Boy, I have no idea when this was added.
And I want to personally thank the engineer who added it, and the person who pushed this through product design.
When you capture a tape with a timecode break, FCP 5.1.4 automatically changes the reel name.
Doesn't sound so important does it?
When you go to recapture a show (for finishing reasons, uprezzing, reconstructing a show from the past...), it's key that you have unbroken timecode on the tape and the correct Reel inserted in your deck. This way, your system can just shuttle through the tape, and it will batch capture all your clips. But if you've got any timecode breaks on the tape, the timecode resets to Zero.
This is catastrophic. It means that you have timecodes on the same tape that recur. There is more than one 1:00:00 (one minute) mark on the tape. Every time the timecode resets, you're defeating batch capture.
An editor has to go back and manually figure out which 'zone' the timecode is supposed to be from (which is even more difficult if the footage is entirely offline and you're not sure which part of the tape it should be from.) I was batch capturing an entire reel (something that I usually don't do - but as an experienced offline and online editor, I chose this type of workflow to handle a specific job.)
While capturing, I ran into a timecode break. Final Cut pro CHANGED THE REEL NAME and added a Letter. So Dumas Tape 1 because Dumas Tape 1-B. Which means that if I have to recover the footage, I know to go to the second zone on the tape.
Someone in the Pro Apps paid attention. I don't recall FCP ever doing this before. On other editing systems, I have to do this by hand (change the reel name, append the letter, etc.)
Oh, and if you want to prevent this (especially in DV, where turning off the camera causes this), you should turn on the camera, rewind into previously recorded area, and then hit record, providing continuous timecode throughout your tape.
