failure to find preroll point

[KGB]

Been having some difficlulty batch capturing in Avid. The camera searches for the point at which to start capturing and then ulitmately ends up pausing. About 20 seconds later it comes up with the following error message: Exception: failed to find preroll point on tape. If I hit either "try again" or "skip clip" it just comes up with the same message. I have no idea what the deal is. I'm capturing all of this stuff to an external hard drive, could that have something to do with it? I can't see why it would...
Thanks, I'm at a loss.

 

[DBXMe2]

The reason why this is happening is because you probably have an issue on 2 places...

1. The timecode on the tape has many breaks... try turning off the TC button on that bar full of buttons..

2. If that didnt fix the problem, then this is what you do... press play and hit the capture button...

If you're batch capturing from pre logged files, well someone played with the time code.... Or the shot you want to capture is just to far forward and doesnt have any pre-roll time on it AT all.. so for that shot, capture it manualy... then the rest batch capture. It will work.

AND IF THAT DOESNT WORk, then I would say get you're self this Program

Ventrilo http://www.ventrilo.com/

And make sure you've got a micraphone... I'll talk you through it. Email me for the server information to connect.

Cronos_2084@hotmail.com

 

[editblog]

"1. The timecode on the tape has many breaks... try turning off the TC button on that bar full of buttons.."
I would not try the above method as that will not capture timecode and will not allow you to recapture should you need to in the future.

It sounds like you don't have enough preroll for a batch capture. Try lowering your deck preroll setting to 1 or 2 seconds, either in the capture tool or the settings under deck configuration and/or deck preferences. If that doesn't work then a manual capture with the big red button may be in order.

 

[MarkG]

The other situation in which I've seen similar problems (though with Premiere, not Avid) is when you're capturing DVCAM from a MiniDV deck. The program can get very confused if the deck gives it DV timecode in fast-forward and rewind, but then switches to the correct DVCAM timecode when it actually begins playing the tape... the timecode suddenly jumps a few minutes when that happens. My TRV900 does that, for example.

I've never tried batch capture of DVCAM from the TRV900 into Avid, so I don't know whether it would cause these errors. I suspect it would though.