Can one re-record 2 hr. movie onto DVCam tapes & over-write cleanly?

[Bill Davis]

Jim,

I don't know who's gonna broadcast your tape. Maybe it's small town cable? But every reputable broadcast facility I've ever worked or done post in has an automation system where if the signal detector gets more than a few seconds of pure black - the transmitter chain automatically dumps to a slate or triggers the next event in the automation roster or something similar.

I think in the VAST majority of modern situations, your "tape" will NEVER see the inside of the broadcast chain. We're almost a decade into the era of "automation." The station guys will digitize it onto the playout drives, set an in and out point, and your tape will go up on a shelf.

Even if they're still using "tape" - I haven't seen a broadcast DVCAM deck in a station in a long time that didn't have a lot of dust on it.

It's the era of digitized content.

Heck, your big local network TV station down the way? It's as likely these days to be connected by satellite to a third party centralized content aggrigator/server as it is to a tape machine in the actual building.

Not to far from me, in an anonymous industrial airpark facility, a huge centralized content farm does a LOT of the content service for the western US all the way up to the Oregon/Washington area.

That's the modern reality. A whole bunch of the stories folks are seeing on their nightly news tonight in Portland, or Eureka, actually originated from an aggregator/server here in Scottsdale.

Go figure.

[Richard Alvarez]

Bill is right. Broadcasters will digitize your tape, and set in and out points for the automation system to play. Check with your Broadcaster to see if there is a SPECIFIC amount of black - usually a minimum - that they want at the end of a progarm. Typically it is thirty seconds. Also check their head slate requirements - they can be VERY specific about those as well.

[Jim Gunn]

Originally Posted by Adam Gold

Yeah, I really just don't think it's an issue. Your slate and tape box are labeled with the actual duration so the endless timecode won't even get seen, I wouldn't think. But perhaps I'm just a relic from the old days; when I was approving masters for airing on the Network I seem to recall the timecode just running to the end of the tape.

But obviously the only way to be sure is to ask the recipient. Why don't you just call and ask your local station and report back on what they tell you?

Adam, Andrew, Bill, Richard, thanks again for all your detailed replies. You do ask a sensible question. But I am not sending this DVCam master to only one broadcaster who I can ask what their preferred specs are. I make a single DVCam master of the movie one time and store the original master in a professional video lab ready to be licensed. Then the movie gets sold for multiple purposes. It may get bumped up to DigiBeta from this DVCam master one or more times for tv including for broadcasters on both US and international cable and satellite tv stations; it will be sold for home video (DVD) rights in Canada, Brazil, Europe and other specific territories and a copy/conversion of the master sent off as NTSC or PAL for those customers; it also may be sold for IPTV rights and a copy of the master sent off to that IPTV broadcaster to encode to their format. I may even decide to make it into a Blu-Ray later and want to send a copy of the DVCam master off to a third party to create the Blu- Ray disk, just to give you a few of the common uses.

Maybe it's just the OCD in me but having made those few messed up tapes, having to re-output with the movies again with the minutes of extra black runnning for a few minutes past the end of the program just irks me and I imagined that with all of the varied intended recipients, that may be an annoyance for some. I guess the best answer is just not to make the mistakes on the first outputs to tape so one doesn't have the remnants left to deal with. I guess in this case I will just have to make the best of it and add some black at the end of the program and hope for the best. It just seems so much tidier to me when the timecode stops after the program ends, not when the tape ends.

[Adam Gold]

I totally get what you are saying but my only thought was that getting even one answer from one possible recipient should put this matter to rest permanently and definitively.

Frankly, in your situation I'd just make sure I had a perfect master on a hard drive and I'd just give that to my local post house to master to tape -- they'll know the best format and will likely use virgin tape.

[Bill Davis]

Jim,

Maybe it will help you relax to consider it this way.

For decades back when people were doing true "insert editing" the common practice was to lay "black and timecode" from the head of every tape you worked with - right through to the last second of mylar available.

Then, one would go back and INSERT the video and audio onto that blank master.

