[Sam Lee]

I already waited 5 years for LTO-8. Another year or two for LTO-9 will not be a problem. 24 Tb native is very nice to have all on one single LTO-9 tape instead of 9-10 with LTO-6.

[Sam Lee]

Got your formula. Very helpful for future calculation.

I’m currently using HP LTO6 External SAS Tape Drive. Bought it 5 years ago for about $2,300. Current new price for the same LTO-6 drive is still roughly the same. ATTO SAS H680 HBA on a Mac Pro 2011 model. No Thunderbolt 3 whatsoever.

The ATTO ThunderLink® SH 3128 looks like a good candidate that allow the external SAS LTO drive to be used with TB3 or TB2 (via adaptor) Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, or other portable computers. Any problems that may arise from the Thunderlink adaptor?

[Sam Lee]

The only time you truly preserve the cam original is when you concatenate a file. But whenever you re-export that to a different codec or same codec, it would have to go to another cycle of transcoding and you’ll not the same bit for bit data of the footage. The lost is small but for those who insists on the highest quality, there is a small degradation every time the footage is transcoded.

I’m reluctant to Optimimze media in FCP X because it transcodes everything to Pro Res codec. I mostly shoot in native AVC Ultra 4K 12-bit on the Varicam series cam and use the Ultra 4K codec for lower disk space consumption vs Pro Res 4444 that can be recorded directly to the Express P2 media if selected. Even though 16 Tb and soon 18-20 Tb hdds will be out, the data and storage costs saving are quite substantial for camera native formats vs Pro Res.

I’d always preserve the original cam footage at all costs. It preserves full metadata values including TC, cam info, shutter speed, ND filter settings, lens info, GPS data, audio tracks layout, shot marks, text memo, etc… When you re-export to another codec, I don’t think all of those rich metadata will get transferred. In fact, only the new codec metadata showing the current bitrate, depth is shown. All others cam metadata are completely lost. The H.264 codec is quite compressed already and file size is reasonably small. I don’t see any added benefits by trying to perform a lossy trim the raw cam media further. The time spent on saving a few hundred gigs may far outweighs the costs of storage media that’s keep increasing in size and decreasing in cost per Mb.

[Sam Lee]

I’ve been sticking to the following frame rate to get the most motion blur as possible on the Varicam:

Low action shot:
38-59 fps: 1/60s, 180 deg allowable minimum shutter

Medium action shot:
60-96 fps: 1/100s allowable minimum shutter

High action shot:
120-240fps: 1/250 allowable minimum shutter

At first the reduced motion blur is a shock to get used to. But after a while, I’m used to it. It passed qc because qc mostly concerned with constant frame rate and not shutter angle or speed. But artistic intention is not the same when you have a 360 deg shutter angle. It looks sharp and fast-action like. There is a mathematical proportion with frame rate and shutter speed. I found at 48-59 fps is a good compromise to get some slow mo while having the ability to use the clip as regular motion with 180 deg shutter motion blur. The motion blur is there, but not as much as 360 deg.

The dual recording medium capability of the Varicam allows me to shoot both high frame rate and standard (29.97fps) with full 4-track audio. I compared the high frame rate by speeding it up on FCP X and the actual recorded frame rate. They all mathematically virtually identical to each other. That is a good thing because of more ability to ramp in and out with higher frame rate. Trying to slow a super fast motion on a 29.97fps footage is not the same as shooting it at 240 fps to begin with.

[Sam Lee]

There is some hope to the manual method with the LACPUG forum. But it’s looking very tedious and open to processing errors by not deleting all of the 5th duplicate frame. Was hoping for a commercial app that will solve this. I have a handful of these (15-20 hours) from time to time.

[Sam Lee]

I tried to slow it down. But it failed qc due to the presence of duplicate frames. It looks like a consistence duplicate frame pattern. I see an extra frame is added onto the 25 frames throughout the entire content. The only way to pass qc on this is to remove the extra single frame that added when you put a 24 fps content into a 25 fps sequence. In essence, it’s a reverse telecine process that worked from 23.976 -> 29.97 fps 3:2 pull down. But it appears there is no such thing as a reverse telecine for 24->25 fps. Compressor would typically allow the option to Reverse Telecine if it sees a 29.97 fps interlaced file.

If there’s any 3rd party utility that will remove the extra duplicate frame on every second (25 frames/sec). This will get the content back to its native 24 fps frame rate and pass qc.

[Sam Lee]

Continuous Playback was not enabled. When enabled, it’s working again. Thanks for the tip. This little feature is a huge time saver for dailies.

[Sam Lee]

Loop playback is OFF and it would not auto advance to next clip. I selected all clips in the event and that still would not get the auto advance to work. It would stop at the last clip. The only thing I did was trash the preference last week because one of the libraries wouldn’t open. Still, I think trashing the preference reset everything back to defaults. And auto advance is the default.

[Sam Lee]

The JVC HR-S#### VCRs have TBC and digital noise reduction. Helps to clean up the chroma noise found on all color under composite video formats. And the TBC somewhat helps the playback but won’t cure picture stability on warped or damaged tape.

I’m moving forward with analog VHS -> hard drive Pro Res 422 capture (via Decklink Studio PCI card) to hdd and then archive to tape-based LTO-7. Not sure why you would want to to backward and degrade another generation by making a dub to analog VHS again. Last time I check, VHS is discontinued back in 2016.

[Sam Lee]

Just figured this out!

I was moving an event to a new library but forgot to move the last remaining project. Upon moving that project to the new event in the newly created library, it now allow me to move everything in the new folder.