Counter / time code - erasing part of last shot

T

thabo

Well-known member
G'day all,
I'm happy to report that I just shot my first short 7min film in the ShootoutBoulder.com 24 hour film fest. Technically I was really happy with the results but had a question or two about the camera.

The Film festival rules stated that we could not use any external editing program and that all editing must be done in camera!
The biggest problem for me was shooting a scene, stopping the recording then the next time I hit record part of the last scene was erased. Obviously the camera reversed the tape a little from the stop positon then started to record but I was wondering if there would of been an accurate way for me to exactly start recording at the end of the last scene. I am aware that the camera was not really designed to do this and one always records a coulple of seconds past the end of the shot. I tried using the counter, read up a bit about the index function and didn't really know what the hell the time code functionally was talking about.

Sorry if this seem to be a simplistic questions but I hadn't really shot anything with my camera before this little film and I was frantically reading the manual the day before the shoot! It was a great way for me to learn about the camera, how to use Adobe Premier and how bad of an actor I am :) We also had to record the dv onto an standard vhs-c cassette for submission (bye bye 500 line of resolution) but the tape they provided us with had the record tab missing by default and with literally 1 hour to go I was pulling my hair out wondering why my VCR wasn't able to record onto the tape!

Regards
Richard
 
Re: Counter / time code - erasing part of last sho

Re: Counter / time code - erasing part of last sho

Put a piece of tape over the nissing tab.
 
Re: Counter / time code - erasing part of last sho

Re: Counter / time code - erasing part of last sho

[quote author=thabo link=board=Events;num=1098813987;start=0#0 date=10/26/04 at 11:06:27]
Obviously the camera reversed the tape a little from the stop positon then started to record but I was wondering if there would of been an accurate way for me to exactly start recording at the end of the last scene.[/quote]
Yep. Switch over to VCR mode and press END SEARCH, and the camera will cue up to the end of the last take. Then you can go back to camera mode.

Two other ways:

1) you can press REC CHK, which will rewind about two seconds and then play about two seconds, so you know exactly where recording will start off.

2) You can use the ff/rw joystick to play or rewind the tape when you're in camera mode, so you can manually cue up the tape to start exactly where you want it.
 
Re: Counter / time code - erasing part of last sho

Re: Counter / time code - erasing part of last sho

Great thanks, I'm still a little confused about time code. If I insert a new unused tape will it zero out the timecode to 000000 ... at the start of the tape? Is there anyway to go to an exact TC number on the tape?

R
 
Re: Counter / time code - erasing part of last sho

Re: Counter / time code - erasing part of last sho

You can do basically anything with DVX timecode. If you're on regen, it'll start all tapes at 0:0:0:0, but you can go to preset and set the timecode to start at whatever you want.

Timecode is covered fairly extensively in The DVX Book, for those who want to understand the ins & outs.
 
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