how to get exactly 15 sec of color bars...

[bfsound]

I have had heard of people recording color bar before a take or shot or whatever etc...

I understand how to do so but how do you say just record 15sec of color bar on your DVX100A? If i have to change tape during a multi-cam shoot how does that work so when editing they rollover alright?

Thanks

 

[kgimedia]

If you actually need bars and have good skills with a wave form and vectrascope you could probably use 15 secs but at least 30 secs. The standard is 1 minute. The main reason to use bars these days is for so when you insert tape you are not recording valuable footage on the first minute of tape. In a digital world with Firewire capture bars and tone is not really needed.

As for the roll over question I don't really understand. If you record bars before the shoot then the only editing issue is the tape is that much shorter.

 

[bfsound]

I didnt mean rollover... I guess what i was meaning was if i have to change tapes on 1 cam during a mulit cam shoot how will those 2 rolls line up in post as far as TC goes?

 

[Erik Olson]

Striping the tapes shouldn't require that you be frame-accurate. Once you start rolling the jammed cameras, just let them roll. Striping can be done at any point once they're rolling, and, if you're using Free Run, you should have mostly constant TC across multiple cameras.

Sometimes better is to shoot a common time code clock or slate, disregarding the cameras' internal timecode, which should still ostensibly be set to Free Run.