So the result? Black and timecode WAY beyond the end of the program. That said, there's no way any reputable manufacturer would ever create a playback system that gets tripped up by the fact that there is MORE black and timecode at the end of a tape beyond the program time. It just would not have made sense to allow that to become a problem.

So there's simply NO ISSUE with extra black/tc and the end of a program.

If you're concerned about old content popping up on a reused tape - the ANSWER is to simply position your record deck somewhere in the black at then end of the existing program - then hit RECORD with no signal present. Every DVCAM deck I know of will happily pick up the existing timecode, and continue to lay more down over BLACK - burning off any other content - right to the point where the tape auto stops/ejects.

Hope that helps.

[Jim Gunn]

Originally Posted by Adam Gold

I totally get what you are saying but my only thought was that getting even one answer from one possible recipient should put this matter to rest permanently and definitively.

Frankly, in your situation I'd just make sure I had a perfect master on a hard drive and I'd just give that to my local post house to master to tape -- they'll know the best format and will likely use virgin tape.

That's also a reasonable suggestion, but not practical for me. The great thing about digital video is the ability to make these high quality DVCam movie masters right at home on a Premiere Pro workstation. If I start doing this again on a regular basis, I don't want to have to send a hard drive off to a local post house just to make a DVCam master. I should be able to crank these out without issue. In years past I used to make a lot of SD & HD tape masters from Premiere Pro CS2 on my old dual-core workstation. Now with HDV footage edited on a Vista 64 workstation running CS3 I guess I ran into some issues specific to my hardware config or Windows or Premiere Pro config that caused the first few export attempts to stutter. And other than for that I would never record to a 'used' DVCam tape. If I fix the issues of the computer running out of memory or bogging down for whatever reason I should be able to export HDV movies to DVCam tapes anytime I want. I'll just have to add some black to the tapes' ends to salvage the use of these tapes this time and hopefully the next output attempts work as expected without any stuttering errors.

[Andrew Smith]

Ahh. Problem there. Can't export HDV (high def.) movies to DVCAM format as this format is standard definition only.

Andrew

[Jim Gunn]

Andrew, I am using Sony 124 "DVCam for HDV" tapes, item # PDV-124. And the exports *almost* work perfectly. Most of the movie looks great. The movies seem to transcode to HDV (as it says in Premiere) off the Premiere Pro CS3 timeline in the background just fine, then the movie plays out to tape in real time seemingly fine. But somewhere along the line the movie stutters and drops the timecode momemtarilly then resumes the timecode display and the video goes black for a second or two, one or more times as the movie plays out and ruins the master.

I actually had a friend suggest that it was the deck and a mechanical issue, maybe the heads losing contact with the tape, not the computer or the Premiere Pro export causing the probem. So I took my Sony DVR-M15U deck off it's side vertically the way I usually have it to capture and export HDV to the much smaller 60 minute mini-DV tapes and put it flat down horizontally and try the export to these much bigger and heavier 124 minute DVCam for HDV tapes. Unfortunately the last export I tried was almost perfect but still not perfect! My 1:57:11:02 program turned out to be 1:57:08:12. So once again, the timecode dropped somewhere as it played out, since the master and display on my monitor *should* say exactly 1:57:11:02. I may have to try another deck perhaps. I am almost at my wits end with this. My deadline already passed and now I am looking really bad to my distributor and clients.

[Andrew Smith]

Ahh, so you are actually recording to HDV format.

If you feel that you can justify the time, perhaps you could do a test export to the tape with a generated on-screen timecode playing? This way you could shuttle through the resulting tape recording, taking note of any differences between the deck timecode and what is displaying on the tape playback.

If possible, pro-actively keep your distributors in the loop. Hopefully they will be thankful that you are determined to make sure that they don't receive a problematic master tape.

All the best.

Andrew

[Bill Davis]

Just a shot in the dark...

But is there a chance that the original NLE timeline was set up for drop frame TC and the recording deck is expecting non-drop - and the recording deck gets momentarily confused when the frame numbering isn't what it expects in a E-E transfer?

Just one more thing to look at and check off.