HDCAM 25PsF on 23.98 TC

It's not often I get to post my own dilemmas but here's more of a warning rather than a cry for help...

I'm working on a documentary about the Chicago Spire [en.wikipedia.org] at the moment and had a bit of a nasty surprise when I went into the suite to find that 7 hours of source tape had been shot on the a most odd setting.

Somehow the camera assistant had setup the SONY 900 (possibly 950) to record 1080i50 25Psf as was specced on the brief but...

...they had somehow managed to set it to record 23.98 TC!!!


The original idea was to hire another deck and transfer but I wasn't sure if the video would be locked correctly to the new TC or not, plus the fact it would cost a shed load in time/tapes.

Well after a lot of fiddling and ignoring TC break warnings, I've managed to digitise via the Kona 3 to 1080i50 DVCproHD.

I used a 25fps 1080 DVCproHD setting for Capture and a SONY 24p control setting using VITC instead of LTC due to the fact that the LTC drops off each second at the point 24 would be reached on the TC.

The downside is that I won't be able to consolidate the footage to a smaller size than the original clips as the TC is unreliable after editing but I can batch an original clip with no difficulties.

So the moral of this story is: When Speccing a format make sure you spec everything - video, audio AND Timecode.

I wasn't personally aware that you could record HDCAM 25Psf on 23.98 but it seems you can. I don't know the setup on either the 900 or 950 but I think it must be a flaw that should be corrected as this non-standard and only causes problems.

Any thoughts on how to hang the culprit or any solutions other than what I wrote above are happily accepted for future reference should this happen again.

Cheers

Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]