Re: Phantom TC Breaks

i got some great tech support from Tommy at CD, but i was a little shocked at the outcome. it turned out that my HDV tapes were indeed non-drop frame. we have been shooting the FX1 for years, so this hasnt been an issue because that camera can only shoot drop frame. we started shooting the A1 and Z1 about a year ago. these cameras CAN shoot non-drop, but i assumed that they were set to drop frame by default. boy was i wrong. at least one A1 was on non-drop by default. now a majority of our HDV library for this year is non-drop. i guess that would explain why when we've tried to recapture a tape in a past Final Cut project, it wasnt frame-accurate. i didnt know this, but if you drop a non-drop clip into a drop frame timeline in Final Cut, it doesnt need to render. since it doesnt need to render, i had no idea that we had been using non-drop footage all this time. but it does change the timecode to drop frame, so frame-accurate recaptures are difficult to impossible. i'm a bit bummed by this, but i thank the little CD HD-Connect box for informing me of this issue. we caught it before a very big TV project. it does make me wonder though. why would anyone shoot an HDV camera at non-drop frame TC? even our 16mm film transfers are drop-frame...

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