[Dave Haynie]

First thing… I would record the audio at 48kHz sampling, not 44.1kHz, for video (well, me personally, I’d probably record at 96kHz, just because I can). 48kHz is pretty much standard for any video format. You’ll probably find some claims online that sampling rate can be a sync issue, but that’s not true.

John’s right about the crystals… every device runs from an independent quartz crystal, unless you’ve time locked them in some way (genlock, external word clock, etc). Every digital device uses some kind of clock for timing. Each has a stated frequency, and a spec that guarantees that frequency, within a certain accuracy. More accuracy generally means more money.

Now, that’s not the main problem… if you’re using an accurate enough clock. The problem is, some devices don’t. Take the plain old everyday bog standard quartz crystal or oscillator you’ll find in most PCs and other digital gear that doesn’t care about super-accurate timing. This has a stated accuracy of +/-100ppm (parts per million), which sounds pretty decent. But at worst case, if that’s the clock in your audio recorder, it’ll walk away by one frame at 24fps every 6.9 minutes. Now imagine if your camera and your audio recorder used the same clock, but each was off in the opposite direction!

On my day job, I do electronics design, including radio. The typical radio clock I’m using these days is 1.5ppm… that would translate to walking off one perfect 24fps frame every 7.7 hours, worst-case. In practice, you’d claim the field recorder and the camera were perfectly synced. Of course, I have to pay $8.00 or so for such a clock, while a 100ppm version at the same frequency might run $0.50. So you can guess which one the PC Industry is likely to use for regular gear.

In following some of the HDSLR sites, this has been a big problem for HDSLR users. Seems lots of these guys never did separate audio/video before (I’ve been doing it for… long), and so they picked up whatever field recorder they could find. Some of the early Samson/Zoom recorders had pretty crappy clocks, so they could walk off your video in 10 minutes or so. I have a later model, the Zoom H4n, and it pretty much holds lock for an hour or more with any of my camcorders. I hear tell folks have seen it wander a frame or so after 100minutes, suggesting maybe a 10ppm clock. Of course, I really don’t know the accuracy of my cameras, either, but pro gear tends to be well made in these kinds of things.

So the first question: what are you using for recording? You did say “record audio on a DAW” … so I’m guessing a PC and some sound card. Is this the PC’s default audio card, or something that’s got a name hooked up externally? Assuming the 2-3 cameras retain mutual audio sync, you can certainly factor them out of the equation.

I bet it clean up really nicely with a different recording device.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Fire up the “Properties” dialog. On the Properties tab, select the “Disc Properties” menu. Scroll down to the bottom. You should find the “Disc Labels” section, which includes “Volume name”. That’s what you want.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

You need something close to a dual-core 2.4GHz Core 2 processor to get decent playback on 1080/60i or so AVC video. So yeah, you’re underpowered.

With that said, editor playback is always choppier than with a good player. VLC has its place, and will play practically any format without your needing to install CODECs. But it’s not very well turned… it’s inefficient and doesn’t use GPU acceleration (the latest claims to do, a little, but very primitive).

If your system has a reasonable GPU and if you’re running a recent version of Windows, you can get some help from the GPU. Specifically, try Windows Media Player if you have Windows 7 — that uses the DXVA 2.0 API and Microsoft’s new AVC decoder.

If you don’t have Windows 7, go and find the Splash Lite player, a free download. That’s going to give you about the most efficient playback you’re going to see on that computer.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Honestly, when I shoot with the TM700, there’s a really good chance I’m going to match video from my HMC40. So in that, I have to shoot at 1080/60p to match 720/60p, I can leave it at 1080/60p to match 1080/60i, or go to 1080/24p for matching that.

