Frame accurate inserting to digibeta?

Which (if any) video cards/serial digital interfaces will allow for frame-accurate inserting to a digibeta?

The AJA box? The Kona kard? I learned the hard way that the Blackmagic card I was using over the weekend won't do frame-accurate inserts. Or is frame-accurate editing more a function of a properly set reference/black burst generator than the video card?

Jeff

? I've been on Blackmagic cards for the past half a year, and it's never failed... except that the deck hits aging moments sometimes and refuse to record till after a few smoke breaks.

First thing is to keep all the machines in the system locked to a common black signal so they're all singing from the same hymnal.

Accurate tape editing is a function of a setup file within the editor. You should have found that all your edits were the same number of frames off. That offset is resettable in a configuration file that you can search for since I don't know where it is. If you want to, you can compensate for the offset yourself by counting frames on your fingers and toes and do the edit in the "wrong" place that comes out right at the execution.

Actual editing happens within the tape machine and is not a function of Final Cut. All Final Cut (or any editor) does is inform the machine where the edit needs to be and the tape machine backs up five seconds and lets go. Everything depends on the ballistics, speed, and accuracy of the motors.

The grownup editors have personality files for each major type of tape machine and you have to load the right one as you move through your project. All I've ever seen in our Final Cuts is "Sony-A" and "Sony-B." Sony-A seems to work for us.

Koz

Thanks! I had a feeling it was something like that. I figured out the frame offset and started adjusting for that, but I was also getting an ugly black frame at the start of the edit, even in insert mode. I'll do some digging and see if I can find that setup file.

I know for a fact that the system I was working on is held together with prayers and chewing gum... The Blackmagic card is over two years old, but I wasn't sure that was the problem.

My new mission is to get this system running like it should, since I don't trust the engineer who wired this together, guess the first stop is the reference generator.

If I want to wire this edit bay up to a digibeta properly - so that everything works like it should - got any suggestions for search terms or threads around here that discuss that. "Edit bay setup" and "digibeta wiring" haven't been too clear.

Is there a blackburst box in the room. If not go out and get one, prefferably one with at least 4 outs. Wire it to the Digi Beta Ref In and the Blackmagic Ref In and the monitor Ref In if it has one. The DBeta should see the sync automatically but it might be worth combing the menus to make sure that it isn't set to ignore sync on the Ref In. Same with the BM card.

What cards you have can alter the ideal way to set up a suite. All SDI? easy.
Analog component? Slightly harder but not too bad.
A mix of everything where the owners want to be able to copy from anything to anything else at all times without repatching and no knowledge involved? Kinda hard.

What are the major points of signal in the room (DBeta, Some kind of BM card, DVD/VHS recorder?Monitor)

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Thanks, Andrew.

There is a blackburst box... or more accurately, there was a blackburst box. The company moved into a new space about 6 months ago, then a month into the new space, there was a leak near the computer, causing a near panicked midnight move of their editing system across the office, and then back again a month later.

Suffice it to say, the wiring is an unholy mess.

The good news is that they're listening to me to bring the bay back up to speed. The downside of that means that I have to really know what I'm talking about! Ha ha ha...

The main agenda that I have is to get FCP and the digibeta talking seamlessly to each other. The bay needs to be pretty self-explanatory, so assistants can digitize without consulting a page of directions on using the patch bay & flipping switches on the digi... and so any editor can reliably lay back to digi without hassle, as well.

There is a patch-bay rack there, because they used to have 3 rooms & have scaled down to one. I want to set it up so that we can bring in a second system as needed... All SDI is the agenda, and hi-def is not really on the table at the moment. Analog component is right out, and anything else for input doesn't really need to be considered.

My thinking is that SDI will get me in and out from digibeta, and DV, and the other tape formats they're using. Worst case scenario would involve dubbing an analog tape source to DV or digibeta. Ref outputs have either been QT or DVD burns, so going back to analog video might be, well, obsolete.

You're spot on with the signal points:

Digibeta
FCP via Blackmagic card
FCP monitor
and the patch bay for the rest of the (now nearly unused) VHS and DVD decks.

What BlackMagic card is it?

If the black burst box died in the leak that's the first thing that needs replacing. No questions, get one.

I do what you are about to do as a hired consultant here and there and I know the problems you are going to face. They want you to wire up 4 points so everyone can do everything without thinking about it. There is no perfect solution because not everyone thinks or thinks the same way but I find that getting the suite set up and leaving detailed notes about how it's set up and why is helpful.
Sometimes a basic flowchart, one for capture and one for layback is good too.
Will they ever need to capture off the DVD or VHS player? There is no good reason to, (dump it to Dbeta and give it a timecode or import the DVD via Mpeg Streamclip) but there is always THAT TIME, when it has to be done the way Prospector Pete wants it done, in the ol'timey way for no good reason no how dagnabit.

