Learning by doing: the hard way
 

For about five weeks now I have been shooting a doc, first using a PD150 and then a PD170. The shooting is not over yet, so I still hope to learn from some of my mistakes.

Yesterday I started classifying the tapes (which are about 35 by now), to dub them to VHS, with on-screen time-code, so I can then pick my selected segments in order to transfer them to my PC using Premiere.

To do this job properly the time-code needs to be uninterrupted, and I have found some of tapes that have TC gaps. So I wonder what might be the way to regenerate that TC.

The bad news: I didn't record in DVCam, which apparently allows regenerating TC.

So what are my choices, if any?


Carlos

there are probably folks here with a lot more experience and better ideas than i have, but one option would be to stripe a new tape, which will lay down fresh time code and dub the tapes with the gaps to the new tape.

the part that i don't understand is why you need to dub to VHS from what i'm assuming is miniDV (since you said it isn't DVCam). you should be able to transfer straight from the camera (or other deck-like device) straight into your PC. transferring from miniDV to VHS will create some image loss, won't it? do you want that?

also i have found when editing in FCP, if for some reason i have a tape with time-code gaps, i cannot batch capture accurately, but i can usually capture single segments of tape one-by-one...occasionally, the camera will rewind to another section of tape with an identical code, so it can take several attempts and be a frustrating and laborious process, but it is still more efficient than re-dubbing, if you can get away with it. dunno if this works with Premiere, but it's worth a shot. you just have to set your tape to be as close as possible to the frames which you intend to capture.

good luck, from the school of been-there, done-that.

The VHS copy will not be used for anything but picking the segments I need. The tapes I will copy to the PC will be the original DVs.

The parts I need I will write down the TC of and transfer those numbers to the Premiere, doing an EDL. Then I will start transferring to the PC tape by tape and Premiere will order me what tape to load on the PD, it taking over from there. I've seen a friend of mine, who taught me this trick, doing it and it seems the best way.

If I can't find a way to regenerate the TC on "interrupted tapes", of course I will transfer the right segments by hand, one by one. Once the segments are on the HD it won't be a aproblem anymore.


Carlos

Carlos,

I cut on Avid, so I'm not entirely familliar with Premiere, but I think you might want to re-examine your workflow.

You have thirty five hours of footage... (roughly) and you don't want to capture all of it.

In Avid, you can "log" your footage as you preview it. In other words, you load the tape in and name it. "Tape #1" As you WATCH it on your preview monitor you hit "log" when you want to mark the spots you like. The avid than finishes up the tape, with the sections "Logged" in a bin. Nothing has been captured. You simply have the in and outs logged and recorded in a bin. Similarly, you can simply watch the tape, make a note on paper the same way, and then "log" the digits by hand into a bin...

THEN go back and Capture the logged clips.

IF you have non continuous time code on some clips, which tends to confuse a logging system, then recapture those tapes on another mini-dv. This will require a second camera or deck. But if you are serious about your doc, this is a small price to pay for rental or purchase. Once recaptured, the "new" dub becomes your master tape, and you log it the same way.

Other's might have better suggestions.

That's what I will be doing. Premiere does the same as the Avid.

The idea is to preserve the original tapes as much as possible.



Yes, I might end up doing that.


Carlos

Interesting suggestion
 

A friend of mine suggested another way to go about this "gappy" time code.

As the continuous TC blocks are rather long, I might simply name them as say Tape 1-A, Tape 1-B; then Tape 2-A, Tape 2-B; and so on. Loading those "tapes" on the edit program EDL.

I would just have to go to each "tape" then as the program asks for it and then it will take over and do the download. That might speed up things.

Looks like a clever idea.


Carlos