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Davinci Resolve Edit to tape failing and driving me crazy!
Hi all.
Hoping someone can shed some light. Long story short. I want to make tape backups of my completed projects and no matter what I do I cannot for the life of me get Davinci to edit to tape properly.
The timeline settings are HD 10bit, interlaced @ 50 fields. Timeline start timecode is 09:59:30:00
Davinci delivery settings are to output SD to tape.
I’ve got a Decklink Studio 2 card.
Decklink SDI out goes into a tape deck [Sony Beta SX or Panasonic DVCPRO 50]
Decklink SDI in comes from said tape deck.
VTR control hooked up correctly. I can control the deck from within Davinci delivery page no issues. Now here is my issue that is pulling my hair out!
With a tape in either deck and blacked with a timecode starting at 09:59:20:00 and onwards. I set Davinci to edit the in point on the tape at 09:59:30:00 and end 09:59:59:24 using Insert edit. It cues the tape up correctly with it’s preroll duration. Soon as it hits the in point, the tape deck stops, then hunts around like its looking for the cue / in point. It then shortly gives up and goes into standby. This happens on either tape deck.
If I set the edit to be an Assemble edit, it cues up the tape, then 50/50 of the time it’s start recording to the tape at the edit in point on the tape 09:59:30:00 and then proceedes to insert some random timecode and start counting I’ve not actually set. It will also show an edit duration at double the length of the actual timeline duration.
I’m trying to cue up bars and slate to programme start at 10:00:00:00 as you can probably see. But it seems to output at double the timeline duration of the bars and slate.
I am starting to loose my patience. I’ve gone over all the settings a million times, double checked everything. Tried on 3 different tape decks and still come out with the same issue. It seems like its a Davinci issue and not a tape deck issue.
My only thought as to a potential cause could be the fact there is no reference into the tape deck or Decklink card as when the deck is in standby the input from the deck Davinci is seeing is very jittery and has random flashes of green blocks and so on. I can’t see it being an issue with a single tape deck linked to a single computer surely? But I’m not sure. I’m really hoping someone can shed some light as I am at a total loss now for something that should be so blindingly obvious to accomplish really.
Many thanks for your help!
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9 Replies
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“Double” the duration, &c. makes me wonder if the system is confused about frame rate. I would try unifying the system at 25i. The Standard Def decks you refer to are likely not going to understand anything else. Make sure the Tape Deck isn’t in some sort of feedback-loop with the Resolve system as far as external reference is conerned. It should lock to incoming, whatever it is — and likely nothing other than 25i. And make sure the interlace is actually correct. PC/Mac-based video systems are notoriously bad at it, some legacy applications just pumping out 50P with repeated fields. If the decks are losing their time-code accuracy or suffering from disappearing code, there might be an issue with “jam” code at the edit point not being continuous, or low probability, the Vertical Interval TC not agreeing with the LTC when it is re-inserted with the active video. I dunno, I stopped recording to tape about 6 or 7 years ago and gave away all my Beta, D-Beta, UMatic, and SR decks. Like, literally, the same as sending them to the dump.
JPO
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Ideally any edit to tape requires genlock to both the tape machine & the Decklink card.
The last time I did anything to tape was many years ago and I didn’t edit to tape, Just fed the signal from the Decklink to the tape (Digi Beta or HDCam), set ext timecode on the deck and hit crash record and then played the timeline which carried the timeline timecode embedded in the SDI signal.
My advice would be to render a finished file and try that from a timeline or if you need multiple audio track use the separate Decklink Media Express software instead of Resolve> Deliver. Actually I’m pretty sure I used Media Express to do the job
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May be VITC time code. The machine may be changing to the VITC when it stops. That could make it think it needed to go to another location. If it’s that, it would be a machine setting.
HTH
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Hi James,
It’s a long time since I did an edit to tape and I feel your pain, it brings back memories.
It could be that the deck doesn’t have an external reference signal and that’s causing the issues.
To fix this, and if you don’t have house reference into your deck, you need to loop the reference on the deck. There’s four BNC inputs on the top left of the deck. I think its take the Deck Ref Input (top left) and loop it with a BNC cable to the Deck Composite BNC input, the bottom right BNC of those four. I can’t remember if you need 75 ohms on or off. I seem to recall that on the Decklink breakout cable there’s a composite out so not SDI, that connects to the composite in, top right BNC, but that may not be necessary. It’s fifteen years ago when I last did this so I’m a bit foggy on the set up but it should work with looping the ref signal on the deck.
Your other option is to make your timeline longer, so add a few mins of black after the pic end, and do an assemble edit to tape. That moves the break after the sequence further down the tape.
Hope that helps,
Neal -
James,
If the assemble recording is working, you could try this hack.
Restripe the time-code track only to match your in-time. (Make sure you actually start your restripe 10-seconds or so before your actual start time to allow for pre-roll in the future.
Chuck
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So many ways to create a mis-match condition. A few of my machines had internal generators so I could pre-stripe entire cassettes, and then it was a matter of setting the TCG to “Regen” so it would ignore incoming timecode.
There was a time in the distant past where we initialized all our crystal-black tapes to start at 23:58:50:00 so that the first frame of program rolled over to “0”. Complete and total no-no with non-linear platforms. Convention became 09:58:50;00 with program start at 10 hours. Of course this also plays havoc with captioning. Depends on Deliverables.
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And set the deck to Internal Timecode, Not sure where that is an an SX deck, could be under the front control flap.
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Set the VTR timecode to Internal and Regen. Make sure you are reading the LTC and not VITC. If that doesn’t work, check to make sure you are sending a compatible signal (i.e. NTSC to a DigiBeta).
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Hey… James you have to use a older monitor like ntsc tv .. so interlaced .. line on line 2 fields.. I have hundreds of tapes from the 2000’s .. i edited on a avid. . pre public.. davinci resolve days. I used to work on the lagacy consoles in film to tape.. telecine dalies on features.. its a while back.. tell us if your getting a video feed or any digital signal. so you may have to use YRGB out analog out maybe because the old dv 25 / dv 50 mpeg2 … is the digital profile back in 2000 to 2008 to 2012 … set your Blackmagic in out to SD .. its more like a video signial . a hybird. or just try crash record if you can see picture .. and just get things to tape
… let us know if you got things going..
paul pitzel vancovuer canada
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