Green Flashes
 

I have a locked 60 minute project that I need to print to HDCam.

I cut it in Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 with Prospect HD. When I attempted to print to a Sony HDcam deck through the HD-SDI spigot (with an AJA LH/LHE card) from my NLE, I encountered two nagging problems:

(1) Random green flashes and (2) a small line that crawled up the screen from top to bottom. I thought it was a sync issue but I was told that I didn't need to use the sync box that was supplied by the rental house. Was I misinformed?

I have printed this same project to miniDV and also burned it to DVD without these issues.

Anyone have these same problems and did you solve them?

Thanks.

You might by having some problems with reference / blackburst.

Some ideas:
A- Try a different reference source.
B- Check the deck's settings to see where it's grabbing reference from. The stop button should not be blinking... if it is, the deck isn't seeing reference.

I believe the deck can either grab reference from the video input, or the reference input (different connectors on the back). The Aja card may have a reference generator built into it (I'm not familiar with that model).
C- Check that the channel condition stays green all the time while printing to tape.
D- Check the error logger... it might help. Entry + Menu or entry + home might get you there. Check the manual for that deck, it might be different.

Maybe this is a ground loop? If you pause the tape and the line is moving, then it's probably a ground loop and not on your tape. This would be an issue with your monitor (and it's not on the tape), which I wouldn't worry too much about.

Many Thanks
 

Glenn,
I will definitely try your suggestions. The rental facility has been kind enough to let me bring my NLE over and connect everything there. But even their tech guys couldn't solve these issues. To be fair, they are more experienced in the realm of camera gear rather than interfacing NLE's to decks.

The doc got accepted into the Sedona Film Fest and if I cannot get it onto HDCam (one of their preferred presentation formats) then I'm gonna have a very unhappy client. I thought about rendering to a QT (H.264) file in 1920x1080 and taking it to a dubbing facility that can transfer the file to tape. But after a small clip test, the results were bad. Plus, it will take 15 hours to render a 60 minute show to a QT file in 1920x1080.

Again, thanks so much.

Try rendering to Prores for a FCP house to layoff to tape. That would be faster + very high quality (should be higher than H.264).

Or photoJPEG, if they don't have the latest FCP. (But add 2-pops; photoJPEG might have audio sync issues.)