[Steve Mahrer]

Hi Ian;

If you format the SD card in the camera, it can be easily read by any PC or Windows CE PDA. The setup files are a simple text file, easily read, even by a human! The operational parameters are listed and the operating value is given for that parameter. As such you should see something like this; FYI this is but a very small portion of the complete file, there are six r seven pages of camera setup parameters.

000E0001 MASTER GAIN(LOW) -3dB
000E0002 H.DTL LEVEL(LOW) 06
000E0003 V.DTL LEVEL(LOW) 10
000E0004 DTL CORING(LOW) 07
000E0005 H.DTL FREQ.(LOW) 20
000E0006 LEVEL DEPEND.(LOW) 2
000E0007 MASTER GAMMA(LOW) 0.45
000E0008 BLACK STRETCH(LOW) OFF
000E0009 MATRIX TABLE(LOW) A
000E000A COLOR CORRECT(LOW) ON

The difference in formatting the card in the camera vs a PC is simply the requirement to guarantee a reliable high level format.

To read the card, use Windows explorer, the SD card will exist as a “E” drive or similar, click it, opoen the file and it should look liek the above.

Good luck,

Steve Mahrer (Panasonic Broadcast)

[Steve Mahrer]

Gary et al:

Good to hear you like the BT-LH900. This LCD model has the button activated 4:3/ zoom mode, this zooms into the center of the raster to provide more resolution specifically to check focus. Once focus is optimized, press again to zoom back out to check framing.

Cheers!

Steve Mahrer (Panasonic Broadcast)

[Steve Mahrer]

Hi Marion;

What lens was on the camera when this problem occured, a Cinestyle lens or an “ENG” style? Some folks using primes or cine style lenses (neither have servos for zoom / iris) occasionally forget to close the iris on a prime, thus when they atttempt to black balance the poor camera is trying to cancel the light it’s seeing from the lens, this can lead to negative pedestal levels. When using “ENG” lenses, the black balance feature closes the iris automaticaly.

Just a thought…..

Steve (Panasonic Broadcast)

[Steve Mahrer]

Hi Marion:

DVCPRO tapes are thin film metal particle tapes with VERY high coercivity, about 2200 Oesteds, Betacam by way of example is about only 600 Oe. The higher coercivity makes DVCPRO tapes very hard to erase with conventional bulk erasers…. they may buzz, but the tape may still have signals recorded after “bulking”.

In reality however, your fears of “old” timecode causng problems are very unlikely as the TC in DVCPRO / DVCPRO HD is recorded in the DIF signal’s subcode area (actually recorded as part of the Video / Audio data). This means the TC can only be read by playing the tape and then demuxing the data to extract the TC. It’s not like 1/2″ formats with a TC edge track. Blacking the tapes beforehand could be done, but it’s a real time operation and costly in terms of both decks and people. You can reuse tapes by simply recordng over them, just ensure that no clients material remains at the tail end!

Cheers,

Steve Mahrer (Panasonic)

[Steve Mahrer]

Hi Walter,

I think we went through this issue recently with someone else on the Cow…. To reca, the AJ-HD1200A is not an “editing deck”, it is designed to hard record and play only. Any attempt to “edit” i.e. assemble a program tape by joining together numerous elements will result in nasty tape data errors at the edit points.

Sorry for the bad news, maybe search back in time on the Cow’s archives to see the older postings for this issue)

Cheers!

Steve Mahrer (Panasonic Broadcast US)

[Steve Mahrer]

Hi Walter:

The 1200A does respond to “hard” record commands on the RS-422A control.
What are you trying to get the deck to do?

Steve Mahrer (Panasonic Broadcast)

[Steve Mahrer]

Herb:

Could you call me tomorrow, I saw your posting and would like to examine the tape you are experiencing problems with. On digital formats, it’s 99.99999999% impossible for valid signals to cause servos unlock, something is very odd here.

Thanks,

Steve Mahrer
Panasonic PBTS

201-348-7576

[Steve Mahrer]

P.S. Sorry for the typos in my previous post, I’ll use my spolling chicker next time!

Steve

[Steve Mahrer]

Tim:

What exactly didn’t the client like, was it the DVCPRO HD CODEC, the editing, the downconversion, the upconversion….? How is he monitoring the content, especially the 576p? Was it noisy, soft, too blue?…
Any hints?

The DVCPRO HD CODEC 1080i 25 (aka 50i) has 1440 Y / 720 R-Y & B-Y samples. When compared to HDCAM’s 1440 / 480 the chroma resolution of the DVCPRO HD CODEC much higher, the luminance is the 1440, the same. Both use similar intra field / frame adaptive compression with feed forward quantizer control. Both are sub-sampled and 8 bits.

If you (or he) can be more specific it would really help.

Cheers!

Steve Mahrer (Panasonic Broadcast)

[Steve Mahrer]

Hello Mike:

The AJ-HDX400 features some Cine-Gamma modes, but these do not include the “FILM REC” mode of the VariCam. The 400 uses a menu structure much like the SDX900, as such it’s “Film-Like” modes look great, plently of control over master gamma, the knee, colourimtery, detail etc. With these you should be capable of building a very nice look, if required, even quite filmic. You should be able to get quite close to the desired look “in camera”, then just fine-finish in post.

Good shooting,

Steve Mahrer (Panasonic Broadcast)