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Capturing Mini DV Timecode & Date with FCP7
Hi,
I am currently doing some work in my spare time on a documentary where they have a bunch of Mini DV tapes they need ingesting. I have been successfully digitising for a few days now but have just realised that there doesn’t seem to be an accurate timecode on these tapes. Forgive me if that is normal, this is a little before my time. The director seems to think there is a good way of digitising the tapes with the correct timecode and date they were shot on, is that the case?
I have been using the ‘capture now’ setting on FCP7.
Thanks,
Ben
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4 Replies
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Most DV cameras recorded timecode. Usually it was stop start, not time of day as time of day would create breaks at each camera stop. This made digitising difficult.
So no I would not expect there to be useful timecode data to indicate time of day. As for date, if a camera op bothered to set user bits to indicate date then you may have that data but don’t expect FCP to read that and use it in any way. So you have reel numbers and timecode and file names. That is all you can expect from a tape format.
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May be a side issue but heads up — shots from mini-DV tapes came into my FCP long ago from stereo audio tracks (from a stereo mic) as double mono. After transfer to Premiere they are locked in as dual mono and it’s a devilish task to edit and mix them.
I don’t know how folks edit double mono tracks like this in FCP7 — do you have to keep duplicating levels and effects for each?
Cheers,
RobertRobert Withers
Independent/personal/avant-garde cinema, New York City
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Unless the tapes were already logged before, and someone made decisions based on those logs, it really doesn’t matter… your digitized version is going to become the “official” version to log and cut from now. So you can make the time codes whatever you want them to be, in whatever NLE they end up in. I can’t remember now if there were aftermarket plug-ins to make that happen in FCP7. But I’m pretty confident there’s a way to jam a new, usable time code into footage in FCPX and/or Premiere. Maybe also on ffmpeg, ffworks or maybe Compressor.
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sorry to the OP for going off-topic…
[Robert Withers] “shots from mini-DV tapes came into my FCP long ago from stereo audio tracks” …. “I don’t know how folks edit double mono tracks like this in FCP7 — do you have to keep duplicating levels and effects for each?”
when you capture in FCP you tell it how you want the two audio tracks formatted: stereo or dual mono. it;s a button in the capture window.
if you inadvertently capture as dual mono, it’s relatively easy to switch it back to stereo in FCP, and pan it to the centre,
then your volume graphing is much simpler.
multipack audio is a bit of a pain as yes, you do have to copy / paste.cheers,
nick
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