Edit to Tape to to D-Betas Simultaneously

[Dan Riley]

We used to do that sort of thing in the old One Inch days,
when you had a 3 or 4 deck system with an edit computer
where the computer was syncing all of them together.
But that was a very complicated setup and very expensive.
CMX editors etc. cost $50k and up. For you to “edit to tape”
even one machine, FCP is looking at the video sync
and the timecode frames and locking it’s own playback
to where the tape machine is, or it’s moving the tape
machine to where it needs to be. It can’t do that with
more than one machine at a time.

Now, you could take the SDI out and timecode out of the digibeta
and feed that to your other DigiBeta. Now if you rolled record
on the other digibeta (the one not connected to FCP)
you should see the same timecode and picture and
audio out of the FCP connected machine. For the timecode to be
correct you may need to turn off the feature on the
digibeta where it shows you confidence playback of
your recorded picture. This causes a delayed video/audio
output and I’m not sure if the timecode is also delayed.
I’m not even sure if the timecode is output at all
in this situation. But you could putz around with it
and see. Try doing a long preroll, like 30 or 60 seconds,
so the timecode on the other digibeta is continuous,
and it should work. Grant you, I haven’t tried this idea.

Dan

[Walter Biscardi]

You can pick up RS-422 routers from places like Markertek and ProMax might even be able to get them for you. Basically you send the RS-422 from FCP into the Router and then from the router to the decks. You can then roll multiple machines at the same time.

They can be pricey though.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Dan Riley]

Walter,
It will roll and sync both machines to FCP…frame accurate?

Dan

[Walter Biscardi]

According to what I’ve read on them, yes. I don’t know why it wouldn’t, it’s just sending the same RS-422 signal to multiple machines via a router.

But since I’ve never tried it, I have no idea. I’ve looked into routers lately because I have four VTR’s and two suites so we’re looking to give both rooms control of the machines.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Dan Riley]

We have five machines. We use a batch panel to give the AVID
or FCP control of which ever machine we want. But two
machines looking at the AVID or FCP at the same time?
Isn’t there a back and forth going on between where the
machine is and where FCP thinks it is? I mean it’s not just
FCP telling the DigiBeta what to do is it? Isn’t it also
asking the DigiBeta what it’s doing? And if so, how could it
know what machine to get to do what it wanted it to do?
I don’t think FCP has protocols for that.
At least this is the way it used to work with our CMX and Sony
computer editing suites. Each machine was rolled and locked
independently, then a frame accurate edit could happen.
Otherwise it’s just roll and hope for the best.

Dan

[Walter Biscardi]

[Danrnw] “And if so, how could it
know what machine to get to do what it wanted it to do?
I don’t think FCP has protocols for that.”

As far as FCP is concerned, it’s controlling a single machine. The Router takes care of ganging the multiple machines. I’ve seen them from Kramer and another company out of Europe. Both say you can send one RS-422 signal in and then route how many machines will be controlled by that signal.

Again, I don’t have one here so I’m not sure how well they work or if they work. If someone can get a demo of one and report back, that would be great.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

I also see many problems here.

Its not like those “roll-all-decks-in-record” remote commands like you’d use for a rack of crash-record decks. This is for a frame-accurate edit.

As Dan said, FCP (or Avid) needs to “SEE” the TC “feedback” from a given machine so that it can cue, pre-roll, and “punch-in” at the proper frame.

If you just DA’ed the commands to, say, FIVE decks at once (even if FCP was only “SEEING” one of them for feedback) FOUR of the decks would just “punch-in” at whichever frame they happened to be rolling by at the time the FIRST deck (the one FCP was “seeing”) hit the CORRECT frame…
Pandemonium!
Mass ‘steria! Friends, the idle brain is the devil’s playground, Ohhh, we got TROUBLE. Right here in… but I digress.

If there WAS a way that FCP COULD “see” each decks TC (for feedback purposes), since there is still only the ONE control system (DA’ed to all decks), FCP would simply abort every time it tried to edit due to one or more decks being “off” the correct TC.

[Michael Alberts]

I would go with Dan’s first workflow option and take the t.c. and SDI out and send it to the second Dbeta deck. Just tell the second deck to accept the Ext t.c. signal. We do this all the time from the Dbeta in our machine room to the BetaSP just below it.
Walter, we built a simple RS-422 patch panel in our machine room that is fed by three other rooms. We just patch who gets control at any given time. The parts cost me something like $30 at Pac Radio in LA. It has room for 10 RS-422 ports.

Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.

[Michael Gossen]

ok, stop overthinking this. set up the first deck like normal, using rs-422 9-pin vtr control. route the sdi out of that deck to the in on the second. now also route the rs-422 of the first deck out to the in of the second. now you have video, audio, and TC. on page 2 of the menu for the second deck, set TC in to RP188. This is the setup for a frame-accurate, on the fly crash clone. once your first deck starts recording, which should be in black, press rec-play on the second, and there you go, done.