Question on DV Tape Timecode

[trickyman]

Quick question for all you experts:

I've read many times that you should run any new DV tapes through your Camcorder first with the lense cap on before u do any actual recording in order to establish a constant timecode. How important is this? Are the benefits worth the extra ware and tare on your comcorder.

If it matters, my camcorder is a Sony HDC30 and i use Adobe Premier 6.5
for editing....

Thanks

[omoses]

Quick question for all you experts:

I've read many times that you should run any new DV tapes through your Camcorder first with the lense cap on before u do any actual recording in order to establish a constant timecode. How important is this? Are the benefits worth the extra ware and tare on your comcorder.

It depends on one thing: Do you want to automatically capture video-sequences relying on the tape-timecode (0:00.00 to approx 1:00.00 on a 60 minutes tapes)? Some videoediting software can re-capture sequences if they are no more available on the disk. To do so they use the continuous timecode in tape. If you do not prerecord your tape, this "continuous" timecode can start from 0.00.00 if the camera cannot detect the last timecode used and starts from zero. If you have such a tape, it is not possible to work in this way.

There are 2 ways avoiding such a failure:
1. pre-record the tape. This will put a continuous timecode on the tape, which will be used in future as reference.
2. capture all scenes from the tape, and then put them back on tape in one session... this will create a new timecode, and it will be continuous.

If you do not use software that depends on these timecodes, it's not necessary.

[BJ_M]

mini Dv doesnt have a time code anyway, stripped or otherwise -- so i fail to see the point of it ... (it really has non)

[BJ_M]

its all faked more or less on minidv ....

it is not like beta sp or d-beta or even dv pro

[omoses]

mini Dv doesnt have a time code anyway, stripped or otherwise -- so i fail to see the point of it ... (it really has non)

that's not really right! It has timecode (even 2!), but the "Recording-Time and -date" is just exact to the second, not to the frame.

The continuous timecode is frame by frame (I can say for my 2 panasonic DV-cams), and there is some software that can really use it, if it is continuous (Edit-DV from media100 for example). Any project I have done with that program can be recaptured (and only the needed scenes) in short time without any problems.

[BJ_M]

DV is not frame accurate the same as beta sp , thats why no insert edits ....

Different time code facilities exist between models/manufacturers. The tapes initial time code cannot be set by the user, each tape starts 00:00:00:00 (00 hours: minutes: seconds: frames) the hour cannot be changed in camera. If you do a digital clone between miniDV's (eg via firewire) the timecode is not transfered, and will be different on the copy.

real time code is transfered (like LTC) with the tape or capture ... MINI DV can not do this .. DV 50 and other pro DV formats can ....