A search of these forums only shows posts from last year regarding this issue, but no resolution.

I've tried several times to capture, but keep getting same error, even at different points in the tape.

Any ideas?

I've seen this error a lot when capturing HDV from Sony HDV 1080i cameras. At this point I am suspecting bad tapes - those used were brand new JVC DV tapes. I have since bought some Fuji HDV tapes, but have yet to test them. In my case, I had 130 mins of footage on 3 tapes, and I was averaging about 10 of these errors per tape. In some cases, I was able to re-capture from where the capture ended (using timecode for the IN on the capture window) and it would work. In the worst cases, I would have to skip 15 frames at a time until I could get past the error. I had a few of these in the whole project where I lost 15-30 frames, but was able to edit around them, and duplicate frames on either side of the break so it was barely noticeable.

More info on your scenario would help

I think that this happens when the throughput of the system can't keep up. I see that you have a RAID, have you had any problems with it? Try capturing to another drive to see if you get the same problem. What resolution are you capturing?

I'm capturing SOny HDV from the M10U deck.  There seems to be no timecode break, capturing just stops.  According to HDTune, I am getting over 120MB/sec on the RAID drive.  This seems to be a fairlu new issue, though it seems to be happening more frequently.

I did find a timecode break, but for some reason, this time, capturing continued through it and the rest of the capture was uneventful.  Damn Sony Tapes!  Guess I need to look into a hard disk recorder.  Thanks for all the help.

If you mean a HDD camcorder, be careful. We had a Sony unit (our purchaser bought the wrong one), but I found nothing could use the output from it without conversion in some crappy Sony software first. We returned it and got the HDV version (HDR-HC9) which works fine with Avid and Premiere. I think Premiere CS3 might read AVCHD that some of these cameras use, but doubt Avid will any time soon. The HDD model we had wasn't cheap ($1200+), but didn't have firewire, which was the first warning sign...

 We had a drive fail a while ago and this is exactly how it behaved.  For a while it was just a bit flaky and eventually we couldn't capture at all.  When you try and capture, is the red light flashing on the capture tool, or is it solid?

Scott Carnegie:

I think that this happens when the throughput of the system can't keep up.

HDV has the same data rate as god old DV had, 25 mbit/s. The actual capturing isn't straining your system. However HDV is much more complex to decode, so you may want to disable the preview, if you're concerned with your machines overall performance.

I encountered this problem several times when capturing footage from our XH-A1, it reproduceably happende at the same spot on a too cheap tape. There was no timecode break, but assumeably a data corruption inside the mpeg stream, a.k.a a dropout.

 I don't think it has to do with data rates. I frequently get this message when recording scratch VO'x (not to the timeline). And I have the 2TB Avid Video RAID. The workaround for me has always been to just do it again. It almost never did it twice in a row.

The only thing different from everything else I capture is that it's on the fly with no deck association and TOD TC.

Hasn't happened since I upgraded to 3.0... yet.

 In researching similar problems with Xpress Pro (same software base), I learned that there is a "Control Track" as well as a time-code track on the tape.  The lack of capture comes from a break in the "Control Track".  This doesn't help your current situation, but for the future, try turning the "QUICKREC" function in the camera off before you record.  This one little setting has saved me much frustration with later capture sessions.

If you are majorly frustrated, you might try a free program called HDVSplit to capture your footage and "snip" out the problem areas and then import the resulting files to MC.

Good Luck!

I have been working professionally with the cheapest Sony tapes for 15 years and have captured tons of DV and HDV to AvidXpress, MC and FCP. It's not true that Sony  tapes are bad tapes. I don't think this is your problem.

This may be too simple but did you check "capture across time code  breaks" in your capture settings?