Production DAT pulldown - did I do it right?

[citysoundman]

Can someone confirm if this process was correct?

I needed to digitize production TC DAT tapes into an Avid project. The project was shot on 16mm film with sound recorded on 30FPS DATs. The picture was converted to 29.97 video and digitized into an Avid, but the sound was not transfered and I had only the 30FPS DATs. I know I needed to pull down the DATs from 30FPS to 29.97 to match the video, and I know the difference is 0.1%. My Fostex D20 TC DAT deck has no "pull down" setting.

I first set all DAT deck settings to 29.97, referenced to blackburst, and tried the internal vari-speed on the D20 set to -0.1%, but quickly realized that the Avid would control the tape transport through serial 9 pin control, thus bypassing the deck's vari-speed. So these were my settings which eventually seemed to sync the sound to picture:

D20 set to 30FPS to match the tape.
D20 referenced to external clock, sync cable connected to 29.97 blackburst generator.
Transport controlled by Avid through serial 9 pin reading TC off tape.

So, did I pull down correctly?
Even though the tapes are recorded with 30FPS, does the transport get slowed down the -0.1% by referencing the deck to blackburst?
Do other (newer) DAT decks offer any pull-down feature that would make this type of transfer any more accurate? Or is this process the way to go on all decks?

Much thanks in advance? [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Captain Audio]

The way I set up is:
DAT machine set to internal
varispeed down .1%
frame rate set to 30 NDF

I don't believe that the varispeed will work when synced to house sync (59.97 blackburst), so that was probably the problem, not the 9pin control.

I use a Tascam DA-60, but your setup should be similiar....good luck [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[citysoundman]

Todd,
Thanks for replying. In my situation I needed to digitize into an Avid using the DAT tape's TC, so I had to lock to serial 9 pin.

To restate my question - when the DAT deck is locked to blackburst does it actually run at the "pull-down" speed of -0.1%, compared to running the deck on it's internal clock?

[F.J.]

I use a Fostex D-15 and set the Ref frame rate to 30ndf and then the rePro TC to "Auto" then set the Sync to Ext Video, feed it blackburst and that does the job.