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sensorfreaky · Mar 21, 2003, 09:52 PM

I recently gathered a bunch of miniDV footage recorded by different cameras of the same event. These were all actually Canons ranging from several consumer ZR-45's, my own Elura 40MC, a GL1, and an XL1s. There were several 15+ minute shots from each camera and even when captured in its entirety in FCP, none of them exhibited any sync drift except from the capture of media from the XL1s. I don't get it. This is supposed to be the "best" camera of the bunch. What gives?

I've called Apple tech support concerning every possible FCP settings and capture preferences as documented in the manual and nothing I do will correct this sync drift. When I play the same tape in my camera output to a TV, the footage stays in sync all the way through. The drift happens when capturing with FCP. The footage was recorded in 12-bit sound, the same audio settings as the other cameras, and I have set capture preferences and audio sampling rate etc. and video preferences accordingly without success. I've also tried de-activating and activating sync adjust on without success. Then I tried to set varying timecode offsets and this did nothing. I've gone back and forth between all my audio/video and capture settings without any luck. Is there anything else I've missed? I know 15 minutes is long for a clip but how come the other cameras had no problems staying in sync after FCP capture?

Unfortunately, the XL1s camera is not mine so I don't have it at my disposal to tinker with settings and get to the bottom if things.

It seems that the video lags from the audio halfway through the 15-minute clip by up to a full second. Then drifts by over 2 seconds at the 15 minute mark at clip's end. Pretty significant sync drift if you ask me. No sync drift whatsoever with the other cameras. In fact, I even captured a 52-minute clip using "capture now" from the media recorded by the GL1 without any noticeable drift.

Help.

Axo1ot1 · Mar 22, 2003, 01:32 AM

When I have had problems like this in the past it has been because of severely fragmented disks, or damaged disks. Run a disk utility like norton or tech tool pro on your scratch disk and see if it has any problems.

sensorfreaky · Mar 22, 2003, 02:27 AM

Originally posted by Axo1ot1:
When I have had problems like this in the past it has been because of severely fragmented disks, or damaged disks. Run a disk utility like norton or tech tool pro on your scratch disk and see if it has any problems.

Can't be it. It's a brand spanking new 200gig lacie d2 and before starting my projects, I've even reformatted it to HFS+ and ran disk diagnostics (even though it was pre-formatted as such from the factory.) Besides, that definitely can't be the problem because none of the other media files captured from the other 4 cameras have any sync drift... just all the ones recorded by the XL1. To make sure, I tried to capture XL1 media to my internal drive and still had sync drift problems. Very frustrating.

jac · Mar 22, 2003, 06:18 AM

Have you tried checking the "Sync Adjust Movies Over: xxx minutes" option in the preferences? That should do the trick. From what I've heard this option exists solely to fix sync with the XL-1.

sensorfreaky · Mar 22, 2003, 01:58 PM

Originally posted by jac:
Have you tried checking the "Sync Adjust Movies Over: xxx minutes" option in the preferences? That should do the trick. From what I've heard this option exists solely to fix sync with the XL-1.

Yes, as I mentioned, I've tried that already. Various different setting too. No luck. This is driving me nuts.

SirCastor · Mar 22, 2003, 02:32 PM

Originally posted by sensorfreaky:
Can't be it. It's a brand spanking new 200gig lacie d2 and before starting my projects, I've even reformatted it to HFS+ and ran disk diagnostics (even though it was pre-formatted as such from the factory.) Besides, that definitely can't be the problem because none of the other media files captured from the other 4 cameras have any sync drift... just all the ones recorded by the XL1. To make sure, I tried to capture XL1 media to my internal drive and still had sync drift problems. Very frustrating.

Have you tried calling Canon? Maybe there's an issue with your XL-1

sensorfreaky · Mar 22, 2003, 03:21 PM

Originally posted by SirCastor:
Have you tried calling Canon? Maybe there's an issue with your XL-1

Like I said, it's not my XL1. It actually belongs to a professional videographer and he has been using it since it was released with no problems. He edited the same footage on a wintel machine using some other NLE system and claims no problems with sync drift after capturing from tape. Let me mention again that all the different tapes recorded on different cameras (including the XL1's) play back fine and without any sync drift on my Elura 40MC. However, when capturing in FCP using my Elura as a DV deck, all the clips from all the source tapes stay in sync while the clips recorded by the XL1 don't. The sync drift doesn't happen during playback to a TV output, only during firewire capture of all the XL1's tapes. There's seems to be some kind of disagreement between FCP and the XL1 and I think I've just about tried every permutation of every setting on FCP to no avail.

vanwyklr · Mar 22, 2003, 06:24 PM

try capturing with the xl1 some cameras have trouble when using tapes from other cameras.

chadcole26 · Mar 24, 2003, 12:54 PM

I read about this problem somewhere. I has to do with using the latest versions of FCP, Quicktime, and recording the audio in 12-bit mode. The article I read said the problem went away when audio was done in 16-bit mode. I've been looking for the article and will continue to do so. If I find it I'll post back.