Even when I don’t, the target is generally standard Blu-Ray, and maybe also internet video. I lived with non-standard video disc formats (VCD, SVCD) before DVD-R was out, and with non-standard HD disc formats (WMV/HD) before Blu-ray was out. I’m not really looking for any kind of distribution medium for this. Shooting in 1080/60p, I can at the very least decide later if I’d rather print to 720/60p or 1080/60i… or maybe I want 1080/60i for the disc, 720/30p for the internet, or some-such. It’s a nice option.

For simple play back… the camera works, via HDMI. I have converted to MPEG-4 ASP (I think it was) and got 1080/60p playing on the PS3… sometimes. Kind of quirky, and so I decided to wait for them to really support it. No idea if that’s been done. I know the device CAN support this, since it’s doing 3D Blu-ray today, which uses more video bandwidth and software crunch than 1080/60p.

Since I haven’t been looking for a player, my suggestion, which I already offered, it “livingroom PC”. There’s a huge hobby market out there in building PCs that replace your DVD player as a video rack component, and this is guaranteed to work.

The other recommendation: look for players listing AVCHD 2.0 on their spec list. They will play 1080/60p. As I said in an earlier post, I don’t know if any random player is going to be happy with an MP4 file. If this were important to me, I’d load up an SDHC card with a video videos: one in .mp4, one in the MPEG-2 transport stream format (.ts, .mts, .m2ts, all the same thing)… you already know every Blu-ray player understands that format. Then take another SDHC card, this time formatted with the AVCHD file system, and that same 1080/60p video. Could be what you shot on the TM700, or something you created from an edit using a tool like multiAVCHD to create the AVCHD structure. Then go shopping, look for AVCHD 2.0 labels, look for SDHC slots (most Panny BD players have them), and just see what works.

The TM700’s video is, after the fact, AVCHD 2.0 compliant. Sony and Panasonic set the standard based on what Panasonic did and Sony was then currently doing similarly on camcorders.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

All versions of HDMI support various resolutions up to 1920×1200/60p (3.96 Gb/s). HDMI 1.3 added some higher bandwidth modes, including up to 2680×1600/60p, and the deep color options… various combinations up to 10.2 Gb/s. HDMI 1.4 added 4K resolutions: 3840×2160/24p/25p/30p and 4096×2160/24p.

In short — the TM700’s HDMI output is perfectly suited to the video it produces, and will play at 1080/60p on a suitable monitor or television, including both of my digital monitors and both of my digital televisions (one DLP, one LCD).

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Broadcast devices will convert to NTSC for NTSC… but in fact, a modern television is technically ATSC, not NTSC. Now, that’s not exciting for 1080/60p use, since that’s not part of the ATSC specification. But 720/60p, 1080/30p, and 1080/24p actually are (no one uses these for broadcast, but they technically could). Though that’s only significant for television reception, not the connection between your video player and your display.

Old fashioned players pretty much did what you told them. You could (and probably still can) tell your DVD player to produce letterboxed video or not, to output 480i or 480p, or if you have an upconverting player, probably 1080i. That’s a one way thing… the player does the conversion YOU TELL IT, and that’s what you get.

Once we went to digital connections (HDMI it the one I’m thinking of, but DVI and DisplayPort do the same things), the display and the player can now agree upon a mutually supported display resolution. This isn’t new, either, it’s been true for at least the last half-decade (ok, to some, that’s new). Modern players do their conversions based on an HDMI resolution handshake — they don’t actually worry about either NTSC or ATSC. So if you connect your TM700 or PS3 or other fairly recent device to a fairly modern display, you probably have the option of 60p, maybe even 24p, as the actual data format over HDMI. It’s even possible you’ll have enhanced xvYCC color space… some camcorders support extended 8-bit color, and the HDMI specs allow for up to 16-bit color (some new televisions do support extended color, though you need a pro monitor for anything remotely approaching 16-bit color).

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Modern displays are “inspired by” than “constrained by” the NTSC standard. NTSC, of course, supported only 480/60i video. Pretty much any modern display (ATSC compatible) will support inputs at 480/60p (some monitors don’t support 480/60i, some do), 1080/60i, and 720/60p… and by “60p”, of course, I really mean 59.94fps.

