Importing miniDV video to FCE limited to 2 minutes - why?

[dllavaneras]

Hey everyone!

I've been having a problem importing my videos. I have about 12 Gb of free space, and I want to import one continuous 20 minute DV clip, which would be about 3-4 Gb. My problem is that at certain moments, the importing stops and starts looking for a timecode break. When I look at the file times/sizes, they're all about 2 minutes long and between 480 and 600 Mb.

It's a real pain to have to be around every 2 minutes to start the importing process again. What can I do so the import completes on it's own?

 

[bigbossbmb]

are you capturing to the same drive as the OS? if it's an external, is it formatted FAT32? if you're just using the internal drive, 12GB is not much space to leave open. that will cause major problems.

are there TC breaks on the tape?

 

[dllavaneras]

are you capturing to the same drive as the OS? if it's an external, is it formatted FAT32? if you're just using the internal drive, 12GB is not much space to leave open. that will cause major problems.

are there TC breaks on the tape?

Yes, it's to the internal drive. I know 12 Gb isn't a lot of space (I just got two 1Tb externals, one to free space and the other for backup), I just wanted to know if the small file sizes when importing had to do with the little space left on the drive or some other setting I haven't checked.

 

[djkirsten]

Yes, it's to the internal drive. I know 12 Gb isn't a lot of space (I just got two 1Tb externals, one to free space and the other for backup), I just wanted to know if the small file sizes when importing had to do with the little space left on the drive or some other setting I haven't checked.

It's probs the limited space on the HD. Try digitizing to one of the new 1tb drives and see if that works.

 

[xStep]

First, what version of Final Cut Express are you using?

Since you say FCE is stopping and looking for a time code, it sounds like your 20 minute video is made up of many individual clips. Can FCE do what iMovie does and just recognize those breaks, or does it require you to create a time log before bringing in the video?

Time code breaks as bigbossbmb suggested could cause this problem. I wonder if the fix for that would be to transfer the material to another camera via a firewire connection?

Have you tried 'capture now' and just manually playing the tape?

This isn't a space issue per se'. Twenty minutes of DV video is about 4.4 GB. I suppose a lot of disk writing delay could affect the software.