Syncronization between ep and sp clips

[Bret Williams]

Dub the EP tape to a SP tape?

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

First, I must assume you’re talking about “DV” format.
There is no inherent quality difference between SP and LP (you say “EP”).
They both run at the same frame-rate and the audio is identical.

The only difference is “physical” in that the tape is pulled past the heads at a 1/3-slower rate in LP than in SP.

So, once you capture the two tapes, they will edit together perfectly.
But THAT’s the real problem… LP tapes tend to NOT play on any device other than the exact camcorder they were recorded on. That’s because the track-spacing at the slower speed is so CLOSE that if there is any imperfection in the head-alignment between two units, the LP tape will likely mistrack and the video/audio will get blocky and drop-out.

So…
If (IF) you can get the LP tape to PLAY into FCP… you simply edit as normal… there should be no sync problems at all.

I can’t speak to the specific problems of the other edit system (it would be no different as far as sync on that system) but I also can’t speak to others’ editing skills, either.

[Chris Poisson]

Matte may be right, but I have some old (wedding!) tapes shot the same way, I do what Bret says and just dub them via FireWire to another DV tape. Works great, since my DSR 11 won’t play EP tapes.

[Jason Griffith]

Thanks Guys,
I had thought about dubbing to an sp format but wasn’t sure if that would be a fix before I attempted. Now that I know that someone has done it with success, I will proceed in that direction. Thanks so much for the input.

Jason