Timecode FUBAR

[Bouke Vahl]

check the tc head, they sometimes get dirty and mess things up.
Try listening to the tc out signal, it should be bright.
bouke

[Lawrence Marshall]

Also toggle your program timeline betweeen “show in drop frame / show in non-drop frame”. You could be off several seconds if your timeline is not set properly when re-digitizing.

Larry Marshall

[Jim Wilcox]

This could be a long shot, but check to make sure your 1800 is not switched to “contol track” on the face panel. This just happend to one of my producers this week. Walked in, switched it to LTC and all was well.

[Dooger D]

Thanks Bouke, I’ll take the 1800 in for a doctor’s visit and see if they can clean the TC Head. Do you think there could be a problem with the P6000 card itself?

[Dooger D]

Thanks Larry – I tried many DF / NDF tests and it doesn’t seem to be the problem. I even tried redigitizing directly into a bin of selects and the TC registered to the original clips are some how way off. Thank you for the suggestion though.

[Dooger D]

Thanks Jim for your response. Unfortunately my problem is not that simple. The TC is off on the original digitized clip and there is no consistant offset. I can look at the TC in & out on the digitized clip and manually go to that point on the original tape and it is way off. In one instance I digitized a 30 min. BSP tape with a TC break that went from Hr.06 to Hr.00 in the same tape and it didn’t even catch that. It just continued to Digitize at Hr.06. It’s not a “record run” / “free run” issue either. ????? I’m wondering if and hoping that it won’t be a P6000 hardware issue. Thanks Anyway.

[Kieran Matthew]

Hi,

When you originally digitized, where you bringing it in one clip at a time, or did you digitize the whole tape in one go ?

I might be wrong here, but it is my understanding that the media100 only samples the timecode directly at the start and end points of a digitize, so any timecode breaks/jumps within the clip will only become apparent when you try to redigitize a part of it. There is the “xxx frames shorter/longer than expected” error that is an indicator, but that sometimes doesn’t kick in in my experience.

Unlike DV, when media100 is digitizing from its analogue inputs any break in the control track is digitized regardless (usually grey screen from a UVW1800) and assigned frame numbers. So if you have two takes side by side on a tape with a short gap between them, even if the timecodes are continuous in the recordings, you’ll get TC offsets when you redigitise. I am forever begging the camera folk to not review in camera for just this problem.

In my experience the only way to get around the problem is to digitize each clip individually, or log a clip the entire length of the tape, place logged clip on a programme, split into bits and the batch digitize the lot. Not elegant, but if there are TC problems, they’ll be isolated to the chunk they occured in.

[Dooger D]

Hi Kieran, I think you nailed it. On this project I did just roll in the loads and and come back 30 minutes later. There were always more frames than expected at the end but I just figured the system would TC address the blank signal as black. Thinking back, I have never had any problem when I log and batch component and I never have any problems with digital because it does auto stop when the signal stops. It’s just a bummer now because I am faced with redigitizing about 22 hours of media and I will have to rebuild the entire show for a proper EDL. THANK YOU for your wisdom. I will never make that mistake again.

[Nick Lammers]

Hi. I’ve had the exact same problem with my DVCam footage – coming out componenet on a DSR-80. I too, digitized long clips, edited, tried to re-digitize and had all kinds of TC issues. I guess I’ll stop digitizing long blocks.

Another issue: I recently was editing a clip with video and synced audio. While on the program line, I lost sync. It was there, I started trimming and it was gone. I adjusted the video to match but I’m still scratching my head.

Lastly, does the DF/NDF setting the program ever have a detrimental effect?

Nick Lammers
Media Mill, Inc.
St. Louis, MO

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