This may be more of a rant than anything, but I was curious to see if anyone one else is bothered by this...

I do a lot of the digitizing/capturing at work and there's a basic difference between batch capturing and doing a stright capture that I find a little disconcerting.  Often when footage comes in, it has what I call "black holes", when the camera, possibly during a battery change, etc., does not sync back up with the TC on the tape and leaves blank tape (black w/no TC) for a few seconds.  Now if I'm doing a straight capture where I have set an in/out time, the Avid will stop capturing when it hits the black, make a clip of what it just captured, play forward until it hits TC again, then start capturing again until it hits the out time, making 2 seperate clip in the bin.  This is the basis behind the "capture across timecode breaks" part of the settings.  Now, if I set up a tape to do a batch capture and it encounters one of these "black holes", it stops and puts up a warning about the break in TC, does not save what it already captured, and does not proceed to the next available timecode to continue capturing.  I don't always sit in front of the Avid during batch captures, so I have to keep checking often to make sure that my batch capture hasn't stopped and I have lost capture time because of a break in TC.

I guess my boiled down question is why doesn't the "capture across timecode breaks" setting apply to batch capturing?  Or...is there something I should be doing differently to make this happen?

Basic system specs: Newscutter Adrenaline (most recent update) on HP dual core running Win XP Pro capturing from Sony DVCAM DSR-1800 decks

Again, sorry for the rant, but I lose capture time because of this.

B Cahoon

I agree. (although I suspect in a few years we'll have forgotten about tape as a capture format...)

Batch capture is intended to recapture media from existing metadata really. If you tell Avid that there's a clip from 01:20:11:01 to 01:23:21:05 that you want captured it will capture that. As Avid can't support partially-online clips it will fail if it encounters a timecode break in the specified segment. It can't have only part of the clip online. You've told it you want that clip, and it can't have a clip that has discontinuous timecode. So, it fails.

It certainly can be annoying, but I think it's by design really.

Capture across timecode breaks isn't actually capturing across them either, more like capturing around them. It encounters a break, stops the capture cues forward until if finds code again, sets and in point and captures again. You actually lose some of the footage after the break, as Avid requires time to pre-roll into the capture.

Sycophant has answered the question, but I'd just like to add that if capture time is precious to you, then why bother logging and batch capturing? I'd just stick the tape in and hit capture, it'll deal with the timecode breaks and you'll end up with all the capturable material on the tape. You can then go through, deleting any short turnovers.

I assisted for years and did all the capturing like this. There was no time to go through creating a logging bin and then batch capturing.

Sycophant sez:

>>If you tell Avid that there's a clip from 01:20:11:01 to 01:23:21:05 that you want captured it will capture that. As Avid can't support partially-online clips it will fail if it encounters a timecode break in the specified segment.<<

But it doesn't "fail" in the sense that, during a straight capture using the example above, if it encounters a break in TC at 01:21:32:14, Avid will save what's been captured, then start a new capture and continue to the out time.  A batch capture won't do that.  I still don't see why the 2 capture techniques are treated differently.  If Avid will break up a clip using straight capture, why not do the same with a batch capture?  I don't mind losing a few seconds of footage during the preroll, I do anyway during any capture.

seincs sez:

>>why bother logging and batch capturing? I'd just stick the tape in and hit capture, it'll deal with the timecode breaks and you'll end up with all the capturable material on the tape.<<

Our shooters are (supposed to) shoot continuios TC on a 1 hour tape, so if I actually get a tape with no breaks. the Avid system is set up to limit individual clips to 30 minutes, after which it stops capturing automatically.  It also makes it easier for us to edit if the clips are closer to 20 minutes, since the package editor is responsible for much of the Broll decisions.

I thin it's treally just a matter of dealing with it, but it doesn't make things easier.

B Cahoon

BCahoon:

Our shooters are (supposed to) shoot continuios TC on a 1 hour tape, so if I actually get a tape with no breaks. the Avid system is set up to limit individual clips to 30 minutes, after which it stops capturing automatically.

B Cahoon

Go to Settings/capture/mxf media files change maximum(default) capture time for example 200 min and from now avid can capture clips 200 min long.

Hi,

BCahoon:

But it doesn't "fail" in the sense that, during a straight capture using the example above, if it encounters a break in TC at 01:21:32:14, Avid will save what's been captured, then start a new capture and continue to the out time.  A batch capture won't do that.  I still don't see why the 2 capture techniques are treated differently.  If Avid will break up a clip using straight capture, why not do the same with a batch capture?