And that’s not all. Most recently televisions, as well as computer monitors, support 1080/60p input just dandy. Some also support 1080/24p (where, again, 24p is really 23.976fps).

When you’re connecting via HDMI, your monitor and your video device handshake, and agree on a good resolution to use. For example, my PS3 and my 5-year-old Samsung DLP always “speak” at 1080/60p, which is essentially the native resolution of the Samsung (it upconverts any input to 1080/60p). So that’s pretty much what you want, most of the time.

However, a more advanced monitor might handle 72fps display rates, even though the connection (via HDMI) doesn’t support 1080/72p. In this case, it would be better to deliver film video at the native 1080/24p, and let the display do the up-conversion, rather than the player.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

“A PC” is currently the only go-to device for this, really. Most newer Blu-ray players will output 1080/60p, including the PS3, but that’s usually an up-conversion — they won’t necessarily play it. Definitely a non-standard among consumer formats. Almost (see below).

You don’t really need a high-end PC to play 1080/60p, IF you have a decent GPU and use a GPU-accelerated player. I can do this on my laptop, which is a Core2 at 2.4GHz plus a nVidia 8600M GPU. Not too difficult to build a livingroom PC with specs to handle 1080/60p.

If you have a player than will support the 1080/60p @ 28Mb/s originals, why not author back to the same format. You’d have to render in AVC, and maybe format it in an AVCHD file system to get that player to work… but it doesn’t know it’s playing edited video, as long as it’s the right format.

Some players will play other formats, like .MP4 or .MOV encapsulation rather than AVCHD (which is that original MPEG-2 transport stream file, AVC video, AC-3 audio), but not automatically. On the PS3, you have to explicitly browse and launch the file. The PS3 had problems with 1080/60p AVC when last I tried it, don’t know if this has been fixed.

The one actual real consumer format with 1080/60p support is AVCHD 2.0. I don’t know if this is explicitly supported in any Blu-ray player yet, but they did add that to the AVCHD standard (up to 28Mb/s, just as the TM700 does it). And that’s only a guarantee the player can play it, not that it’ll understand a non-AVCHD disc or flash card, much less some other video format (I’d stick with AVC when experimenting, at least to start with).

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Yeah, I’ve run into this before, at weddings and other events.

I shot one wedding Florida, that had not one, not two, but THREE official photographers. Seems the couple had hired one, then found themselves with two more, a couple of pros who were friends, I think. I pretty much assumed I’d have a photographer standing in every shot, so I didn’t get too crazy about it. But it wasn’t all that bad.

If you have the chance, try to meet the photographer(s) before the even, just be a little friendly. Doesn’t always work — some photographers are just angry at the world or something. But in this one case, I was able to get a CD of stills from the photo-couple, which helped for coverage shots since at that event, I didn’t have a B camera (never again, even if it is on a windy beach).

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

I have the Bella DV keyboard with Vegas keytops and the jog shuttle. I love the shuttle for certain kinds of editing, though I’m not a big fan of the fairly goofy arrow keys on the Bella. I haven’t had any problem with the Bella software properly supporting the extra functions of the keys. I also like the USB hub in the keyboard, room for a mouse and one other device to connect without separate wires running to the PC or a hub.

I’m also a bit annoyed at the build quality. Don’t get me wrong, this keyboard has a great feel, real keys with a good but no excessive spring force, etc. But all the key labels are silkscreened on — a real quality keyboard (if you can still find these) will have molded-in printing. As a result, my A, S, D, C, W, E, and L keys are essentially blank now. Not such a problem for typing (if you’re reasonable at touch typing, which I am), but it kind of defeats the purpose of the Vegas keytop feature. Next time around, I might go for the separate job shuttle device, and a normal keyboard. Not that I expect the Bella to fail anytime soon.

-Dave