Second system? Do you mean bring in a separate deck or a separate edit system? In the same room or just tied into the patch field?

If you have SDI in and out from the BM card, it should be pretty straight forward to set up in FCP with easy setups that you could call CAPTURE and EDIT TO TAPE so that no one gets their neurons in a twist. Get that set up now with blackburst, confirm that you've squished the output issue and then plan your suite. It's impossible to show you everything you'll need to do in this forum but I would say that this is your order of business:
Make sure the big stuff is working, then plan how it can best work together and then leave copious notes.

<RANT>
As an additional piece of advice, I would suggest you invest in some of these
[www.lsdinc.com]
[www.hellermanntyton.us]
and label every cable with where it comes from and where it goes. An identical label on each end is best, one in the middle if it's a long run and more if it's going to another room.
Nothing makes a wiring job fall apart faster than poor or nonexistent labeling that makes everyone "fish'n'follow" trying to figure what goes where which just leads to things being repatched and it slowly deteriorates into chaos.

I would also STRONGLY suggest that you reserve a few ball-peen hammer blows to the forehead for the first person who suggests you just use tape to label cables or one of those Brother thermo printers. That stuff dries up and cruds up and makes the next persons job a hell better reserved for small minded bureaucrats and bullies. No masking tape, no electricians tape, no clear tape over paper. Those above labels have a write on panel that is covered by a clear tail that "self laminates" the written label to prevent fading and they are designed to last and not peel or gum up.

Can you tell I just spent four days undoing someone else's cabling mess? </RANT>

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Good advice, Andrew, thanks.

I'm in a slightly better situation than what you're envisioning... My client has a tech guy who does their wiring work, so I'm not going to have to design the wiring plan. I just get to tell him how I want the bay to function, and he'll implement whatever is asked for. It's nice to be asked how I think the edit bay should function and then have my answers listened to.

I've got a week or so to draw up my 'big stuff' list. The number 1 spot gets jostled around a little but "working reference generator" spends the most time there. Speakers, waveform monitor, and a better NTSC work monitor (instead of the re-purposed TV), all have a place in the top 5.

One upside is that the all digital, all SDI-input/output model is going to work here. They largely shoot their own material, not edit other people's footage, so Prospector Pete and his vintage 3/4" tape are going to get dubbed to a digital source tape without complaints. So that's good news.

Do you have an ideal FCP to digibeta configuration? Simplify it to one system, one deck. Video goes SDI in and out, how would you run your audio? Would you keep the audio on a permanent loop through the digi, back to the mixer? Or would you run the mixer off the Mac's speaker output? That's the question that I've been pondering lately.

If you've got a BlackMagic card in there (Do you? Which one is it? Puhleease!) you won't be using the Macs speaker output for anything other than system sounds and maybe the odd iTunes or QT playback.
Not knowing what card you're using makes it hard to say what the best set up is. Need to know what connections you have available.

There are two basic methods for how to do this.
1) Connect Deck to Card/FCP directly in both directions. Both Deck and Card/FCP should offer an Aux or Monitor out that you pipe to separate channels on a mixer. Benefits are leaving everything in Preset and just capturing. Downside is it's hard to adjust levels if you get a hot or badly recorded tape. Inexperienced users can capture tons of footage hearing the audio from the wrong source.

2) Deck and Card/FCP get their own channels on Mixer. Mixer sends Main outs to Card/FCP and AUX outs to Deck. Benefits are being able to ride levels as you digitize. Downside is you have to make sure your operators know how to set all the various gain stages in the signal path. The mixer would have two by itself.

If your SDI enabled card (I wonder which one it is?) also has AES/EBU ins and outs you hook the DBeta up via this Digital Audio connection in both directions (1 XLR= 2Channels, Hooray!) and use the analog connections to monitor the deck and the card/FCP as in example 1.
Throw any extra audio outs or ins into the patch field and make dubbing from Deck or FCP to anything else very easy. Most cards have enough ins and outs that if you only have 1 or 2 decks you can leave them both hooked up and just change card settings and an easy set up in FCP.

thas' all. Model Numbers please.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

>If you've got a BlackMagic card in there (Do you? Which one is it? Puhleease!) you won't be using
>the Macs speaker output for anything other than system sounds and maybe the odd iTunes or QT
>playback.

For Decklinks, you won't be using the mac's default speaker output at all, actually...

Andrew - awesome advice, it's really appreciated. I won't find out which model of Blackmagic card they have until tomorrow, but I promise you I'll find out the model!

