"online" issues

Hey all -

just finished 'onlining' a short film that was cut from DVCPro tapes made from Dbeta film transfers. Timecode was dead-on-nuts accurate between tapes as far as I could tell.

I followed the 5.0 manual closely and Ken Stone's article as well. Everything was captured but many clips were out of sync...some by as much as 30 frames. Since I usually dont do the offline/online workflow on FCP, is this a normal occurance in this process? Any other gotcha's I should be looking out for? Thanks.

did you get a burn in on your DV dubs?
always do that,
and always check your burn in against the actual TC.
both in your deck/camera
(best to check at the place that did the dubs, and if wrong, get them to do it again)
and check burn in against TC after capture.

but your basic assumption that this should work is correct.
FCP is pretty solid on something this simple,
you'll need to do some detective work yourself to really get to the bottom of this

are some tapes all out, others all in?
does the TC drift after a certain point on some tapes/captures?
what, if anything, do the "off" clips have in common?
did you have speed changes on the "off' clips?
(that could point to an FCP problem)

maybe there's some drop-frame issues?? ( which i wouldn't know about as i come from PAL land)

the truth is out there...

nick

Scott,

On a daily basis we use this process to "conform" hours of TV shows. Usually, it works. However, there are some areas that ALWAYS require checking. Speed changes, and particularly speed ramps do NOT come across accurately. Still frames can be problematic. And yes, some times the straight forward, simple shots are out of whack. We now make it a part of the process to check EVERY single cut and adjust accordingly. To do this, we up res with 15 frame handles to give us the ability to "slip" and shots requiring adjustment.

Our sync issues are just a few frames here and there... not 30 frames. If you're having those kind of problems I would test and confirm every step of the process starting with the dubs to examining your decks and how you're ingesting the material. Since this is like searching for a needle in a haystack, you may find that it's easier to just fix the sync issues and be more careful next time.

Mark