Baz Leffler
Forum Replies Created
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Will you are such a nice guy you should be rewarded somehow…
What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!
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[John Pale] “You busted your butt making a whole series of shows and now you want to take the finished product and do a makeshift standards conversion….take a deep breath…if you have any way of affording it, get it done right.”
Yeah well what was missing from the original post was the purpose of the exercise – it is just for preview purposes – non broadcast and as such didn’t warrant such an expensive exercise. The Procoder conversion will suffice as it has in the past.
Whoever invented ‘batch processing’ should be given an “Obama certificate of merit”!.
And Thompson thanks for thinking out aloud; fortunately I own the decks so it wouldn’t cost me to try your thoughts but I would hate to pay the rental on a theory – risk takers we all are,,,,
BAz
What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!
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Hey Michael – Ah yes, I was confused with my own spock logic – of course – it was 24 to 25 down conversions I was doing previously and the 16.5% difference in sound is too much for the deck to handle although the pictures provide a nice smooth conversion.
I guess its back to Procoder and over night batch conversions!
Baz
What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!
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Hi Stuart – why do you prestripe the digibeta’s?
We always have a small project called ‘lineup’ that outputs SD bars and 4 channels of audio (FCP) and just stripe up to where the ID board begins and then output our main program using assemble edit with timecode set to jam sync. Never had a problem.
And we use the same technique with our HDCAM decks; HD ‘lineup’ then assemble edit main program.
The concept of prestriping your tapes is doubling your head usage on the machine (as well as tieing it up for that length of time!).
Baz
What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!
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[Dave Po] “No, they did not do an initial calibration with our bars. Is that something that they would normally do? How likely could it be that that is the problem?”
The fact that the bars you put on the head originate from the source of all subsequent output is very important. It is the ‘perfect signal’ travelling down the same road as the rest of your video and as it is the ‘perfect signal’ it is used to adjust the decks controls to make it ‘perfect’ when viewing on the scopes. Then all subsequent video should be correct (assuming you have made it that way).
If your signal path is not quite lined up correctly, or, the deck is slightly out of adjustment then this ‘perfect signal’ would take all that into account at the receiving end.
Back in the old analog days signals could vary by as mush as 25% between tapes but digital has reigned that in but there still are variances. The fact that most broadcasters specify 100% as max while but most ‘broadcast’ camera’s output up to 105% is something that you have always gotta keep an eye on.
With your situation, they may have used their deck prior to testing your tape, and had to make adjustments for another tape and it was left that way. Thats why decks have TBC adjustments to calibrate for these little differences.
Baz
What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!
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Did they do an initial calibration using your reference colourbars?
If you used the ‘broadcast safe’ filter in FCP you have to make sure it is the very last item on each clips filter list. If you add say a colour correction filter AFTER you have added the broadcast safe filter then you could have problems.
Use the scopes in FCP to check each clip etc. I use external scopes that are connected to my Blackmagic Multibridge so I know I am looking at the absolute output because sometimes the playback hardware on your Mac may not be precisely calibrated.
Baz
What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!
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Go to the device control settings and select ‘edit’ and change the frame delay by 1 – its a trial and error thing.
Baz
What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!
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[Gene Colburn] “Also Baz I got a kick out of your the App for pros thread.”
Hey Gene – I say it like it is… I was surprised I didn’t get flamed!!!
Baz
What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!
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Broadcast specification for deliverables on any tape format is that the VITC and LTC be identical which is mostly done automatically by the deck so long as you haven’t messed with the ‘normal’ settings.
A quick way to check for this while recording is to watch the VITC at the same time as the actual timecode numbers. The VITC displays at the top of the picture from ‘frames’ on the left to ‘hours’ on the right all in ‘binary’. When you get to zero frames there should be a large (ish) gap at the left side which is binary for zero. Remember there is ‘user bits’ in the VITC which is indispersed with the actual timecode (as well as sync data). By watching the natural flow of numbers you will see a similar ‘pattern’ in the VITC. Subsequently, when the timecode goes thru say, 10:00:00:00 most of the VITC data will ‘disappear’.
Binary vitc is as follows (based on [8] [4] [2] [1])
00
01 –
02 –
03 —
04 –
05 – –
06 —
07 —
08 –
09 – –Baz
What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!
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Are you wanting to have the digibeta deck use the VITC in the SDI input as master timecode?
If you are using an A500 deck just switch the timecode switch under the panel to VITC and the above panel timecode switch to external and regen. This will force the decks timecode generator to lock to incoming VITC and record both as necessary.
Interestingly enough with Sony’s HDCAM series they allow for timecode in the data stream which is part of the SDI spec but Sony never catered for it with the A500 – A simple firmware update would have been nice Sony…..!!!
BAz
What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!