that operation will be based on the false, flowing timecode FCP assigns to the clip -- which means it will be non-existent on the tape.

If your timecode appears visually continuous but FCP detects a break you can't see, then chances are you can choose "Warn after Capture". Sixty per cent of the time, when I get a TC error in FCP, it's an "invisible" error which can be ignored because it's not causing any visible disturbances. The only concern, then, is whether you can successfully batch-capture it. In all cases where I've worked before, "invisible" dropped frames or timecode breaks have not caused any trouble either during capture or editing.

If timecode resets to zero, you have no choice -- change your reel name to "001B" (if your tape is 001) and log it. The "001B" tag will tell you it's the same tape, different section. When capturing and the system asks for "001B", scroll the tape forward manually to after the break.

"Make New Clip" is a compromise. It messes with your file-management system big-time and I never use it myself. More importantly, DV tapes are susceptible to having sections of repeated dropped frames, and "Make New Clip" is very unforgiving. If "Make New Clip" is on while you hit a cluster of dropped frames/invisible TC breaks, it will create these grossly annoying, unusable one-frame clips. It's not surprising for this feature to create 14 clips out of a two-minute clip.

So bottom line: When I log, I implement a manual solution to major timecode breaks: I log around them. I give five-second pre-rolls after each break (if there's important footage there, which shouldn't have happened, I set the Pre-Roll in preferences to 2 seconds and set my in point three seconds after the break). The out point can be as close to one second before a TC break. This method is very time-consuming, but ensures a pristine batch list that can be recaptured, Media Managed, and operated on normally. Since your logs don't go across the breaks and you left enough pre-roll before each in point, FCP will simply roll the tape to the timecodes and grab the footage as if nothing's wrong.

I use "Warn after Capture" on invisible breaks because it will most likely not affect the edit, Media Manager or recaptures.

Generally, if I have a tape with more than three major TC resets (ie. reset to 00:00:00:00), I ask for a re-transfer of the tape. The "001B" method breaks down if you have too many sections with reset timecode.