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Free Run, or Time of Day Time Code Capture
Quick question.
Can Avid Media Composer capture Free Run or Time of Day time code with out user interaction. I.E. if the tape has 15 segments each starting at different times of day is there a way to just press capture and not have to tell it to start capturing again when there is a time code shift/break.
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2 Replies
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Yes. In your capture settings make sure Capture Across Timecode Breaks is checked. Whenever Avid hits a timecode break, it will stop capturing the clip, preroll, and start capturing again at the break. If you have 15 breaks, you should have 16 clips when the tape is done (you’ll always have 1 more clip than breaks).
Michael.
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When doing this, you may want to drop the pre-roll time slightly. You will miss the beginning first few seconds of each clip (due to preroll) – although not too short, or you’ll have trouble if you need to recapture (for online or data recovery).
Also, you will run into problems if there are clips that are very short (less than or not much more than preroll time) as Avid gets confused trying to cue for the clip or the one following.
Also be careful of time rollovers – when timecode leaps backward numerically on a tape. This is most common when a shoot goes past midnight (actually rolling a take from 23:59:59:00 to 00:00:00:00 can be mighty troublesome), or when a tape is used one day, and then again the next. Or, in fun cases when the tapes have bars pre-recorded on them.
In general capturing for the offline is easy, recapturing for online can require a little more attention to detail, but it’s not too much hassle.
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