Your #1 above is the model I was thinking of... It's not a digital mixer, so I'd prefer to keep the audio digital in and out, and just go through the analog mixer for monitoring.

Thanks again! Be back tomorrow with a specific card!

As I read this, it sure looks like we're putting a standard definition room in brand new.

Everybody I know expects the February 2009 date to stick when we turn off all the analog television broadcasting and much of Standard Def with it.

You giving any thought to what's going to happen when the first 16:9 jobs come rolling through?

Koz

As Vince Lombardi said when asked a similar question; "Simple, we punt."

Michael Horton
-------------------

I am still setting up new edit suites that are SD only. Straight offline or low end online for corporate gigs. The low rez offline paradigm works well for HD and a lot of places don't want to get into the extra cost of the HD side and chasing another moving goal post.

Plenty of post houses are making money by doing the capturing of HD footage to low rez files and shipping out drives instead of doing down converts and sending out tapes. I think this means "Punt" in Monsieur Horton's Lombardi analogy, but I know sweet f. all about sports so I could be wrong.

jwilliam:
I assumed you would have an analog mixer and therefore my little AES/EBU addendum at the end of that post. Let's say you have the Mackie 12ch mixer. Put Analog outs of Deck on 1 and 2, Analog outs of Card on 3 and 4, Main XLR outs of the board to Card, ALT/3+4 outs to Deck. Control Room outs to speakers, Tape outs to DVD/VHS or DVCAM deck. This lets you leave the deck in AES in mode, ignoring the analog ins unless you need them, allows you to dub anything you connect to the board to the deck or FCP and a simple "Mute switch up=FCP, Mute switch down=DBeta" label can clear up a lot of confusion.

Strypes:
Is that Blackmagic/Mac built in audio issue a known bug or is it a "feature" of their audio drivers?
I think the Kona drivers allow you do direct the system sounds through the built in audio, don't they?

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

>Is that Blackmagic/Mac built in audio issue a known bug or is it a "feature" of their audio drivers?
>I think the Kona drivers allow you do direct the system sounds through the built in audio, don't
>they?

I don't remember the set up in a Kona, but it should be similar to Blackmagic. You set that up under system preferences (most of the time, i like having 1 set of speakers and cables from the machine and that comes straight from the capture card). Only issue with Blackmagic, is that if you have itunes playing in the background, and you're doing an ETT, that goes straight out to tape too.

Hey Andrew - so the card is the Blackmagic HD Decklink Pro with the 6.5.1 drivers.

I don't think the card has an analog monitoring output, though, so getting FCP audio to the analog mixer/speakers is still a bit unclear to me. Am I using the deck's monitoring output to hear my FCP output?

Or is there an analog output on the Blackmagic card that I didn't see while crawling around tonight? The spec sheet for the card says "no analog output", unless, of course, I'm an idiot and reading it wrongly somehow. If I am mistaken about the lack of analog output, then getting to the mixer is probably easy enough for me to figure out.

No, you're not mistaken, that card has no analog output. What a PITA!

Your options are limited then to using the DBeta as your monitoring source.

If that is not suitable, then you could look into a AES/EBU DDA (digital distribution amplifier or splitter) and AES to analog converter (aka DAC or DA)
The DDA could split the signal and the DAC would convert it for the mixing board. That's a lot of $ just to hear the audio through your mixer. Your deck can do this already.

You could suggest an upgrade to the Blackmagic HD Decklink Extreme which is less than what your current card cost, and, if it fits your Mac model, has analog audio out and in as well as HDMI and analog video in so you could connect another deck permanently if you needed to.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Thanks again for all the advice, AK... it's appreciated and well-heeded.

I was afraid that was the case. The way the system is running now, you have to flip into A/V preferences and switch the audio out from default to decklink to lay back to tape. The mac default audio runs out to the mixer, and for the time being, that might have to remain as a solution.

The upgrade to the Decklink Extreme card would be optimal, but I'm calling for the whole setup to be re-wired, new monitors, and a new NTSC reference monitor, so 'spiffy new video card to replace the perfectly functional (albeit flawed) current card' might have to wait a month or two.

Still, an editor can dream...

The new card lists for less than the card you have so you could try to sell it.

Another option to investigate is embedded audio in SDI. Sometimes called muxed or multiplexed audio. Your card can do this

Quote
From the Blackmagic site
SDI Audio Output
16 Channels in HD and 2K on Mac OS X?, 8 Channels in HD on Windows?, 8 channels in standard definition. Full support for the maximum 6 channels in Adobe® Premiere Pro®.

and I am pretty sure the DBeta can do it (double check that though). If you get this to work you just need a AES to analog converter to feed audio to the mixer.

I still think that just using the deck as the monitor is the best option.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!