JVC HDV capture issues and workflow

[... sound of crickets chirping....]

hello??

at the very least, I need to know whether the TC on 720 30p HDV is at 29.97, or 30 fps, and how this will affect the offline to online workflow if using the deck's downconvert setting, or capturing offline through the kona.

I'll try calling AJA, they are usually very knowledgable about all this stuff.

OK, here's what I have found out so far, and still no joy...

I'm afraid my friend is up against a serious workflow challenge right now. His foootage was shot on this JVC HDV camera at 720 30p. Apparently, the frame rate is actually 30fps, and not 29.97, although hen I look at the Kona control panel, it identifies the input video as 59.94i, which suggests that the acutal frame rate should be 29.97.

Either way, his assistant editor has been capturing whole tapes as offline RT through the Kona's analog ins, with the downconvert turned on on the deck. They are on tape 120 at this point.

I helped test their offline to online workflow, and there seems to be no way to get the footage recaptured in HD or HDV in a way that corresponds to the timecode in the Offline RT clips.

We cannot capture HD via the Kona LH, because JVC's 720 30p setting uses drop-frame timecode, and there is no preset, setting, or driver for the LH that supports this timecode format. All of the other 720 30p settings for the Kona's device control default to NDF, and the dropdown to change the TC format is grayed out. If I try to capture with these other settings, there is a mismatch in the frame rate, and if I simply play the tape with L&C, the image stutters, the timecode readout stops, and FCP loses connection with the deck.

I thought that perhaps we could bypass the Kona, and capture the Offine RT directly from the firewire connection to the HDV deck, but of course there is no way for the computer to transcode HDV to offline RT. Tried setting the downconvert on the deck to DV or 480i, however, on the BR-HD50, the downconvert only changes the analog outs, and not the IEEE 1394 output, unline the Sony HDV products I have used.

So the only way we can capture as Offline RT is through the Kona, which messes up the timecode, and the only way we can capture in HD is to capture the native HDV via firewire. There also seems to be a fundamental lack of support in FCP for the format on which this material has been shot, since I can tell from the display on the deck that the timecode is definitely DF, although any HDV capture seems to change the TC format back to NDF, and here again, the TC format dropdown in grayed out if I try to make a custom device control setting. I can capture HDV, but the resulting clips always come up with NDF TC, and if I try to match frame the timecode of the clip to the same time on the tape, there is a mismatch there as well, without even trying to deal with the offfline to online process.

Really, we'll need to figure out a way to get the 100+ hours of Offline RT clips they have captured to somhow match the TC on the tapes, using whatever method of HD capture we can manage. I tried to get the RT clips to give me matching video to the corresponding times for recapture by modifying the timecode on the clips, and also by exporting new RT proxy footage from a sequence that had been modifed to match the tape time, but did not have much luck with that workflow so far either, probably because of the way FCP is forcing the DF TC on the tape to be converted to NDF at capture.

I love a challenge, but this is ridiculously challenging. A little more workflow research on their end would have been helpful in determining a bettter shooting format that would have worked with his hardware and software setup, but of course it's too late for that now. We really need to find a way to get his offline RT media to correspond to the tape time in the way it comes through the recapture process. I'll keep trying to modify the RT clips' TC as a workaround and post what I find out, but any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

keeping my fingers crossed -


Max

Yes, but we have over 100 hours of clips already captured as Offline RT, and I need to figure out how to get HDV recapture to correspond to those times. I definitely agree that capturing in native HDV is the way to go.