Mini DV deck

Are there any decks that play back tapes shot in LP?

My DSR-11 does.


www.shanerosseditor.com

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Where can I buy one?

Dont all dv decks play back LP?


Capturing LP into FCP is a problem but playing back?

Michael Horton
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Well I shot my entire film and captured it in Long Play. No problem.

Now, I'm ready to recapture and would rather not use my camera as the deck. Will using deck that plays back in long play get me out of sync?

DSR-11? In LA, Unitek Video. That is where I bought mine.

Also look at www.bhphoto.com


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

> Well I shot my entire film and captured it in Long Play. No problem.
> Now, I'm ready to recapture and would rather not use my camera as the deck. Will using
> deck that plays back in long play get me out of sync?

For one thing, you shouldn't have shot in LP mode. Tapes are cheap -- you were risking sync problems, capture problems, pixellations etc. for a savings of $5 a tape.

You can try capturing your LP tapes using a DV deck, but there's no guarantee it'll go smoothly. General knowledge is that you often have to use the same camera you shot with to capture LP-mode tapes.

But the thing is, why are you recapturing? Did you capture your film at less than maximum quality at the first stage? With DV, capturing at offline quality is often a wasteful step. Much better to buy enough storage and capture all tapes at full DV quality.

Whatever you do, don't dump your old clips yet. Export a self-contained QuickTime movie of the film with timecode burn, even if the clips weren't maximum quality. With DV, and especially with FireWire and with LP mode, you may not have a successful recapture, so you need to be prepared for the possibility that you'll need to do a manual conform by eye, shot by shot.


www.derekmok.com

This is a pretty useful item all around:

[www.bhphotovideo.com]

In fact I have a spare...

I think clam shells are kinda cheap to have as a workhorse deck.

Kevin Monahan
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Thank you. That looks like what I need. Hopefully I can find a rental house here in Los Angeles that has one.

A DSR-11 is a better buy, shuttles better and will last longer than a clam shell.

Kevin Monahan
Social Support Lead, DV Products
Adobe
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro Community Blog
Follow Me on Twitter!

What's done is done - as far as shooting in LP. I used low resolution becuase I had 200 hours of footage and I even captured in 90 minute clips.

The good news is, I recaptured a 2 minute segment of the film as a test, and it went very smoothly. So it does work.

The next thing I want to test is using a mini-dv deck that plays back in LP so I don't have to recapture 150 reels through my camera.

I'm also going through a Black Magic card to get a 4.2 conversion for better quality.

> I used low resolution becuase I had 200 hours of footage and I even captured in 90 minute
> clips.

All the same, keep your original low-res clips and do a movie-file output with timecode burn. Ninety-minute clips, more often than not, make Media Manager go haywire.


www.derekmok.com

Do a timecode burn - Is that so I can manually go backand insert the original footage if the machine can't figure it out on the recapture?

How do I do a timecode burn?

Thanks

Hi Eric

the LP mode is going to cause you problems-

Higher tape speed allows deck to Fix tape glitches ect-
- error correction -it is done behind the scene-

LP mode dose not fix these as good-

Most likely you are going to have to dub your tapes over to
regular tape speed for best results -

ERIC B Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I'm also going through a Black Magic card to get a
> 4.2 conversion for better quality.

You are not going to get any better quality than the mini dv that was shot. Capturing mini dv via FW is the best quality you can get with your footage. That being said if your timeline is very graphics intensive, then creating an uncompressed 8 or 10 bit sequence will help with the graphics but your original footage is still mini dv quality. Capturing it with a BM card does not add quality.

> Do a timecode burn - Is that so I can manually go backand insert the original footage if the
> machine can't figure it out on the recapture?

Yes.

Nest your editing sequence into a sequence with matching settings. Apply a Timecode Reader filter to it. If the 90-minute clips had erroneous timecode then clip timecode won't help you (because the clip timecode may be wrong and may not match back to tape, especially given the added complication of LP mode), but timeline timecode will at least help you match the footage by eye, by telling you where in the timeline a certain frame falls.


www.derekmok.com

Jay, I've recaptured the LP footage using my camera. There were no problems.

Do you mean I'll have problems if I use a deck other that plays back LP like a DSR-11?

You could have problems. LP is not very ... professional .. not very accurate. It can get a bit slippy when played in decks or cameras that didn't originate the footage. That's not to say that it will, just that it's a possibility. Some would say a probability.

> Jay, I've recaptured the LP footage using my camera. There were no problems.
> Do you mean I'll have problems if I use a deck other that plays back LP like a DSR-11?

I'd go with Jude's "probability" -- most people who use LP mode with an editing application have problems. You may have lucked out. However, watch your captured footage carefully -- sure you haven't missed one or two dropped frames? Timecode abberations? Sound is in sync -- both in the beginning and at the end of every clip? Have you watched the footage on an external monitor to make sure the cadence and frame rate aren't screwed up?

It's true, LP mode doesn't screw up everybody. But it's so filled with peril that any cameraman shooting with LP mode would be considered by post-production to be making a big mistake. This is what 180-minute DVCam tapes are for.


www.derekmok.com

I just have to chime in hear and say, don't overlook JVC and Panny decks at this level. And "clamshells" are crap with the cheapest mechanism available. Better off using a camera.

For the low end, unless you intend to master to DVCam, check out Panny or JVC. They can at least do 422. And what kind of DV mastering are you really going to do if you don't even have proper TC control?

Now, at higher levels, Sony is the biz. Even the DSR-20 is still solid.

- Justin Barham -

> For the low end, unless you intend to master to
> DVCam, check out Panny or JVC. They can at least
> do 422.

Which decks by those companies? And do they play LP?

>And what kind of DV mastering are you
> really going to do if you don't even have proper
> TC control?

I'm onlining my project at Sunset Digital. I'm not all that worried. Going from my mini Dv tapes to Digi Beta, I think.

Hi Guys,
I took everyone's great advice and did a big upgrade to my system. I just have to thank all you experts out there who guided me to some really sound decisions. I now have final cut 4 and tiger and toast8 to burn my dvds. I am just dumping the last project off final cut 3 before I move over to fcp4. My problem is that my newly burnt DVDs look fantastic on the pc oe the mac. When I play them on the Toshiba DVD player they have a twitch every other second. I tried to drop the burn speed on Toast from best to X1 and then X1DVD. The twitch remains. I have 3 different types of DVD so I tried them all but the twitch is still there. I'v gone through the forum to try to find another problem like this and I'm stumped. Can you tell me the best settings to use on Toast 8 going from 30 to 45 minute projects on fcp?
Thanks!
Fran