Laying back to HDW F-500

[bryston]

I have to layback 5 shows this month to this machine. The mixes will be just stereo and mono pcm.No Dolby E encode. The shows are 1080i/59.94. I noticed there is a profile for this machine in the machine control page, but I'm not sure how to go about locking it up to a project in ntsc 29.97 drop. If anyone on this board is familiar with this machine, I could use some input. Do I need to have a tri level sync generator that locks to my house sync in order for this to work?

[Matt Foglia]

You won't need a tri-level sync because you're recording at 59.94. Just feed it regular NTSC black burst. If given the option, have the machine's ref set to "SD" as opposed to "HD" or "INT" to help avoid clocking ticks (these options are on the D5, but I'm a little foggy if they're on the HDCam). As an aside, I've been having some weirdness with sync when relaying to HDCam and HDCam SR (the 12 track version). I've had to advance my audio 4 frames for it to actually be in sync on tape (no, not with Dolby E - just regular audio). Do yourself a favor and put tone in your protools session where it's supposed to be on tape (say 00:58:30;00) and punch in on the HDCam. Scroll back on the machine, unarm your tracks, and look to see where the audio actually hits on the tape (using scrub/jog). If it hits at 00:58:30;04, then advance your whole protools session 4 frames. I don't know if this is a deck firmware thing or what - but this was never a problem 2-3 years ago when I first started using these decks. Now it is (the delay is visable on both SD and HD monitors). Just a head's up. . .

[bryston]

Thanks for the info.

Yes there is a SD ext ref option. I just wasn't sure if I could use it at 1080i. I read an earlier posting about
the 4 frame issue with audio inserts, so it's good to get confirmation. I'll have the deck a few days early before laybacks to run sync tests. We also have an HD-SDI monitor for viewing.

[rhumphries]

... As an aside, I've been having some weirdness with sync when relaying to HDCam and HDCam SR (the 12 track version). I've had to advance my audio 4 frames for it to actually be in sync on tape (no, not with Dolby E - just regular audio). Do yourself a favor and put tone in your protools session where it's supposed to be on tape (say 00:58:30;00) and punch in on the HDCam. Scroll back on the machine, unarm your tracks, and look to see where the audio actually hits on the tape (using scrub/jog). If it hits at 00:58:30;04, then advance your whole protools session 4 frames. I don't know if this is a deck firmware thing or what - but this was never a problem 2-3 years ago when I first started using these decks. Now it is (the delay is visable on both SD and HD monitors). Just a head's up. . .

Check your machine control profiles in Protools. I battled this exact same dilemma for a while until I noticed that there was a 4 frame offset in the machine profiles of the HDW 500 and the SR.

-Richard

[bryston]

thanks, will do.

[networker]

There is a wierd bug that only shows up when chasing LTC rather than vitc on these Sony HDCAM and HDCAM SR machines. I have proven this to Sony but they will not change it. They have known about this bug for some time.

If you chase the machine while in record ready, the machine will indeed be 4 frames out. This error will go away when you go into record so if you are syncing up by comparing your pt session with a guide track in the machine while in record ready, it will be off.

Soundmaster has a custom driver for their edit controller system that addresses this error. If you are not using that, you should be ok if you set for sync while you are recording.

[rhumphries]

There is a wierd bug that only shows up when chasing LTC rather than vitc on these Sony HDCAM and HDCAM SR machines. I have proven this to Sony but they will not change it. They have known about this bug for some time.

If you chase the machine while in record ready, the machine will indeed be 4 frames out. This error will go away when you go into record so if you are syncing up by comparing your pt session with a guide track in the machine while in record ready, it will be off.

Soundmaster has a custom driver for their edit controller system that addresses this error. If you are not using that, you should be ok if you set for sync while you are recording.

If I understand correctly what you are describing, I don't really think that's a bug. When the deck is in record ready it is playing back from the confidence head which is where that delay comes from.

-Richard

[networker]

Well what is strange is that while video and audio move back for confidence PB, the tc output moves the opposite direction for a total of 4 frames out. Again, only in ready, not once you punch in.

The Sony techs were at our place for a couple of days on this one.

They missed it because at video houses, people lock up using vitc. We are a post sound facility and we use ltc to chase the machine.

Our custom Soundmaster driver is able to deal with it because it is aware of record status and can change accordingly.
Mr. Soundmaster has spent a great deal of time helping to make this all work for us and he deserves a ton of credit.

You may want to call Bob for more in depth info.

[bryston]

I'll be using machine control, sync I/O 9 pin, and vitc, so this shouldnt effect me. thanks for the info though.

[BrianM]

When we began doing HDCAM laybacks here at Soundtrack, we ran into the 4 frame delay problem and I spent a great deal of time researching the problem. We're using an HD-SDI embedder to go into the deck and getting 4.2 frames of delay (actually 6779 samples at 59.94/29.97 and 8416 samples at 23.976; all these are at 48 kHz sample rate).

With the HDW-F500, we traced the problem to the fact that the LTC output timing doesn't compensate for the delay required for audio to be recorded onto tape (i.e. go through the processing and record electronics) when the VTR is in INSERT mode. For most video facilities, this isn't a problem because they're deriving positional information via VITC or through the 9-pin serial connection, which does compensate for this mode. For the HDW-F500 we found no solution when using LTC other than to offset the audio in the ProTools session. Sony has not acknowledged the problem, despite numerous interactions we've had on the subject.

Fortunately, we're recently upgraded to a Sony HDCAM-SR deck, the SRW-5500, which can (with an option card) play/record/insert both HDCAM and HDCAM-SR tapes. What's interesting is that THIS deck has an option in the VTR setup (item#618) called "LTC Output Phase" and it can be set so that the LTC is always in sync with the output video. This eliminated our need to offset when locking to LTC. Sadly, no such option exists for the HDW-F500.

I guess the good news is that Sony got it right on the second try...

- Brian