V1U, Neo HDV, Time code

[George Bours]

I am currently working on a documentary that was shot on the V1U in 24pA mode. We will be edting on FCP v6.x. We have been testing various ways to pull down the footage and have found the best look in the Cineform codec. The biggest issue we are having, and this happens in all direct to FCP workarounds as well, is that we lose the original time code relationship with the original camera tapes when we convert to the coneform codec directly from the camea while doing the pull down. We have shot over 180 tapes on multiple cameras over the course of a month as well as a seperate sound recording. We used time of day as the time code in order to help facilitate syncing all the elements in post. The tc is within 1 second, so it will not take long to sync all our source together. Since we lose the tc relationship with the original tape all time codes start at 00:00:00:00.

I have worked with a lot of Panasonic footage shot in 24p that Final cut will pull down on ingest and still maintain time code with the original tape, though one is counting 23.98 and the original is 29.97.

Is there any way to do this with NEO or any other Cineform products that will keep the original TC?

Any insight on this would be most helpful.


Thanks,

George

[David Newman]

Currently NEO does not preserve timecode even it does read it, whereas our Premiere capture tools do preserve timecode. There is a histortic reason for this, related to AVIs not having a standard way to handle timecode. Now that NEO supports MOV files we will consider adding timecode. Sorry this will not be in time for your project.