[Michael Gissing]

If I understand this post at all, you are saying that when you captured as separate mono channels that the signal was mixed on capture? That makes no sense unless you were summing to mono externally before going into FCP. Of course you don’t want to do that.

If however your sound is cancelling when you pan the files to centre, rather than left/ right, then you are telling me that you have a serious phase problem with your original camera footage. You won’t fix that by just panning FCP after capture. If that is what is happening, then you need to sort your mic cables or perhaps your edit room monitor phase.

[Michael Gissing]

Is the “comb like” effect on all shots or as Rafael suggests just speed changes?

How are you viewing this quicktime? Just on a computer screen or external interlaced monitor? If you make a QT from the DV timeline before it was dropped into the Uncompressed does it look the same?

On the issue of 8 bit or 10 bit, I prefer a 10 bit uncompressed timeline, because that’s where your final render will happen of all your elements including the grade of your DV footage. Recapturing in my experience makes no difference, but doing the final render in a 10 bit timeline does. It is not making DV 10 bit, but it is giving you finer grey scale increments for your grade and it helps other elements like graphics. If like me you are using a lots of filters, you will see a small but important difference.

These days hard drive space and system speed in SD is trivial unless you are keeping old machines going.

[Michael Gissing]

The Sony J3 machines play all flavours of beta and have an SDI output which can feed straight into a cheap Decklink with SDI I/O. The J series are play only but as you didn’t specify what type of beta tapes you will be ingesting, this machine covers all your capturing requirements.

Some J machines also have a firewire interface so you can capture as DV without an I/O card. I wouldn’t recommend it as DV codec is a backward step in quality, but it is the cheap option. Your final can then be played out to your DVCam deck.

[Michael Gissing]

[Lynne Desjardins] “It’s phony stereo, but it’s better than mono.”

Actually it is not anything but mono. If you simply pan your mono track to centre it is the same as two tracks of the same mono panned.

[Michael Gissing]

You didn’t say what camera. If it is an HDV camera, then you can have the camera down convert to DV and edit in SD on FCP5.

So to help us help you, we need to know the camera model and also the version of FCP. There are many variants of vers5 and the differences may be really important for you.

[Michael Gissing]

Actually Dave, the reason why there is need for audio post pros (many who use systems other than Pro Tools) is that all video editors are clumsy inaccurate tools for audio editing, processing and mixing.

Firstly good audio editors have dedicated controllers, not the clumsy interface common to video editors. Secondly, we need the 2000 edit points within each frame for accurate dialog and fx editing. Thirdly we need proper processing tools like EQ and dynamics which FCP et al simply don’t have. Thirdly we have to bus pre mix stems for deliverables and again, FCP doesn’t know about bussing. STP is a baby still and again is a slow and clumsy system compared to serious audio tools like Fairlight.

And for Raven, if you set up a compressor on one clip and then drag the filter to a bin, you can then highlight all in the sequence and then drag and drop that filter to all the clips. That will stop you copying other filters that are already applied using David’s alternative method. If you don’t like it, then undo should clear that global paste.

The fact that audio questions are often considered a pain in the bum, is that it is a specialist task, just like editing and requires experience and a totally different tool set. It also needs FX libraries, quiet rooms and decent monitoring. Personally I find that using FCP to online & grade reminds me of the need for Apple to talk to the makers of dedicated controllers (like the Fairlight Xynergi) to add a proper ergonomic editing interface. I showed the FCP interface to the Fairlight engineers and they were horrified at simple things like how FCP jogs (or rather doesn’t)

[Michael Gissing]

[Steve MacMillan] “I’m guessing that somehow the Snell & Wilcox produced a pulled down PAL rate (24.98?)”

No such thing. PAL is 25 solid (thank goodness). I am wondering if you had the deck settings right when capturing.

[Michael Gissing]

What frame rate are you working with?

This comes up so often that a search might answer the question, but try slowing the speed of the audio by .1%

[Michael Gissing]

Messy post Randall. Firstly what camera was used to shoot the tapes. You say 108i 30p but is it 1080 60i or 30p? i and p are not the same thing, but it is possible to shoot p and embedd that into an interlaced tape format.

Secondly where does the error message show? Is it on the Sony deck or in FCP. If it is FCP then can you see the tape playing on the machine properly (ie monitoring the deck directly, not via FCP).

If the camera tapes were shot on a JVC, then it is possible that they can’t be played on the Sony deck. Not sure about the Sony M15U deck, but I know the HDW 1500 needs a converter board to play JVC tapes.

Also you haven’t indicated how you have FCP set. What Easy Setup did you selected before trying to capture?

[Michael Gissing]

You didn’t say what type of programs and where they will be displayed. If you are doing broadcast delivery work, then most broadcasters specify 1080i. If your work is for the web or projection, then 720p might be better.

There are many determining factors but it is best to shoot and post in one format obviously. In my opinion 1080i is best if you are integrating SD material which will be interlaced.