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script notes and resetting timecodePosted by mattsilfen
A client of mine shot about 8 hours of footage on a consumer mini-dv camera. The client somehow set the camera up so that every time the camera was turned off, the timecode restarts to 00:00:00:00. Now she would like to be able to watch the footage back and log and make script notes. I'm trying to decide the best way to make this easy/fast for the client to make notes and to have them make sense to the editor. Which of these options makes most sense: A, B, or C?
A. Have the tapes dubbed onto new tapes with fresh timecode. B. I capture the footage and lay it out into a sequence, add a timecode burn and make a DVD. C. None of the above Any ideas?
Tom's suggestion is labour-intensive but solves the problem once and for all.
But if you want a less painful option, try this: Lay the footage onto timelines (one per tape -- don't try to do them all in one timeline), add an overlay for timecode burn. Then, instead of making a DVD (far too much work, and very little payoff), just export the timelines as movie files with timecode burn. Have the client watch those on a computer. That would be more of a half day's work rather than eight hours of redubbed footage which would then have to be relogged and recaptured -- which would translate into more like two full days of work. Movie files would also allow them to rewind, replay and reposition with random access -- they can fly to any part of the footage with the click of a mouse. An added disadvantage of redubbing, in your case, is that in order for your client to watch that stuff, you still have to make dailies DVDs/movie files of the redubbed tapes. If the client is using the actual redubbed tapes for watching and notes, s/he can mess up the tapes by careless handling, poor equipment (using a camera to playback, for example) and other mishaps which happen when a non-professional handles post-production stuff. ![]() www.derekmok.com
> Another advantage of dubbing the tape is that you'll be able to capture it much more easily.
> Capturing the material on the tape with the timecode breaks will be a complete bear. True. A major determining factor here is whether you'll need to recapture anything. I might say: Redub the tapes if: - You need to work on this project for a while, say longer than a month; - You won't have drive space to store the clips with infallible backups; - You have some time in the short term to prep the tapes, relog, recapture, etc.; - If the tapes contain many, many timecode breaks (eg. trigger-happy camera operator who loves stopping all the time, doing two-second shots) that cause some parts to be uncapturable; - There are other flaws in the tapes such as "bad data"; - The client doesn't have a computer to do the notes on. Use the original tapes and just export clips for the client if: - This is a rush job; - You are prepared to backup the manually captured clips until the end of the project (because Capture Now clips with timecode breaks cannot be recaptured and any edits performed with them will be lost if the media is lost/corrupted); - If there are only a few resets in the tapes, say 3-5 breaks, in which case you can get around the breaks by just logging the sections as Reel 001A, Reel 001B...; - If you have problems dubbing the tapes. While DV-to-DV dubbing tends to be easy, doable by hooking up two playback/recording devices with a FireWire cable, problems do happen, and you won't find out until at least one tape is done. ![]() www.derekmok.com
Since we're kinda moving into the tapeless world.. I'd say capture your footage, sort them into different tapes, name them and back that up. Drop the clips into an FCP sequence, add a timecode generator, and let your client go through that. The thing to be careful about is, like when you're working with multiple seats, you do not rename the clips after you've logged them.
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