Hi Pamela,

From what you've written the issue of "gap" seems to be one your JVC is causing as it breaks the video up. Clips often break between pause and record.

With PD7 a Video Fade (Transition) and an Audio Fade (Audio Mixing Room) will help you blend the clips together. Look on the left side of PD7 > icons for both options.

I hope this has helped.

Dafydd

Thanks for your response and suggestions.

It's actually not just a matter of the camera creating breaks when I hit pause or record ... I left the camera recording for 90 continuous minutes. Unfortunately it still seems to break the recording up into clips of about 19 or 20 minutes in length on the camera's internal hard drive. When viewing the video on the camera there are no detectable gaps. However after exporting the clips to my computer and trying to merge back together with PowerDirector there are. Unfortunately this often happens right in the middle of a song ... so I don't really want to fade in & out at that point in the movie.

This is a question of your videoing technique, the video camera and then the presentation of the clips to PowerDirector.

Your camera is making the clips. PD can only display and alter the video presented to it.

If you make available the last 10 seconds of one clip and the begining 10 seconds of following other clip then perhaps this issue could be looked at more closely.

I can give you an upload point for these video files - please PM me your contact information so I can supply you with some data.

Dafydd
[Moderator]

Thanks.

Actually I finally found a solution after searching through countless forums on the web. I'm going to paste what the other person posted way back in 2004. It references a different video camera than I use, but the concept is the same. Perhaps this can be of help to others who run into the same problem:

As all the camcorders having a HHD formatted in FAT, the size of a data file is limited to 4GB.

During a continious recording, the GZ-HD7 closes the current file when this limit is reached and open a new file. This 'cut' point is not well undestood by the NLE softwares when the 2 files are imported on the time-line.

In fact, at a binary level, both files contain the correct data of the recorded flow: they are really like 1 file cut in 2 --or more-- separated other files.

So, you need to merge them back into 1 file to retrieve a normal file. If you have no specialized Tool to manipulate files (having in general a merging function somewhere), you can do as in the 'old-time' a DOS merge:
- under Windows, open the 'Run' window, and type into it the program name: Command
- you are now into a new window, in text mode, running a DOS environment,
- you need to know the path where are located your files; assuming that they are into the Directory 'C:\VIDEO', you need to change your current Directory by typing: CD C:\VIDEO
- now, you need to do a binary merge by typing: COPY /B FILE1.TOD + FILE2.TOD MERGED.TOD

Note: replace FILE1.TOD and FILE2.TOD by the real names of your files, and replace MERGED.TOD with the target name of file you want. If you type the same COPY command without specifying any target name, the 2 files will be merge into the first file. The same command can be done with more files than 2: you only need to add a + FILE.TOD for each additional file you want to merge.

Do a search for MPEG Streamclip
It's free and will join .tod files together as fast as your drives can write.

You can save to many types of mpg's.. for any editing software.
It may work for you.

oh ya.. and it will repair timeline

Thanks, Ron. I also found a little utility from Boxer Software that seems to do the trick. It's called F.A.S.T. (File Append and Split Tool):

http://www.boxersoftware.com/file-append-split-tool.htm