How to verify video files?

First thing...turn on all the options for dropped frames. "Warn if dropped frames detected," "Abort capture if dropped frames detected," all that. You don't want to drop frames, and you want the capture to stop if it happens. A lot of people get annoyed by those warnings, and turn them off...not realizing that in doing that, they are capturing video with dropped frames. They need to figure out WHY and solve that issue.

Is that what happened here?

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Doug Lyons] "But since most of the videos do seem to be good, is there any way after the fact to know if there are dropped frames?"

Only if you watch them and see it with your eye. There's no internal tool to analyze the footage to see.

[Doug Lyons] "Or will only a comparison between the tapes and the capture certify that?"

Well, you should be able to see that with your eye. If you notice "that just skipped a little," then it most likely dropped frames.

[Doug Lyons] "And is there a link to the debugging procedure to find out why there might be dropped frames occurring?"

YES!

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/ross_shane/fcp_faq.php

#12 Dropped frames on capture/playback

Shane's Stock Answer #12: Dropped frames on capture/playback

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58640

1) Do not capture to your main system drive. Since it is busy reading the operating system and application files, it will intermittently drop frames during capture. Capture to a separate internal drive, or external hard drive (firewire and eSATA for example).

2) Deactivate any anti-virus/filesaver software, including Norton and Virex. For some reason these programs think that the large files created when you capture media are in fact caused by some sort of virus, and they try to prevent this.

3) Check the format of the drive you are capturing to. It should be Mac OS Extended, journaling off. If it isn't, copy your files from it and re-initialize it. If it is any other format, you will encounter problems. If not at first, then eventually.

4) Trash the FCP preference files. Use PREFERENCE MANAGER to do that, available here:
http://www.digitalrebellion.com

5) Make sure that the hard drives you are capturing to are fast enough to handle the footage being captured to it. A regular firewire 400 drive cannot capture uncompressed HD, or even uncompressed standard definition. A RAID array of drives might be in order for these formats.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

Looks like the long frames command will mark "long frames." Has that always been there? When FCP drops a frame, it generally repeats the frame before it to keep the length of the video correct, and to keep the video in sync with the audio. So if you highlight clips in the browser, and choose mark long frames, then it should put markers on the clip marking the long frames (dropped frames) within the clip.

I always wondered what LONG FRAMES were. I consider myself a big FCP expert, and I don't even know what those are. Nor have I used the ANALYZE command.

Glad we have this community...

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def