AVID and Panasonic HD1200A deck

[Jon Zanone]

Well, I’m not sure you can control the Pannie deck via firewire unless you are using RS422 – did I miss that? If you are capturing via the firewire from the 170, but controlling the Pannie deck… I don’t think that will work. Firewire has imbedded deck control protocols – you may have to capture using the ‘no deck’ feature in the digitize tool (and forego TC). Panasonic decks are well supported in the deck configuration tool. Wouldn’t it be just as good to convert your tapes to DV using the 170 as a deck, then applying a reformat (assuming this is 16:9 footage – does the 170 support native 16:9, or just mask it like the 150?) to your footage in the Avid…. Bottom line, I think you’ll be losing your 24p flavor by running it through the 170. Might as well put it on DV and save yourself some headaches.

Jon

“The Almighty tells me He can get me out of this mess. But He’s pretty sure you’re F%$#*D!”

[Joe Biscotti]

[Jon Zanone] “Well, I’m not sure you can control the Pannie deck via firewire unless you are using RS422 – did I miss that? If you are capturing via the firewire from the 170, but controlling the Pannie deck… I don’t think that will work. Firewire has imbedded deck control protocols – you may have to capture using the ‘no deck’ feature in the digitize tool (and forego TC). Panasonic decks are well supported in the deck configuration tool. Wouldn’t it be just as good to convert your tapes to DV using the 170 as a deck, then applying a reformat (assuming this is 16:9 footage – does the 170 support native 16:9, or just mask it like the 150?) to your footage in the Avid…. Bottom line, I think you’ll be losing your 24p flavor by running it through the 170. Might as well put it on DV and save yourself some headaches.”

I will be using a 9pin 422 for contro1 and not the firewire.
I will not be using a pd170 as my a to d converter, I will be using a DSR-70a as my a to d converter. Its a real deck looks like a SX clamshell execpt it DV DVCam recorder and player and DVCPro player.

Time will be an issue so dubbing then injesting might not be to pratical but I do see your point!

Not worried about loosing 24p flavor for the edit as the HD tapes will be re edited later on a proper HD system. I need to deliver an SD version from these HD tapes using a Newscutter XP or an Xpress Pro Laptop System.

If I understant your post Machine control should be possible using the 422 (9 pin).

Thanks.

[Jon Zanone]

I think I understand you:

-You are controlling the Panasonic deck via rs422, and using the 70 (sorry about the confusion there!) to convert to SD and sending out via firewire. This is happening simultaneously.

I think (not sure – this is a unique solution!) your problem will be trying to select firewire as your input. Avid will expect to use the control protocols imbedded in the FW signal. The only way I see around this is to either a) take an analog signal from the 170 into the Avid (and you’d need Mojo – I’m not familiar with the ingest of your system) or tell Avid to disregard TC (which doesn’t sound like and option since you are offlining this)…

Does the Pannie deck have FW out? Have you checked the menus? Maybe the deck has a software HD/SD converter? If you have the book (you can usually download the manual from Panasonic website) it should have a pretty good menu section… (I reseached the 1400 on Pannie’s website, and found this statement in the overview section: “Built-in up/down/cross converter for playing back DVCPRO 50/DVCPRO/DV/DVCAM tapes and for outputting a converted HD signal”. Sounds like you might not even need the 70!….)

One final caveat about rs422 machine control – you must have a serial/rs422 converter to get the macine control to work. Do a google on macine control and rosetta stone – I forget the company’s name, but it is a required piece to make this work

“The Almighty tells me He can get me out of this mess. But He’s pretty sure you’re F%$#*D!”

[Jon Zanone]

I just did a little more research – according to Avid’s supported devices list (https://www.avid.com/content/8927/SUPPORTED%20DEVICES%20FOR%20AVID%20EDITOR%20PRODUCTS.pdf), It looks like the 1200 is the only deck of the two supported, and it only supports certain systems. And, it looks like neither of these decks are supported on Newcutter…

It doesn’t mean the 1400 won’t work, it means Avid hasn’t tested it. There are some pretty specific menu settings to, so make sure to follow them.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news…

Jon

“The Almighty tells me He can get me out of this mess. But He’s pretty sure you’re F%$#*D!”

[Joe Biscotti]

I will probably use the 1400 and through trial and error see if it it will work. I know I will be able to down convert out of the 1400a and injest into avid. You can import via a firewire and control via rs 422 (9 pin) control cable using a rossetta cable.

I should have the deck next week and will post the results .

Thanks

[Bill Stephan]

You will lose the effect of 24fps when you downconvert to NTSC because the Varicam records 720/59.94P ONLY — no matter what frame rate you set on the Varicam. The only thing that happens when you set frame rates in the Varicam is that it flags in metadata the frames it needs to produce the desired frame rate. To use that metadata, you need to edit on an Avid DS, which will store only the frames needed from the 59.94P stream. Or you can edit on a Final Cut Pro system that is set up for HD and has the Panasonic frame rate converter software installed. Or you can run your Varicam footage through a hardware Panasonic frame rate converter unit, which recovers the true 24P frame rate.

Only after doing one of these steps, then you can downconvert to NTSC and edit away.

Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City