Time Code Breaks

[Shane Ross]

Did they shoot TIME OF DAY code? I hate that. Unless I have 2 or more cameras to synch up. I try to keep from yelling at DPs for doing that.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Shane Ross] “Unless I have 2 or more cameras to synch up.”

Ugh, even then it’s a pain in the arse. What ever happened to the ole clap stick, a perfect low tech sync tool.

Jeremy

[Shane Ross]

That’s what I have them do now. But, I have yet to multiclip them. I am too much in the habit of just treating them as separate clips.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Bob Flood]

Walter

Logging tapes was not a problem when using a Beta SP machine, or any machine that was made for linear and non linear editing’

BUT

logging tapes using a toy deck like the M10U or the camera is not only time consuming..its down right painful!

What deck are you using to capture and log your footage? do you find that you HAVE to mark in and out between the timecode breaks? or can you “Capture Now” and hit escape right after the tc break?

I would love to just dump it all in but for 2 reasons: 1. the m10u cant spit out clean code, so i get phantom tc breaks every 30 seconds or so and 2. In the back of my mind i still want the tc to be accurate so i could recapture the material later, if necessary, either because of major storage failure, accidental erasure, or even altewrnate versioning down the road?

so, if it can work, i would like to have my assisitant just capture between TC breaks using capture now, making sure to start capturing a good 4 seconds after any tc break (real,not phantom) and stopping right after the next tc break. will that work?

thanx for any help you can offer

[Walter Biscardi]

[Bob Flood] “What deck are you using to capture and log your footage? do you find that you HAVE to mark in and out between the timecode breaks? or can you “Capture Now” and hit escape right after the tc break?”

Sony M15U. Yes, I mark in and out for each and every shot. I don’t digitize entire tapes, I only digitize what I feel I need to cut the story. That means out of about 40 hours of material I might have captured about 3 hours of raw material. But I log all the tapes all the way. If there are TC breaks, it doesn’t affect me unless it happens right on a shot change and there’s no enough pre-roll. At that point I just slide the In Point down by a few seconds.

[Bob Flood] “so, if it can work, i would like to have my assisitant just capture between TC breaks using capture now, making sure to start capturing a good 4 seconds after any tc break (real,not phantom) and stopping right after the next tc break. will that work?”

You set an In Point at the Beginning of the Tape and Out Point at the end of the tape and do a Capture Clip, but with “Create New Clip” at TC break turned on. That will create a new clip each time there’s a TC break.

As for the “phantom TC breaks every 30 seconds, turn OFF Start / Stop detection. That’s causing the tape to stop each time the camera operator stopped / started the camera.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

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

[Bob Flood]

thanx walter!

all good, however one point perhaps i did not make clear: the Phatom time code breaks every thirty seconds or so have nothing to do with camera start stops! they simply happen! honestly! i go to capture a shot i need, just one response to an interview question, maybe its 2 minutes of answering the question, and i mark in at the end of the question, and mark out at the beginning of the next question, and after i capture it i get an error message saying that a timecode break was detected and you should log and capture yadda yadda….

do you fine this behavior with the m15u? i think the code coming out of the m10 is just flaky?

[Johnno3399]

Thanks Guys all good stuff. I am a shooter and I understand about keeping clean time code. My question is why does FCP take so long to find the break and then start to encode again? When Avid finds a break it takes 1/3 the time to find and start again.

[Johnno3399]

Thanks Guys all good stuff. I am a shooter and I understand about keeping clean time code. My question is why does FCP take so long to find the break and then start to encode again? When Avid finds a break it takes 1/3 the time to find and start again.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Johnno3399] “My question is why does FCP take so long to find the break and then start to encode again? When Avid finds a break it takes 1/3 the time to find and start again.”

That’s a question for the FCP engineers, not for us. I find that FCP is much quicker working with TC breaks on RS-422 decks than Firewire decks.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

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

[Steven Gonzales]

Good point Walter, as I find that a lot of folks who say Avid is more nimble at capture were using RS-422 control on Avid compared to firewire control in FCP.

Also, capture from camera vs. capture from deck is a big difference, as the transports are much more robust on decks.