AJA Kona2 deck question

I'm onlining a museum piece, SD 10-bit uncompressed. Most of it is being recaptured from DVCAM sources, so client rented an FCP setup with Medea fast SCSI drives and DSR 1800 DVCAM deck. So far so good.

Now we want to add a borrowed Beta SP 1800 deck to bring in older sources.

We don't want to disturb the rental house's Kona2 SDI from DVCAM to G5, that's working beautifully. I thought we could try to loop the Beta SP 1800 component out into the DVCAM 1800's component in. We could remove RS 422 deck control cable from the DVCAM and give it to the BetaSP. We could lift the blackburst video ref from the DVCAM and also run that into the Beta.

The rental house graciously suggested this may work with a possible timecode latency. They indicate to transcode BetaSP signal through the DVCAM and out SDI, load a tape into the DVCAM and press the REC button. So I did that.

Well, I'm certainly getting deck control and the monitor shows the beta deck is playing out, but i cannot launch the Log and Capture window! It begins to launch and then dies. I assume this means it's not getting SDI signal from the DVCAM deck.

The BetaSP deck indicates LTC timecode. The DVCAM deck indicates VITC. So I tried a customized Kona2 10-bit codec which includes both. No dice yet.

Anyone tried piggybacking like this?

- Loren
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E-E through a tape machine is always frought with problerms. Some signals go through the record amplifiers and some don't--hence the TC latency which may or may not match the picture.

Time Code isn't fluffy. If a certain part of the code isn't within certain timing of the picture, the process will fail.

The Oh-My-God desparation method is to actually make a DVCAM tape and capture that. That does work, right?

Koz

You mean dub from the Beta to the DFVCAm deck? I suppose we could do that.

Should I feed the blackburst from the beta to the DVCAM or go directly from the Horita to the BETA? I was wondering if this was the capture issue.

I think it's a combination of things -- like maybe we're not in E-E on the DVCAM?

Thanks, koz and others for any ideas.

- Loren

Feed Black Reference to the BetaSP machine. Connect everything, component analog, both audio channels, and timecode if you can.

Put the DVCam machine into "External Time Code - Regen"mode (if you can), put a fresh tape in, press play on the SP machine and then record on the DVCam. You should get a DVCam tape with as good a transfer as possible and if the external TC worked, tracking Time Code. You will also get the first five seconds or so of useless trash as not one but two tape machines sync to each other.

Your capture will start *after* the transfer settles down--possibly a good 15 seconds later.

Pray the show doesn't start right at the top of the tape.

Koz

Thanks, Koz. We got it working without having to dub, thanks to the addition of a second blackburst connection and get this:

The Log and Capture window was hiding... on the mirrored video monitor. Which of course you cannot see if you're monitoring deck out. We only discovered the Gotcha when changing resolutions and therefore changing the display arrangement. Remember this one, folks...

All working well, playback, Log and Capture, with accurate timecode form the Beta deck, and as far as I know, digital cut back to Beta through the DSR-1800. Just have to reroute the front panel inputs.

Now on to my next crisis...

- lsm