[Trevor Kinsey]

Sorry I’m a Final Cut user so I don’t know how you would do it in Premier. In FCP you would edit on an uncompressed timeline (all DV material would need rendering) and output analogue (YUV) to the SP deck (I don’t know of any SP recorders with SDI inputs, you could use Digi Beta). We normally input from a DVCam deck (DSR1500P or DSR45P) via component analogue as uncompressed so that the clips do not require rendering. All graphics and any uncompressed vision would be true 4:2:2. DV material would be in a uncompressed codec, but would still have the original data loss associated with the DVCam compression.

Trevor Kinsey,
Technical Producer,
CVP Film and Television,
Melbourne,
Australia

[Trevor Kinsey]

If you output to DVCam your result will be DVCam. It doesn’t matter whether you use a deck or camera the format is 4:1:1 (or 4:2:0 if you are shooting PAL). Your graphics will only improve if you output to a different format, and your camera vision will always show the limitations of the DVCam format.

Having said that, we use DVCam (PAL) for most of our work and the results are very, very good. We shoot Betacam SP or Digital Betacam when we are chromakeying the vision and TVCs are usually output to Betacam SP before being sent for broadcast (we don’t own a Digi Beta recorder). Most material can’t be distinguished from Digi Beta, particularly after it has been broadcast.

Trevor Kinsey,
Technical Producer,
CVP Film and Television,
Melbourne,
Australia

[Trevor Kinsey]

You might need to change the field order on your timeline as well. Depends on what standard you are using (NTSC/PAL).

Trevor Kinsey,
Technical Producer,
CVP Film and Television,
Melbourne,
Australia

[Trevor Kinsey]

I have lived this game and can offer you the following.

You may be able to use the MAC sound input for the voiceover tool. You can set the VO tool to use a different input to the log and capture tool in FCP. This works on one of our Dual G5’s. The other machine is nominally identical and it doesn’t work.

If you use the Decklink input as the input for the VO tool you will need to turn off the external monitor when you do recordings (under the view menu, external video – set to off). The trick is to get the external monitor to show black. If it shows anything other than black (i.e. no signal, not black video) say the desktop, you can’t record. Apparently this is the way Apple have set up the tool to work. This means you can’t do ADR or anything else that requires you to have an external monitor working as you record.

You can also record audio only using the log and capture tool, but you have to supply a valid video signal, even if you aren’t recording it.

Hope this helps.

PS. I would be interested to hear if you can get the MAC input working. I still can’t figure out why it works on one of our machines and not the other.

Trevor Kinsey,
Technical Producer,
CVP Film and Television,
Melbourne,
Australia

[Trevor Kinsey]

Digital Heaven, https://www.digital-heaven.co.uk make a nice little widjet for your dashboard which will calculate disk space required for a given capture time in various codecs, or capture time available for a given amount of space. They have some nice effects plug ins too.

Trevor Kinsey,
Technical Producer,
CVP Film and Television,
Melbourne,
Australia

[Trevor Kinsey]

Hi Luke,
I have a second almost identical machine (it is a few months older and has been upgraded from FCP4.5 rather than being a clean install of FCP5). Both machines behave in the same way and both do it with different projects.

I wonder if many other people use their systems in the same way as us. Our habits are partly inhereted from linear edit suite days and with previously using a UVW1800 as well as the PVW. The UVW doesn’t do a good job of picking up timecode on an assemble edit. We also do a bit of dropping titles back onto source tapes at the beginning of a program.

If you only do assemble edits and/or are religious about resetting the recorder to regen timecode after blacking a tape you might not notice the problem.

I guess if you use SDI to edit back to tape the issue might be different too (oh for a Digi Beta deck).

Regards,

Trevor.

PS. I have posted on the Apple Final Cut forum to see if I get any response there.

Trevor Kinsey,
Technical Producer,
CVP Film and Television,
Melbourne,
Australia

[Trevor Kinsey]

OK Luke.

Insert seems to work fine with Blackmagic Deck Control. The Timecode Insert light on the deck does not light up and timecode is not overwritten. In FCP the Timecode Insert light on the deck comes on and timecode is overwritten. I suspect it is an FCP bug.

Regards,

Trevor

Trevor Kinsey,
Technical Producer,
CVP Film and Television,
Melbourne,
Australia

[Trevor Kinsey]

OK. I haven’t used Blackmagic Deck Control so it might take me a little while to work it out.

Trevor Kinsey,
Technical Producer,
CVP Film and Television,
Melbourne,
Australia

[Trevor Kinsey]

As I said in my previous post we use the MAC’s audio input for just the V/O tool. This gives full funtionality including working to picture. All you need is the right patch lead and output from your mixer.

Trevor Kinsey
Technical Producer
CVP Film and Television
Melbourne
Australia

[Trevor Kinsey]

I had some issues when setting up our Decklink Extreme and found this:

1. The card needs a valid video input (even if you are not recording video) to record audio.

2. I couldn’t get the Voiceover tool to work with the Decklink card, probably because of 1. above. We now use the Voiceover tool directly into the MAC audio in (you can set up for that in FCP). This works perfectly and has given no problems over about six months of use.

Trevor Kinsey
Technical Producer
CVP Film and Television
Melbourne
Australia