[Julian Clarke]

Good advice guys… Thanks!

I’ll think about picking up that DVD too!

[Julian Clarke]

Interesting idea! So FCP will work better with several smaller project files open, rather than one big one?

Its a little late for me to try it out now, since I FCP won’t cooperate with copying stuff out of the project file. But I’ll give it a go when I start my next one.

Thanks!

[Julian Clarke]

Well it appears like capturing native through firewire eleminates this issue. Its a sad day, when firewire appears more reliable than your capture card. Interestingly the decklink deals with soure timecode in a 30 time base, while firewire has 60 based timecode. Not sure if this is relevant to anything. Nor how it will effect relinking my timeline.

Anyways, I’m going to dig a few tapes this way and do some more tests. If anyone has any suggestions as to what will make the decklink digitize this material 100% accurately I’m all ears.

[Julian Clarke]

[gary adcock] “3) sounds as if you are allowing the FCP to determine the pulldown – DO NOT- FCP always defaults to a 2:2:2:4 cadence if not told to do otherwise. On the Kona cards I can set the cadence of the redundant frames to my choice of pattern”

Thanks for your response. I don’t think the decklink has options for changing the cadence. I am using the 720P 24 easy setup that installed in FCP when I installead the Decklink’s drivers. I’d be surprised if its a cadence issue, because the 23.98 clip that is captured has 24 good frames, with no dupe frames, so it appears to be extracting the duplicate frames correctly. FCP has been set to 2:3:2:2 but I think this just effects playback to the monitor, not capture.

The problem is the timecode, If a clip is captured or an EDL is generated that contains in- points on a D frame, then my timecode goes out….

[Julian Clarke]

Ok, update on the above:

I found the reason for a) the difference in frame-duplication patterns between tapes and b) the reason why clips captured on the “00” frame yielded inaccurate timecode but still accurate conforms.

The reason is that in comparing offline clip timecode to the timecode on the tapes, I would open up the clip in the Viewer and scrub through the tape in the Log & Capture Window and do a frame-by-frame comparison. But it seems that the Log & Capture Window when connected through SDI (along with my NTSC monitor) have trouble dealing with the 24p format and preview what appear to be duplicate frames in places where they shouldn’t be. However, the Log & Capture Window connected via FireWire to the deck seems to preview the progressive frames just fine. So when using this configuration to scrub through tapes, all tapes seem to a) have the same frame-duplication pattern (the D frame repeated over frames ending in 3 & 4, and 8 & 9), and b) the clips that we captured starting on the “00” frame have 100% frame accurate timecode to what is on the tape.

So it would appear that capturing starting on the “00” frames is the way to go. But I have yet to test how an EDL/conform is affected by this necessity…

[Julian Clarke]

Well I tried John’s suggestion of resetting to factory settings (thanks John), but that didn’t do the trick either. I phoned Panavision, who rented me the deck, they suggested switching my input mode to firewire. Not sure why this should effect what I’m outputting, but I did it. That didn’t work either.

Now I’m waiting to see if they have a replacement deck, then we’ll see if this deck has just had a fried firewire port the whole time…

[Julian Clarke]

Thanks for the posts guys.

The deck has a big “don’t turn this on while plugging in firewire” sticker on it. So I never made this mistake. My firewire ports are fine, as they will detect other devices. They detect no device, when I attach the deck to the port. I thus, do also not get deck control, or any video in my log and capture window.

I tried hooking up the deck to a laptop also (the power was off on the deck), this laptop also could detect no device attached. I’ve tired several different firewire cables, so it is not the cable.

Basically, I’m thinking there is either a physical problem with the deck. Or, there is a setting in the menu’s somewhere that I need to tweak.

[Julian Clarke]

Hi Rich,

The super is working fine, this is how I am setting the menus on the deck. So, yes there is stuff coming out of the deck. I am using firewire as my output, not my input. I am attempting to capture, not playout. I haven’t used this format before, but everything I’ve read, suggests that it is possible to capture through firewire. The timecode after all is 29.97, its only 24 after the pulldown pattern is removed.

Another thing I’ve discovered, is the in my System Profiler, my computer does not even detect a device connected to my computer when it is attached. It does detect other devices. Could this mean that some previous user of the deck, has fried the firewire port? Or does the whole attaching the deck to your computer, while its turned on, only fry the computers ports?

[Julian Clarke]

[tony salgado] “Were you looking at an external safe title generator overlaying the reticles on top of the underlying video?

If so was it a digital safe title generator or composite?

There is a difference in where safe title will line up when looking at a digital versus composite vers”

Good question. I have no idea. I’ll talk to the online editor after the long weekend.

[Julian Clarke]

[Danrnw] “But you are using Quantel, one manufacturer, certainly not the only one
networks and broadcasters use, to determine your standard?
Why is that”

I’m not using anything as my standard yet. I just wanted to know what people thought. If the consensus was that FCP’s 16:9 safe were not “safe” then I’d trust the Quantel one more. It seems that there isnt’ a consensus and that different machines are just drawing a different line in the sand, in which case, FCP’s guides are probably fine.