My guess is this is how it was designed to work, because it was based on the old workflow of capturing material at low res, doing your edit, and then recapturing at high res only what you needed for an online rather than logging clips and allowing you to walk away while the system batched them in.  Again, this is just a guess, but assuming batch capture was intended to speed up the offline/online workflow, having it create new clips when it hit timecode breaks would cause problems for an edit that was already completed.

I understand why you want it the way you want it, but if you (anyone, not you particularly, BCahoon) wanted to have the same capture across timecode breaks functionality in batch capture that you have in straight capture, how would you handle the situation where somebody was batching in a completed sequence and there was a timecode issue on one of the tapes or with the deck?  Personally, if I were onlining a show and there was a discrepancy between the expected timecode and the timecode being read, I'd want the system to stop and let me know.

good luck,
Carl

BCahoon:

But it doesn't "fail" in the sense that, during a straight capture using the example above, if it encounters a break in TC at 01:21:32:14, Avid will save what's been captured, then start a new capture and continue to the out time.  A batch capture won't do that.  I still don't see why the 2 capture techniques are treated differently.  If Avid will break up a clip using straight capture, why not do the same with a batch capture?  I don't mind losing a few seconds of footage during the preroll, I do anyway during any capture.

In a batch capture Avid has all the metadata already and it just trying to fill the video tracks to match that metadata. As an Avid clip can't contain broken timecode, and can't have only part of the media online anything less than the full duration uninterupted can't be captured against that clip.

When you do a regular capture you are telling Avid to create entirely new clips (video and metadata) if the actual tape has breaks then Avid can recognise that and create the clips to match.

Our shooters are (supposed to) shoot continuios TC on a 1 hour tape, so if I actually get a tape with no breaks. the Avid system is set up to limit individual clips to 30 minutes, after which it stops capturing automatically.  It also makes it easier for us to edit if the clips are closer to 20 minutes, since the package editor is responsible for much of the Broll decisions.

I believe that in a standard capture if you put in in an out times, Avid will still cope with timecode breaks. It may not continue automatically but will detect them and allow you to keep the clip up until the point the timecode breaks.

camoscato:

Personally, if I were onlining a show and there was a discrepancy between the expected timecode and the timecode being read, I'd want the system to stop and let me know.

Well it's more than that, I believe Avid is incapable of dealing with a clip that doesn't have consistent and continuous timecode. So it actually can't digitise media against a clip if that media has a timecode break.

Hi Dylan,

Sycophant:

Well it's more than that, I believe Avid is incapable of dealing with a clip that doesn't have consistent and continuous timecode. So it actually can't digitise media against a clip if that media has a timecode break.

Yeah, I agree.  I think what BCahoon wants is resonable in the limited scenario where nothing has been digitized, and the assistant is just logging clips.  I suppose if there turned out to be a timecode break in that situation, the system could just make two clips, and the clip naming convention would reflect that, possibly along with a message at the end of the batch capture.

However, I think that'd potentially cause a lot of problems in an offline/online workflow, so while I understand the desire to have that functionality in logging scenario, I don't think it's a good idea in the larger sense of an editing system that has to work consistently across a wide range of workflows.

good luck,
Carl

Best solution to all of this:  Have the shooters pre-stripe their tapes before shooting.  Have the shooters roll long after the shot, then roll back into the footage after a batt change.  Field tapes should NEVER have TC breaks. 

If you can get the shooters to follow that standard practice, then your woes during capturing will be moot.

The cause of the problem is as much due to the original tape and deck as to Avid.

If you're recording on a prestriped DV tape, for instance, you can only crash record.  If there's black after the clip even though you can't see it there will be a considerable amount of blank tape before the code re-establishes itself.

When played back, the deck may resolve frame n as the end of the clip, and the next time you play it frame n-1 or n-2.  If you've logged frame n as the end and Avid doesn't get it from the deck, it will abort and wait for further input from you.  Arguably, this is exactly the behaviour that you'd expect.  I would suggest that it's also the behaviour that you'd want.

A further cause of this problem is the fact that the average DV and Beta deck is designed to extrapolate timecode over a brief dropout.  You can get apparently valid timecode after you no longer have stable video.  You log your tape, Avid takes that log file, but can't find stable video corresponding to your out times.  Again, it will abort and await further instructions.

A nice "fix" for this would be if Avid allowed you to trim in and/or out points by some arbitrary number of frames.  If you know that your hardware is going to tell you that you have timecode 3 frames longer than your video, you could subtract 5 frames (for safety) from all of your logged clips and then digitise.

A possible feature request maybe?