What happens when cadence is broken in camera DVX100?

rjcam

rjcam

Active member
I am wondering what the effects are when the DVX100(b) camera hiccups / going schitzo to the recordings.
Just how sideways can these cameras go?
Why? I shot something 24P regular and the frames did not always get captured into Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 at 3:2 cadence. Sometimes every single frame is interlaced. This was often preceded with a timecode break or something that caused the FCP digitizing to error and stop.
Sometimes 30 minutes of tape is bad like this, sometimes just 2-5 minutes in hour long Panasonic DVM63MQ tapes.
I have samples of the footage posted here on other links.
 
Try hitting the Record Check button before each shot. This rewinds the tape and helps prevent breaks in cadence. Do it for every shot. Also, I'm sure you don't, but even if tempted, don't reuse tapes. Some people black a tape before shooting, but I haven't ever done that. I haven't used 24p (prefer 24p ADV), but the principle is the same, since as I understand it, the break in cadence has to do with the camera needing to reset the tape to find the correct frame to resume shooting properly, and if you don't hit Record Check it can't do that.
 
Hi Thanks!
Although here I assume you do mean hit the Record Check while actually in the field to make the original recording to camera. Thankfully I never have to shoot with that DVX camera again, since now I finally own the gem of small cameras - the HPX170 and I love it (along with a HVX original that is no longer as loved).
But in my case above I am trying to save the bad footage. I just watched the film end to end last night. I edited the new sequence in 23.98 along with 75% of the footage correctly pulldown removed 24P reg footage using CineTools both auto and manually pointing at 'A' frames. But the bad footage, so far there is no saving it and no hope. So today, in desperation, I am dusting off my old G4 tower and gonna boot it in OS 9 - yup! - and use old crusty Adobe Premiere with a Sony VX2000 camera for playback with FireWire to see if it can ignore garbled flags the camera may have put on tape and transfer over a 3:2 cadenced series of clips. If that fails, and I expect it will fail, I will use a friends PC tower Sony Vaio with Premiere and the Sony VX2000 camera. I don't know what else to do.

I did Not ever re-use tape. They were always factory fresh shrink wrapped tape stock from Abel Cinema LA office. I never black-ed tapes. Seemed like a ridiculous waste of time and camera head wear (I hate videotape so much! - RIP)

Thank for your comments and any further ideas!!
 
rjcam said:
Why? I shot something 24P regular and the frames did not always get captured into Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 at 3:2 cadence. Sometimes every single frame is interlaced. This was often preceded with a timecode break or something that caused the FCP digitizing to error and stop.
Click to expand...

Shoot 24pA and remove pulldown during capture. There will be no interlaced frames if you do.
 
I am not going to shoot with a DVX again for any of my projects. Nor will I ever shoot interlaced for anything ever again. It's such a horrible way of doing things.
I just re-digitized the footage using a VX200 Sony cam, my old G4 tower and Premiere and it's exactly the same problem. My footage was recorded to tape all screwed up with massive interlace artifacts on EVERY single frame in the problem portions (not at 2:3 regular like the rest of the footage even though i NEVER altered the settings on a 8 day shoot). I verified its the same ruined footage in both FCP viewer at 100% and in CineTools advancing one frame at a time. This is really an unacceptable joke and extremely frustrating.
I am Not interested about shooting tips in the future in this particular case since, as stated, I'll never use a DVX100 again and if a client is today cheap or ignorant enough to send me out with one to shoot interlaced SD, then I won't really be that concerned if their footage turns out like that. Sure, I'd shoot it 24PA now, but now is not 2006 when I shot the originals which I am needing to fix since they look so bad.
 
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OK. This is a capture issue, not a recording issue. The DVX recorded the cadence properly.

Did you capture the tape(s) all at once? Were individual clips created where the camera was stopped and started?
 
David. I would be THRILLED if you are right!
I just posted a 26 consecutive frame output at full res of this just now. Each frame has the comb like nasty effect on it.
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...-this-Pics-posted&p=1986137022#post1986137022

I did the capture over 2 or 3 days. All using same setup, the Sony DSR-11 dvcam deck to a PowerBook G4 laptop with FCP 6.0 via FireWire.
I captured 29.97 DV regular.
However, at least for tape #1 I transferred, I had the settings set to keep digitizing no matter what and report errors later - whatever wherever that setting is, it's been a long time since I messed with it. But because I would sometimes have digital errors, I quickly switched to 'begin new clip on error' or something like that. And I was sitting next to deck during transfer, and when the deck would start hunting back 1 frame at a time, I would often hit 'stop' on the deck and then manually start a new record by hitting 'play' on the DSR11 and then 'record' in the FCP capture window. My logic here was to save the rec / playback heads on the DSR11 since it was not mine, and it had problems so many times. My tape batch bins in the project range from 12-30 clips per 63 minute tape. The 'bad' interlaced portions happened in clusters on the same tape, like 2-8 clips in a row and then back to regular 3:2 clean pulldown-ed footage. The bad settings would carry over from the tail end 5-20 minutes on the end of one tape through tape change to a new tape and 5-20 minutes on the next fresh tape. And then it would switch back over to clean 3:2 again. At least this is how the raw transfered DV tapes show up in Final Cut bins for me. OH, and I can see that for example, a clip is either at the good or bad setting, and then it might keep recording up to 5 frames on the opposite (so if it was recording or playing back ok for the DSR11, it would switch to each frame interlaced or vice versa, it might be playing back and digitizing badly and then swap to 5 frames of normal expected 3:2 pulldown encoded / read / transfered footage) or so before aborting the clip capture and starting a new clip.
 
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