Establishing cadence

F

francheezie

Active member
Are there any tips/tricks for establishing cadence at the beginning of a tape? Like letting the tape run for a couple of minutes, or something like that? Half the time when I go run Advanced Pulldown removal after I'm done importing footage, it can't do it because of a break in cadence.

So far, it seems that non-master tapes have a harder time with it. But I still get the error message every once in a while, even with the master tapes. Also I'm going to start using the "rec check" button.
 
Use the Rec Check.
Try to roll off a few seconds at head and tail of your critical section. That will allow you to log and capture with a little trim to avoid tiemcode problems.
 
Can powering the camera down mid tape, then powering back up and not using the Rec Check feature screw up the cadence for the rest of the tape?
 
The cadence itself shouldn't be off but there will be a timecode break which will cause problems with editing software.
if you recorded 0:00 to 5:00 and the n powered down and then restarted you may fidn it back at 0:00 on the following take.
 
Would rec check, after powering back up after say a battery change, recue the tape back to the last out point time code wise?
 
You're gonna hate this answer, but...

... use an editor that doesn't whine about timecode breaks. FCP can't handle it. And I assume you're using FCP? 'Cause Vegas doesn't care, Vegas will ingest an entire tape and just make different clips where the scenes start/stop, etc. But from what I gather, it just causes FCP fits. (any FCP experts want to weigh in with a better solution please?)

If you're shooting 24P, the cadence will *always* break when you start recording again -- or, well, it'll almost always break. There's an 80% chance it will.

Reason is: the camera always, always, always starts recording on a timecode interval of 5. The first frame when recording will always be an "A" frame, which means timecode of 0 or 5. I don't believe it has to finish recording on a five-frame interval, but it does have to start recording on one. So it can't just pick up the last timecode, because the last timecode could have been any frame from :00 to :29, yet the new timecode *must* be :x0 or :x5.

Now, truth be told, I haven't bothered to go in and verify this, because as a Vegas user it's never been an issue. But I've heard from other FCP users about this same thing. So I'm guessing as to the reason, and as to why FCP is choking on it.

EDIT: And actually, instead of changing editors, maybe you should just clamor for FCP to update their software. There's no reason that it can't remove pulldown from 24PA footage regardless of what the cadence is or isn't (as evidenced by the fact that Vegas does it). 24PA is flagged as to active frames and inactive frames -- they should easily be able to modify their software so that it properly removes pulldown from a 24PA sequence regardless of whether the cadence gets fouled up or not. All they have to do is look to the flags, instead of the cadence.
 
Amen Barry! I'm fairly new to FCP and it's chokes all the time on the cadence. Yeah, if anyone knows a workarond with FCP please let us know.
 
Yep, that is a pretty common problem with FCP. and it used to frustrate me to no end. I would log a tape and then go to capture it, and it would stop due to a cadence break. Here are two work arounds that should help. I use the first one- (These are for 24pA)

Work around #1-
Capture the entire tape using capture now. Start the tape playing before where you need and then use capture now to capture the entire tape. Let the tape run until there is no more media on it. FCP will stop capturing at the end of the footage due to the break in cadence, at which point you press ok.

Work around #2-
When you are filming include about a 5 second buffer before and after each shot. Then when you go to capture the footage after logging it, you'll have enough pre & post roll to not lose the cadence.


Work around #1 works the best for me since I do a lot of event videography, and can't always have 5 seconds of pre/post roll. Some times when I use this method of capturing the clip will be displayed as 29.97 even though it is really 23.98. The fix for this is to close FCP and open Cinema Tools. Then open the clip in cinema tools and use the conform button to fix it. When you press the conform button a box will show up telling you what the rate the footage is at (which should read 23.98) and then a drop down box asking you what rate you want to conform it to (which should read 23.98). Click OK, and then close out of Cinema Tools. (You footage has not changed, but the flag on the footage is changed I think.) Open your project in FCP. You will get a dialogue saying that media is off line. Have FCP reconnect the media. Your footage should now read as 23.98.

:beer:
 
waltind, for the Work around #1, are you capturing in standard NTSC? Or capturing using the NTSC Advanced Pulldown Removal setting?.
 
Even using that setting, along with the Capture Now feature to grab the whole tape, it goes for a bit, then stops and says this:

"ERROR: Capture now was aborted due to a break in cadence in the VFR/Pulldown in the source stream"
 
Just unchecked it, still same error message. Maybe I should stick to Imovie. I appreciate your help, don't worry about it if you don't have the time.
 
This may sound like a dumb question, but do you have continous timecode from beginning to end of the tape? (At no point does it change and start over?)
 
Continuous timecode throughout, doesn't start over. I'm gonna try and use the Rec Check, and stick to master tapes next time.
 
Hmmmm, I don't know what to tell you, doing what I've suggested has worked, and continues to work for me. (I just got done capturing 6 more hours of tape. No problems.) If I think of something else I'll let you know. :beer:
 
Cadence is litterly the 2:3:3:2 pattern. A break in cadance is some change in that pattern. Dirty heads will cause this because a frame is not entirely readable.

When I've had this problem, I have had to capture at 29.97 then using Cinema Tools to do the pulldown removal. I've had mixed results doing this, but it is a sollution to over come droppouts in your 24pa footage.
 
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