I have about 100 sd minidv tapes that I want to edit with Avid but since Avid doesn't like capturing over the many timecode breaks that I have on my tapes, I need to find another software to capture all my dv footage in a format that Avid is able to import. Can anyone recommend one? I tried Edius 6 but I've not been able to find a format to capture in that Avid will accept to import properly. (It actually imports it but the when I play it, you hear the audio but only see a single frame as the video.) I know that I can encode the files that I capture with Edius in order for Avid to like it but that's very time consuming and then I'll loose some of the quality of the video.

Capturing with Avid directly would be fantastic but I already spent so much time trying to find a way to capture over all the timecode breaks that are on those tapes but each time Avid sees a timecode break, it stops capture and displays the message 'Capture aborted due to lack of progress'. I was on the forums trying all the things that some people recommended like changing the setting to 'capture over timecode break' and turn off the timecode in the capture tool but nothing works so this is why I'm seeking another software to capture with.

(I'm capturing the sd footage from a Canon ZR100 camera)

What I would do, with that many tapes with broken TC, is to upgrade Avid to version 6 or 6,5, get me an external hardware unit, Matrox works good for me, and live capture it all through the Matrox using Time of Day for timecode.

You will get it captured to an Avid codec of your choice with correct colour levels from the beginning, ready to do edits on at once.

With timecode and machine control off have you tried crash recording? (hit play on the playback device and record in Avid) Used to work for me for DV tapes with reasonably significant breaks in timecode.

mjolnarn:

What I would do, with that many tapes with broken TC, is to upgrade Avid to version 6 or 6,5, get me an external hardware unit, Matrox works good for me, and live capture it all through the Matrox using Time of Day for timecode.

You will get it captured to an Avid codec of your choice with correct colour levels from the beginning, ready to do edits on at once.

 

Goodness Tomas - I'm sitting here in a similar situation, capturing around 100 hours of tape with broken timecode using the Matox Mini cature tool then using Liquid to output the parts I want in .avi format.  This workflow is a pain because I have to capture in Win7 then switch to XP but is way faster than attempting the task in MC 5.03.

I intend to upgrade to 6.5 once this particular burden has been worked through.

Kind regards to you

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/WinDV

(Not affiliated with it.  It's just small, old, free and works.)

SussexJohn:

mjolnarn:

What I would do, with that many tapes with broken TC, is to upgrade Avid to version 6 or 6,5, get me an external hardware unit, Matrox works good for me, and live capture it all through the Matrox using Time of Day for timecode.

You will get it captured to an Avid codec of your choice with correct colour levels from the beginning, ready to do edits on at once.

 

Goodness Tomas - I'm sitting here in a similar situation, capturing around 100 hours of tape with broken timecode using the Matox Mini cature tool then using Liquid to output the parts I want in .avi format.  This workflow is a pain because I have to capture in Win7 then switch to XP but is way faster than attempting the task in MC 5.03.

I intend to upgrade to 6.5 once this particular burden has been worked through.

Kind regards to you

Hi John, 6,52 works well, you´ll gonna like it, bugs are fixed, I also get this type of bad tapes from time to time so that Matrox box saves a lot of time for me.

Just remember that you also need 64 bits plugins when upgrading, Avid FX is included though, and BCC with Symphony, there was an upgrade offer earlier, not sure if it is still valid.

Happy editing

I don't know if you remember a tool called Scenalyzer. That was easily the best DV capture software for difficult to capture files. I still have my DV500 card I used with it but haven't tried scenalyzer with Win7. The software was actually very useful for organising and renaming hundreds of DV files in sequence in one click etc and worked a treat with the DV500 for analogue capture. Give it a try.

http://www.scenalyzer.com/