FCE - capture now has reached the end of tape

[aurableue]

Hello all,
english is not my first language, so please, be nice with me.

I recently bought my first camcorder, a Canon HV20.
I bought a firewire cable too to connect it to my Imac.

But when I try to capture the movies with FCE HD 3.5, it works well few seconds and after I have this message: "capture now has reached the end of tape".
I tried with FCP 5 and I had the same message.

I tried 1080i50 and 1080i60 under FCE, with "apple" codec (don't remember the exact names).

But with iMovie 08, all work fine.

Do you have already meet the same problem ? How did you have resolved it ?
Thanks for your answers.

[xzu]

beside the "real" end of tape, you may have errors when the Device Control is having problems
so -> check capture device settings, try SONY Firewire, or Firewire basic at the proper framerate. Check firewire connection.

also -> be sure to capture at a point where you have enough pre-roll + avoid record gaps so that there is a continuity of video signal and time code

if you are running a "capture on the fly", select "non-controlable device" as device settings.

let us know what is hapenning next.

[aurableue]

Hi Xzu, and thx for your answers.

_ I checked and re-checked my firewire conections;
_ I used Final Cut Pro 5.01 because I can do more choices for configurations.

Here are the differents configuration I tried this evening:
all with HDV Apple Intermediate Codec as capture settings and for device controls:

_ non controllable device -> end of tape "error" after 8sec of capture;
_ HDV Firewire -> end of tape "error" after 6 sec;
_ Sony HDV Firewire -> end of tape "error" after 3sec;
_ Sony HDV1080i50 -> end of tape "error" after 5sec.

I tried HDV capture settings too.
_ Sony HDV FireWire,
_ Sony HDV 1080i50 FireWire and
_ HDV FireWire.
The capture, in each of those configuration, works (no end of tape "error") but I just had the sound. No images of my footage ...

Any ideas ???

[Hallvalla]

Have you tried fast forwarding past 5 seconds or so? Sounds like you may have dropped frames that is stopping the capture...I'm new to this as well, but I'd even try forwarded a couple minutes and then try to capture, if you haven't already.

[xzu]

Final Cut can work "on-the-fly" to capture footage, even with dropped frames (check your user prefs /for that setting), but it is not the case here... well I think : when the is frame loss, a warning pops up and say frames have been dropped. Depending on the prefs settings, either it will capture on the fly with new time-code, or it will stop capture...
but "end tape" error looks more like there is no link between video and timecode : to remote properly the deck, final cut needs a timecode that match the video. setting up the frame rate for both video and firewire should be enough to get over this, but I see you made plenty tests, so sI don't see what to setup next.
Beside hardware problem like, hard drives, computer speed, I think there is that little trick with final cut pro 5.02 : if I remember well, this version had some bugs with firewire issues on my mac G5, and I had to upgrade to 5.1.x.

if you don't have the money to spend on that, try something : install developper tools from Apple Dev Connection and install the
Firewire SDK 25 for Mac OSX
There is a simple and smart capture program that handles most of incoming HDV signals from a firewire connection (in fact the software package is sometimes the only way to capture from camcorders when drivers are not supplied for mac os x) : DVHSCap
as well as AVCVideoCap (also included in SDK firewire), it will allow you to test a real-time capture without the use of a "big" app like Final Cut. The captured stream is native HDV raw format (m2t), but if capture works here, then you don't have to blame your hardware, and just need to focus on FCP settings and upgrade.
let us know what is going on...

[mayhem]

This may sound like a dumb question but.... Did you rewind the tape.

[xzu]

hum ... no response, I guess it's not a such dummy thing to remind obvious tips

[mayhem]

hum ... no response, I guess it's not a such dummy thing to remind obvious tips

No doubt!
He should get FCS 2, I can set the preset to uncompressed 422 10bit and it just laughs at me as it captures HDV 1080i60 without blinking.

[xzu]

No doubt!
He should get FCS 2, I can set the preset to uncompressed 422 10bit and it just laughs at me as it captures HDV 1080i60 without blinking.

my post is out of subject... but I just realize what you said mayhem
do you mean that you set capture in 422 10 bits pro res ?

because in FCP Studio 2@work, I did not figure out how to create a capture preset with my own parameter (digitizer, compressor/codec,...). with FCP studio 1, I was able to create capture preset from scratch, now it seams I don't have the choice.

for now I'm capturing in HDV (not customizable, no choice here)and THEN I can set sequence preset to whatever I like (uncompressed pro res as well, uncompressed 4:2:2, 1080p25, etc...)