HELP! Scene Detect goes crazy - Vegas 7

cinemaduro wrote on 4/20/2007, 9:50 PM
I shot some long interviews for a documentary and now I've got a box of tapes I need to start capturing. I captured one tape using the camera I shot with (JVC HD100u, HDV 30p) and everything seemed fine for the most part. The auto scene detection process gave me 22 scenes, which is about right.

One other factor is that I captured onto a brand new Western Digital 400 GB "MyBook", which used USB. I actually ended up returning this and upgrading to a 500 GB "MyBook" using firewire 400 to cut out the drop frame factor, and this is what I used for the next captures below.

For capturing the next tape, I didn't have access to the camera, but I brought home the JVC DR-HD50 deck from work. The first two tapes I captured were broken into over 150 scenes each. Some scenes are only a few frames long, others a few seconds. They don't seem to be following the date/time info from start/stopping the camera. The scene intervals seem completely random.

For instance, it will break up a 5 minute answer to an interview question into 11 scenes!! That's not right.

This is my first time working with Vegas and is a bit frustrating out of the gate. Anyone have any ideas on what's going on here and how to fix it?

Comments

dsf wrote on 4/20/2007, 11:13 PM
One obvious workaround is to disable automatic scene detection. The USB cable is an obvious explanation for dropped frames, but you said you then used a firewire. I haven't done a scientific study of the problem, but i think auto scene detection drops frames anyway, firewire on not; which is why I never use it.. So recapture with auto scene detection disabled.
cinemaduro wrote on 4/21/2007, 9:54 AM
Thanks for the response. I actually turned off scene detection this morning and ran a tape. It seems to work better, but for some reason still breaks it up into scenes, though much more manageable, 38 for a 48 minute tape, still a bit strange, when there should probably only be about 6 or 7 scenes total.

Everything seemed to work like it should have when I used the camera as a deck. But when I use the actual deck I have this issue. Has anyone else tried capturing using the BR-HD50?
Former user wrote on 4/21/2007, 11:05 AM
Under the Capture options is a MAXIMUM size setting. Any chance this is turned on.

Dave T2
Tim L wrote on 4/21/2007, 6:57 PM
Also, is your external drive formatted for NTFS?

If formatted for FAT32, the maximum possible file size is 4 GB, I think. But still, this should amount to about 20 minutes of video per file.

By the way, I used to use a USB drive (160GB Western Digital) on a not-particularly-fast machine (P4, 3 GHz), and never had a problem with dropped frames. (Have since added a 500GB internal drive, so I don't use the external much. Plus, its about full anyway.)

You might have other issues. Maybe dropped frames cause scene detection to start a new clip? I don't know that... just guessing.

Tim L

Laurence wrote on 4/21/2007, 9:11 PM
External USB2 and Firewire drives are ALWAYS formatted as FAT 32. If you haven't specifically reformatted your drive as NTFS, it is in the wrong format. They are done this way so that they will be both Mac and PC compatible. You should definately reformat the drive for NTFS if you are using it for video on a Windows machine.
cinemaduro wrote on 4/22/2007, 11:35 AM
I know the drive is in FAT32. and I'm leaving that way so I can go back and forth between mac and pc machines. I don't think this has anything to do with the multiple files I'm getting in capturing.

I just tried another tape with auto detect scenes DISABLED and it still "detected scenes" breaking the first 15 minutes up into over 300 files. That's really not supposed to happen. The machine I'm on is not real new, so it may be that everytime a frame drops, it creates a new file, but I'm not sure if that's what's happening. It is not indicating any frame drops, and 300 in 15 minutes seems pretty excessive. hmmmm....
Laurence wrote on 4/22/2007, 6:59 PM
The problem with FAT32 is that there's a size limit of 4 gig. A capture will start another clip at the 4 gig point. Hopefully it's not in the middle of something you need.
dsf wrote on 4/22/2007, 9:40 PM
If you have auto scene detection disabled then Vegas will not start a new file even if your camera is dropping frames. Also, if you put these files together, you should be able to determine if a frame(s) have been dropped between the files. It seems clear that you have not reached any 4 gig limit of whatever file system you are using ("it still 'detected scenes' breaking the first 15 minutes up into over 300 files.") Therefore what can it be other than auto scene detection still working?

If you are sure you have auto scene detection disabled, I would uninstall then reinstall Vegas.
cinemaduro wrote on 4/22/2007, 11:13 PM
>>If you have auto scene detection disabled then Vegas will not start a new file even if your camera is dropping frames.

I turned auto scene detect off and it's doing the same thing, breaking the capture up into multiple files. Very strange.

I guess I'll try uninstalling vegas, but I want to wait a little bit. I posted this over on the dvinfo.net forums just now, also, to get some new eyes looking at it, since no one here seems to have actually experienced the same problem. Plus I've only got this equipment rented for a short period of time. Hopefully between all of us we can figure this out.

I appreciate everyone who is sharing their thoughts.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?p=665472#post665472
nolonemo wrote on 4/23/2007, 9:38 AM
You could try downloading the free version of Scenealyzer, which, if I recall correctly, does timestamp scene detection. (Look for the freeware link on http://www.scenalyzer.com/download.html ) The results you get with that should let you know if the problem lies inside or outside of Vegas.
dsf wrote on 4/23/2007, 9:23 PM
>>>"I've only got this equipment rented for a short period of time."

But as you undoubtebly know, uninstalling and reinstalling takes...15 minutes? You lose your settings (e.g., window layouts) but none of your veg files. You can recover (e.g.) caption layouts you made by installing the project, then just save one of the captions. Or maybe you don't have the Vegas disk? If you do elect to reinstall, don't reinstall over the version that's loaded (some programs have a "repair" option: baloney). Uninstall then reinstall.
blink3times wrote on 4/24/2007, 4:14 AM
The scene detection (for me anyway) is just plain inaccurate to begin with and I never use it. It always seems to miss by one or two frames and I have to go back and re-adjust... kind of useless i'm sorry to say. :(