Setting Capture Preferences

The General tab of the User Preferences window contains options that relate to capturing. Certain user preferences will affect how you capture your video. Some of these preferences help you troubleshoot or work around difficult video. Others smooth the capturing process. Take a look at these options so you will know what each of the capture preferences does.

• Sync audio capture to video source if present This option ensures sync for audio captured from a genlocked audio deck.

• Abort capture on dropped frames If Final Cut Pro notices any frames of video being dropped or left out while capturing your source material, it will stop the capture process and report the dropped frames. You will lose all the media it had captured up to that point.

• On timecode break If there is a break in the source-tape timecode, you have the option to make Final Cut Pro do one of three things: start a new clip at the timecode break, abort the capture process, or warn you that there was a timecode break after capturing is over.

  

• Warn when importing non-optimized media Final Cut Pro will always optimize media files when capturing. On the rare occasion that it can't optimize a media file for multiple-stream, real-time playback, it will warn you if this option is checked. Unless you are editing with multiple uncompressed video streams that demand maximum media file performance, you can usually leave the files as they are and continue editing normally. If you are working with standard definition DV captured in Final Cut Pro, your files are already optimized.

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Try capturing using the default User Preference settings. If you have problems with dropped frames or timecode breaks, deselect one or more of the options and try again.