After a week of research and troubleshooting, I'm stuck and need to ask the Avid-L2 Genius for help. Please forgive the long-winded explanation – problems may be related to some of the steps in my workflow, or perhaps someone will see an alternate path to a solution.
9 years ago we edited a 90 minute doc shot on Varicam at 23.98 (DVCProHD 720p over 59.94). At that time, Standard Def was still the norm, so we saved money by editing in SD widescreen for release on DVD. We rented an AJHD1200 deck for a weekend and transferred everything over to SD 29.97 tapes. Over the course of the edit, we captured that footage into Final Cut with Pulldown Removal to create ProResHQ 720x480 23.98 files for editing and the Master file.
Now, our client wants to re-release the program in HD. All we need to do is re-capture video from the original DVCProHD camera tapes, and re-create some titles and effects. My system is MC/Symphony 7.0.4 on Mac 10.7.5 I'm thinking, this will be easy!
1.) I used Automatic Duck to export a video only AAF of the offline FCP sequence.
2.) Created a new 720p/23.98 Avid project, imported the AAF and the 720x480 ProRes Master file into the timeline, giving me the audio and a visual sync reference that lines up perfectly with all the offline cut points.
3.) Decomposed the Avid sequence to create a bin of offline clips for batch capturing only what the timeline needs.
4.) Hooked up and successfully tested a borrowed AJHD1400 for capture via IEEE 1394. But! Batch Capture fails because the offline clips are 1080/23.98 format – not the 720p/59.94 coming from the deck.
5.) Fine. I'll work in a 1080/23.98 project – which I actually prefer and expect that the 1400 will nicely upconvert. I bring the offline clips into a new 1080/23.98 project, and spend half a day figuring out settings to get a stable 1080/23.98psf HD-SDI signal from the 1400 into our Matrox MXO2. [BMD Sync Gen @ 1080psf/23.98; 1400 System Frequency @ 23/24; MXO2 @ Scale Input for Capture from a 1080psf Source].
6.) A stable and locked signal appears in the Capture Tool, the Composer Window and the External Monitor, but Batch Capture again fails on each clip with a "Failed to find coincidence point on tape" error.
7.) Investigating further, I determine that I can occasionally capture a clip by manually setting In and Out points in the Capture tool, but usually the same "coincidence error" occurs. The Capture Tool, the 1400's timecode display, and the timecode embedded in the HD-SDI all match when jogging frame by frame and are all in 23.98 mode.
8.) More hours with the Matrox, Panasonic and Avid user manuals and Google research – no solutions found.
9.) Next I try to manually Capture On-The-Fly the area around each clip (100s of them!!) and hope I'll be able to relink the offline clips later. This method avoids timecode coincidence errors, and the captured clips look good, but the Avid starts spinning beach balls with every mouse click, and frequently crashes to Finder. This ain't workin!
Anyone familiar with the AJHD1400 deck and ideas about the coincidence errors? Am I missing a setting somewhere?
I note that Avid Deck Configuration has a setting for the AJHD1400 at 60 via IEEE 1394, but in a 23.98 project it only configures the AJHD1200 at 24 using the RS422 port – there's no machine template option for a 1400 running at 24.
What about the Matrox MXO2? Does anyone successfully capture with the MXO2 into 7.0.4? Frankly, I've only been using it for monitoring and haven't had to capture from tape in years – but I know the Matrox driver is the one specified for 7.0.4.
Is there another workflow I can take, knowing that I can successfully capture 720p/59.94 from this deck using the IEEE 1394 connection? How would I be able to convert the offline 1080/23.98 clips to that format for Batch Capture?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Craig Mikhitarian
ACM Productions
Posted by: CraigACM@aol.com
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