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FCP to DV Timecode Slip
Hey Cows,
I looked around for a quick answer, but this one is really bugging me. I had a 15 minute DV NTSC 48K sequence with 20 or so promos. They all had to hit on the xx:xx:xx:00 (zero frames).
My non drop frame timeline had it all laid out, bars and tone, slates, spots… all perfectly.
My DV tape was blacked, non-drop.
I set my in and out on the sequence and an in-point for the record deck using EDIT to TAPE. I dragged the sequence into the ETT window and dropped into the INSERT tab. All went well, hit OK and off it went.
15 minutes later, I rushed the tape out the door to my client to dump it to Beta SP… I was able to scroll frame by frame on their deck and I realized that everything was 6 frames early. My sequence started at 00:59:59:24 instead of 01:00:00:00. The weird thing is that my bars and tone started exactly where I set my in-pont 00:59:15:00.
Sound familiar? Is there a setting I’m missing? Is it a FW thing? I’m at a loss, and with no frame by frame control on the Panasonic AG-DV2500, I can’t see the 6 frames easily.
Suggestions?
Thanks!
JasonPowerMac G5
3GB RAM
FCP 5.1.3
Panasonic AG-DV2500 (connected DV to FW 400) 4 to 6 pin I believe it’s called. -
4 Replies
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welcome to quicktime— you should always use a 2pop as a source of reference- your bars will insert correctly but if you look back at the end of your bars they will go long, probably 6 frames long. I haven’t messed with too many DV layoffs especially trying to be frame accurate, but i’ll tell you it is one hell of a … trying to lay down accurately to my HDCAM or even D5- toggle your frame offset in your device control tab- of course my experience is with SDI and RS422, not trying to get Firewire to lay down correctly… but that is at least what I can offer up.
Final Cut Pro ≥ A/V settings ≥ Device Control Presets ≥ Duplicate your current setting ≥ and change Playback offset to something that works — for me -1 frame is more often than not right, but I’m not sure in the firewire world… try -6 and see if it hits the 2pop.
Post Production Specialist
The DR Group
Los Angeles, CA -
Thanks for the post… I’ll give that a shot. 6 frames seems such a strange number. I am not sure I understand WHY this is happening.
I know this isn’t the most ideal way to do this, but I’m not buying a beta machine. This client is moving to DB (wishing I could just upload to their server)… Is DV just not reliable for frame accuracy? Seems to me it should be.
Jason
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DV by itself does not hold timecode accurately, DVcam is known to be more reliable- if you are just hitting a mini dv tape you might be out of luck… best senario is something like going out Standard def SDI to something like a Sony DSR1500 dvcam machine- I know for a fact with that machine you can make accurate edits… but like I said the problem is within Quicktime when performing true frame accurate drops-
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Bummer…
I appreciate you dropping some knowledge. I have adjusted the playback offset, so I’ll try that on my next output and report back.
Jason
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