DVCPro HD 720p 30 not ingesting via firewire.

[Tom Wolsky]

p49 of FCP6 HD and Broadcast Formats it says:

“Note: Drop frame timecode is supported when capturing 720p60 DVCPRO HD.”

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Ray Siposs]

“Note: Drop frame timecode is supported when capturing 720p60 DVCPRO HD.”

But we shot 720p30. So I assume we are not supported.

[Jeremy Garchow]

There are a couple of different menus to get HD via firewire out of your deck. If Sd works, I imagine your deck is setup improperly. Make sure you have the right ‘dif speed’ and formats set to 720p DVCPro HD.

I can’t remember off hand, but there are at least three different menu options to change to 720p DVcpro HD out of the firewire if you have changed the settings to SD.

Jeremy

[Ray Siposs]

Well here is the solution.

I went over to ProMax in Irvine, CA and talked to their tech department. Yes, it is true that there is indeed a conflict still existing with recording DVCPro HD 720p 30 59.94 Drop Frame and Firewire. Both Apple and Panasonic are aware of it too.

Firewire likes all the frames – including the ones that are dropped (missing).

We took the same 1400 deck and tapes, ran an HD SDI cable out to a Kona LHe and everything worked flawlessly. HD SDI solved everything. The time code ran via RS422, and the video/audio ran down HD SDI. No major deck menu changes were required.

So… lesson learned is: Shoot every HD project in Non Drop Frame (to be safe) and adjust if for Drop Frame in post. (Fix it in Post).

As a side note, the engineer also shared another horror story of a similar event with a JVC 250 camera and 35 recorded tapes. Same issue – shot in Drop Frame – except the JVC deck didn’t even play it back. The camera did however. They ended up taking the camera with an HDSDI path out and everything worked. Since then, they strongly suggest to shoot all HD projects in Non Drop Frame to be safe.

I learned my lesson… painfully well. I come from the old school of broadcast. HD throws away many of the very basic rules. I can live with NDF just fine, now that I know.

Cheers – and thanks for all the suggestions.

Ray

[Jeremy Garchow]

Yeah, makes sense. Thanks for the follow up.

[Mark Raudonis]

[Ray Siposs] “Firewire likes all the frames – including the ones that are dropped (missing). “

Ray,

There are no frames dropped… only numbers.

Timecode does NOT affect the frame rate… only how you count the frames. So your statement should read, “Firewire likes all the frame NUMBERS… ”

Too many people are confused by the “drop vs nondrop” issue to let this inaccurate statement go by.

This from Wiki:

To correct this, drop frame SMPTE timecode was invented. In spite of what the name implies, NO video frames are dropped (skipped) using drop-frame timecode. What’s actually being dropped are some of the timecode “labels”. In order to make an hour of timecode match an hour on the clock, drop-frame timecode drops frame numbers 0 and 1 of the first second of every minute, and includes them when the number of minutes is divisible by ten. This achieves an “easy-to-track” drop frame rate of 18 frames each ten minutes (18,000 frames @ 30frame/s) and almost perfectly compensates for the difference in rate, leaving a residual timing error of roughly 86.4 milliseconds per day, an error of only 1.0 ppm.
i.e. – Drop frame TC drops two frames every minute, except every tenth minute, achieving 29.97frame/s.
Drop frame is usually represented with a semi-colon (;) whereas Non-drop is represented with a colon (:)

Mark

[Jeremy Garchow]

Dn’t you think that’s what he meant, Mark? I took it as such. I see your point, too.

[Ray Siposs]

Yes, it’s the numbers that matter.

I would hope we all recognize that “no actual frames were lost or harmed” in the making of this film. 🙂

Thanks for the followup.

Ray

[Herb Sevush]

Ray –

I have ingested well over 200 hours of DVCPRO HD 720P30 DF via firewire into Final Cut. If this isn’t possible than I’m delivering illusions to PBS. So far they haven’t kicked any back.

I don’t know what your problem is but there is NO issue with capturing 720P30 DF. I’ve captured with the 1200A, I’m sure the 1400 handles it as well since the HD SDI output is working. My guess is you don’t have your firewire output set up properly on the deck.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions