Setting Timecodes

Asking a potentially embarrassing question...

When shooting with the DSR-500 on a single camera series, and using the large DV tapes, how do shooters set the timecode on each subsequent tape ?

Would editors prefer the tapes @ 1hr, then 2hr30, etc. , OR, just keep it sequential (ie, let the timecode continue from 1hr) ?

Confused...

Duraid Munajim
Toronto

Duraid CML

>When shooting with the DSR-500 on a single camera series, and using >the large DV tapes, how do shooters set the timecode on each >subsequent tape?

Duraid,

Not a bad question at all. In recent days as I've worked on a couple documentaries and some television work I have simply gotten shorter stock or merely not shot past 59 minutes on a piece of stock. If, in a couple of cases, we wound up rolling past the hour on a tape, I would denote that the end of that tape would have redundant timecode for the beginning of the following tape and let the editors deal with it from there.

The reality is, however, that if you have a show that ends up having more than 24 tapes, you're always going to have redundant timecode, so it will always be a problem to deal with.

All the best,

Jay Holben
Director/Director of Photography
Los Angeles, CA

>When shooting with the DSR-500 on a single camera series, and using >the large DV tapes, how do shooters set the timecode on each >subsequent tape?

Editors shouldn't have any trouble with repeated time code as long as it's on different tapes.

However, there is one situation which I'm not sure about. On a recent documentary I shot over 50 hours on 3 hour DVCAM tapes. So I happily started at 1:00:00:00 on the first tape, 4:00:00:00 on the second tape and so on. But when you come to tape 8 which starts at 22:00:00:00 it will roll over to 00:00:00:00 during the tape!

So far, I haven't heard any complaints about this and I think I'm OK since there will be no on/off-line or linear tape editing.

Next time I'll start the first tape at 00:00:00:00 so the 24 hour roll over occurs on a tape change.

Bruce Douglas, DP
Sao Paulo, Brazil

>Would editors prefer the tapes @ 1hr, then 2hr30, etc. , OR, just keep it >sequential (i.e. let the timecode continue from 1hr)

I always take questions like that to the editors, as they'll be the ones to make sense of it all.

Art Adams, DP [film|hidef|video]
San Francisco Bay Area - "Silicon Valley"
http://www.artadams.net/

Record-run timecode (starting at 00:00:00 on each tape) should be fine as long as you label and log your tapes carefully. That way you'll never have to worry about rolling over into a 25th hour.

I'm currently shooting a Mini-DV doc (tapes run 1:02:00) and making the transcribers window dubs on DVD’s that run 1:00:20. So I always change tapes before 1:00:00. So far, no problems. (I've actually got a 10-second leeway as well, because I always shoot the first 10 sec of my originals with the lens capped.)

On one occasion I had to use LP speed to get 2 continuous hrs on one tape. So in my numbering scheme I allowed for cloning those LP originals onto two SP tapes back home... which then became my "originals." No problems there, either.

Dan Drasin
Producer/DP
Marin County, CA