Drop-Frame vs. Non-Drop-Frame Capture question

check your tape by turning on visible timecode in your lcd on camera. if there are semi colons or commas separating the pairs of numbers on screen you have recorded drop frame, if there are colons in the display you have recorded non drop. I usually roll tape a little before I log so the tc mode is noticed by FCP. other than that if you log a bunch of tapes and don't track the reel numbers properly you can get messed up by feeding the monkey the wrong tape.
you can choose to ignore the warning and proceed with capture anyway

timecode and canon cameras are notorious. I think the default tc is df I'm trying to remember the options on the tc section of the camera but the picture in my mind is somewhat fuzzy. there can be an issue with the battery that remembers the cmos settings on board the camera. I would log then capture that tape and put it up. the tc on dv can slip and slide as it is parsed to simulate SMPTE and is actually called dv

Hi JD Marlow
I hope I am in the proper place. I was referred to this forum & find that your problem relating to capture is similar to my problem relating to preview of sequence: When the playhead reaches a certain location on a clip in timeline, it stops with a report on dropframe. This happens before even adding any effects or filter to the timeline.
I have recorded drop frame (semi colon between zeros) as tallguy says. He also says, "you can choose to ignore the warning and proceed with capture anyway" which seems consistent with what the manual says, "if you're bothered by the reports of dropped frames, during playback, not by dropped frames themselves, you can keep using Unlimited RT and just turn off the reports" from User Preference.
In your case, the two good sources for trouble shooting are: Optimizing your FCP System and the article http://www.csif.org/html/dropframe.html. I hope this help.
However, in my case of previewing sequence can I would like to know how the decision to turn off reports would affect the clips. Would this mean the clips be dropped altogether during outputting? In other words, by keeping to use Unlimited RT how my documentary movie will be affected. I hope you, tallguy or anyone else provide me with some answer. Thank you. golab.

Dropped frames are different from drop-frames. Dropped frames refer to frames that have not been captured due to a lag in the capturing system whereas *drop-frame timecode* refers to a type of timecode that drops the first two frames of every minute, with the exception of every tenth minute. This is to correct for 30 fps video being broadcast at 29.97 fps when color TV was invented.

To answer your question, you can ignore the dialog box and it will not cause any issues, but you may not be able to play back the clip in real-time. It might judder and skip. To fix this, render the clip.

Hi Jon Chappell
Thank you so much for such clear explanation of the way the two behave. I fully now understand what is what. However, "somenoe said that "by matching the video to my sequent setting I don't have to render the video in the timeline. The only time I have to render is when there a filter/transition applied to the video. (small price to pay)." My question is how to match the video to sequence and how to set the sequence. I would be gratefull if you could kindly tell me how or refer me to an article. Thank you so much. golab

Scroll sideways along the browser and you will see how they are compressed under the Compressor tab. Now drag the offending files into Compressor and change the settings to match whatever it said in the Browser. Render them and reimport the files into FCP.

Thank you so much Jon.
My problem is indeed solved, but I know how to mark the solved problem, golab

The same thing is happening to me while trying to capture DV Cam tapes using a DSR-11. My main problem with this is that I have a few hundred clips to capture and after every clip during batch capture I get this error message:

"WARNING: A change in the timecode format (Non-Drop Frame to Drop Frame) was detected while capturing clip"

I have to click OK to go to the next clip. This sort of defeats the purpose of batch capturing.

I have a few tapes and they all appear to be recorded in non-drop frame (I have the colon between seconds and frames on my deck's TC display) but one of the tapes captured without any error messages. I used the standard DV NTSC preset.

I've tried playing around with Capture and User settings but nothing seems to work. Is there a way to capture to non-drop frame?

First of all do the obvious: make sure that in your audio/video settings, under DEVICE CONTROL PRESET (which you'll find on the Summary tab) you've chosen Firewire NTSC NDF (I'm assuming you are capturing NTSC video).

Then you should not have a problem. But you might: I did. The problem, so far as I can tell, came down to dirty heads on my deck, a Sony DSR-11. Somehow, since the deck was not finding time code, Final Cut assumed that the problem was in the time code itself. So it gave me the non-drop/drop error message. The DSR-11 is prone to all sorts of misbehavior. Sometimes, for example, I can't preview video when I am in log and capture. It's not a great deck. You get what you pay for.

The thing to watch out for, both in logging and in capturing, is when you log or capture multiple tapes with mixed NDF & DF timecode.

There are three or four things that can affect this:

FCP5 and later allow you to set the TC format of the capture preset, such that the Log & Capture window would default to NDF if you are working with NDF tapes.

Otherwise, Log & Capture will still auto-detect during playback when logging, but you have to be sure to play the tape some before logging the clip. If you capture multiple tapes using capture now, You could easily start recording before the time code format updates. This kind of error results in a clip whose in point is the correct "number", but the format is wrong.

During Batch Capture, the device control is not always able to change the time code format. I'm not sure about FCP6, but I am in the habit of grouping my clips in batches according to the TC format. You ma be seeing this alert because you are switching the TC format of the tapes in the batch capture, but device control is "stuck" in DF mode, for instance. This is not an issue during logging, only capture.

I think it may also be possible to override the clip's logged TC format at capture by unchecking "use logged clip settings".

Capturing clips with the wrong TC format can really mess up recapture later. The offset that happens as the format gets converted back increases as the starting hour of the timecode gets bigger.

So basically you can have clips that get logged wrong, and clips that were logged correctly, but captured with the wrong TC. It's easier to miss it when logging, since there's no alert message to pop up. But the other alert is there to tell you there is a mismatch somewhere, preventing you from making the second kind of error. Your only error may only be that you had both DF and NDF clips in the same batch.

There is a trick to get the TC format to switch to the non-default for batch capture - Open Log & Capture and play the tape until you see the TC format update. Now start the batch capture with Log & Capture still open - device control will stay in that TC format now. Otherwise, I think device control switches to the format of the first clip in the batch, but stays there until you cancel and start a new batch.

Hope this helps -


Max Average

This was the answer for me. When I changed the device in my capture window, I was able to batch capture previously logged clips, withouth the error. Thanks LV!