Video Mini DV Capture issue (Timecode?)

Hello all

I'm currently transferring many video from my mini DV cam under my iMac.
It's going pretty well for most of the tapes. But for one or two, FCP cuts a large unique video sequence into several (very many) shots of only a few seconds, while the video on the camcorder or via TV is smooth.

The problem is that even when you put all these shots back together, there are still frames missing and therefore jumps in the editing.

I understood that this may be due to the fact that the timecodes on the DV tape were not saved correctly.

My question then: is there a way under FCPX to manually capture without end-of-frame detection to get the entire sequence uncut?

NOTE : I also noticed that FCP usually did not acquire the last shot of a DV tape where there is still some blank tape (no end detection) and that I had to record again few seconds after the last shot for having it captured: Bug or Timecode issue again ?

Thank you in advance for your help and your informed opinions.

FCPX is not the best tool for this, as it is very picky about Timecode being very clean and consistent. Try Quicktime player to capture it, perhaps.

Seems that Quicktime Player makes the job !!! (Even if it stops capturing and freezes. But that solved my issue. Thanks a lot.

How about iMovie, I have the same problem with many home movies and capturing them thru my camera.

Now very much a subset of FCP. The problems in FCP will appear in iMovie as well.

If I use quicktime to capture, can I then take them into iMovie for editing?

Yes

I'm assuming quicktime pro. What is the problems with using quicktime as a capture device?

QuickTime Pro is dead. There is only the QuickTime player. That's the one to use. Connect the deck and use File>New Movie Recording. In the popup next to the record button you can select the DV source.

I know iMovie can capture from Mini DV-25 camcorders. It may not be any better than FCPX but you could try it. You could also test the free trial of Premiere Pro.

QuickTime X will capture it just fine. And it's free.