[Andrew Van baal]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

Capturing via Firewire is really my only option as far as the offline is concerned; I don’t have a DSR deck or a SDI card and I doubt the client would spring for either.

The image looks good (enough) for me captured via Firewire in FCP, but I do want to maximize its potential; how significant is the difference in quality between a Firewire DV NTSC 48kHz capture and a component capture from a DSR deck? Which leads me to another question: how important is the deck in maintaining the original quality of the tape image? Are all Firewire decks the same in that regard or is there some variation?

The post house that’ll be doing the online (Outpost Digital in Santa Monica; anybody worked with them?) is going to work directly from my FCP sequence/hard disk files, as you recommended. So that’s good.

I’m concerned about the timecode issue, though. Not so much for this project, but let’s say I’m doing an offline edit for a non-DV project that has to be conformed. Firewire timecode is completely unreliable for this?

AvB
FCP Editor

[Andrew Van baal]

Thanks for the prompt responses everyone. The problem has been solved. I ended up doing two things differently: 1) I recaptured each tape, splitting them into three separate clips each, and 2) I digitized from the DVX100 as opposed to the cheap little Panasonic miniDV palmcorder I usually use. I’m thinking the latter might be the culprit – anyone have similar problems using cheap consumer DV cams for decks?