16mm on DV , feature editing

Hello everyone.

I am planning to edit a feature film on FCP version 4.5. The telecine is on to DV and I have chosen 24@25 as the easty set up. (this will end up on film)

Now I am not able to capture. After capturing for a few seconds, the tape goes back to the beginning of the clip. There is a time code break on the DV tape, (or I am not sure if this is something they overlooked at the telecine .)

COuld anyone suggest if there is any site I can visit to look for pitfalls in the future, as this is just the beginning!


ANy suggestions would be highly apreciated.

Thanks

Murali

are you sure it;s a TC break?

what sort of warnings / alerts is FCP throwing up?

if there is a TC break on the tape, it would be the post house's resposibility to do the telecine again.

nick

> Now I am not able to capture. After capturing for a few seconds, the tape goes
> back to the beginning of the clip. There is a time code break on the DV tape,
> (or I am not sure if this is something they overlooked at the telecine .)

Have you made sure all the In points you set in your logging aren't too close to a timecode break and/or reset? FCP needs pre-roll to start capturing and if you have an In point at, say, 00:00:00:02, you would never be able to capture that clip. You can set the pre-roll time at 1 second, but even then, you generally can't set an In point earlier than 00:00:03:00. If the tape's rewinding itself, it could be hunting for a timecode that doesn't exist.

> if there is a TC break on the tape, it would be the post house's resposibility to
> do the telecine again.

I second that! Don't start work on an improperly done set of telecine tapes. Still, I'd study the tape first to find out what exactly is causing the problem before going back to the lab.

Murali wrote back:

in the middle of a clip, it says, end of the tape and keep coming back to
the beginning.
I am going back to the post house of the clip.

-----------------------------------------------
Mick replies:

my feeling is the tape might be OK
i dont remember the datails, but i remember reading others having that same thing hapen to them.
you should do a search here for "end of tape" or whatever the FCP warning says, and see what turns up.

nick

I assume you're dealing with 16mm camera rolls transferred as a continuous 12 minute take, with A frame pullin punched at the head of each roll, etc. I agree with Nick. It's possible they began the tape deck too late and started the transfer without allowing for adequate deck preroll. In which I would just have the transfer done again. It's good you're working this out beforehand.

The other thing is the tape medium itself. MiniDV is notorious for clogging lubricants and dropout count. Stick to one brand. Use DVCAM or DVCPRO only in telecines to reduce this. (I'm partial to DVCAM for offline sources.)

AND CLEAN YOUR DECK TAPE PATH after every dozen tapes or so!

- Loren
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