Timecode question.

[greg121]

Hello all, I've serached through several posts and didn't find what I was looking for.

We did a 2 camera shoot (both 100A's) of a high school football game.
I was in the stands on a tripod, my colleague was hand-held on the sidelines.

I (camera 1) , for the most part, kept the tape rolling. Camera 2 stopped and started many times to catch just 'the play'.

This was our first experience in shooting something other than test footage.

In post, I laid down camera 1 on track 1 and camera 2's many clips on track 2 and
here is how I'm going about syncing them up:
I pick a spot (say, the center hiking the ball) and mark that on track 1, then I have
to grab track 2's clip and slide it to the hike. Form there I can use the mute envelope to switch between the camera's during the play. (it looks pretty good btw)

But, it is very, very time consuming. One thing we learned is... tape is cheap, roll both cameras and keep them rolling, so in post I only need to sync up once and the rest of the footage will match.

But having said that, what can timecode do for me? I'm not sure I even understand the concept thoroughly, meaning: If we set the date/time on each camera exactly, could I then somehow view that on track 1, and then click on track 2 and say go to timecode XX:XX:XX? Or even better, sync
track 2's timcode at a marker.

Does this make sense and does anybody see a way I can speed up this process?
For the next 2 cam shoot, I will look into Ultimate S for the 2 camera editing they have.

Thanks for your time.
Greg

 

[David Jimerson]

You probably want to look into free run timecode. If you start both cameras at the same time, when they're recording, they'll have the same time code for the same moments, no matter how often you start and stop them.

 

[greg121]

Thanks David... makes sense. next time I will do that.

Is there any way to view the timecode of a certain clip(s)?

 

[Barry_Green]

Yes, you can get Vegas to display the timecode right on the clip in the timeline. I don't recall exactly how right now, but it can easily be done. Free Run timecode will get you almost all the way there. There does seem to still be a little drift, but I don't have two DVXs right now to test with; I think most of the drift occurs when you power down to change batteries or when swapping between camera and VCR mode. If I can get ahold of another DVX I think it'd be interesting to set 'em both on AC and see if they can hold sync throughout an entire 12-hour production day.

Even if they don't hold perfect sync, they'll still get you way close, and then your sync'ing would be just fine-tuning a bit to make 'em match.

So definitely look into free-run timecode, and starting both cameras at exactly the same timecode (use PRESET, not REGEN, and start both cameras with the same preset and switch them into free-run using the same remote control, and they should start and stay in sync throughout the day).

 

[greg121]

Thanks for the tips gents.

That is good to hear that you can display the timecode right on the clip - it helps me understand timecode, and the importance of it in some cases. I'll post it here when I find out how to do it. I'm sure there are multiple ways of doing it (this IS Vegas after all) - I'd be happy finding just one.

Thanks!

 

[greg121]

Wow, has it been that long... I said I would post when I found out how to do it. I finally found out how to display the timecode right on the clip in the timeline:
Options->Preferences->Video -- Show source frame numbers on event thumbnails as: timecode.

That gets me that far... but as for syncing two clips to the same timecode, I don't think it can be done with just Vegas.

My friend who uses FCP says in FCP its a matter of selecting the 2 clips and clicking 'sync timecode' and magically they slide and sync up.

oh well.