Hope someone can help me with this - the tapes are due next week, so ASAP would be great!

I shot a project last December that just got locked last week. The project was shot on the Panasonic AG-HVX200 in 23.976 on mini-DV. Everything captured fine into the 23.976 project, and editing was flawless. I've submitted DVDs and Quicktime files, which all turned out great.

Now the book publisher (who's also having their own DVDs made) wants 2 mini-DV copies of the project to work with.

I output it to tape 2 nights ago, delivered them to my producer (I forgot to check them first) and he called me later to say they looked all stroby.

Here's my question - what can I do to output it to a miniDV tape without looking horrible? I heard someone say I may have to recapture. Is that the only way? And what settings would I have to do to make sure it captured right?

Thanks ahead of time for all your help!

What exactly is stroby? You really need to see EXACTLY what he is talking about... but i suspect it is not a frame rate issue -- UNLESS you shot 24pA and then edited 24p and/or output 24p (or course over 30) -- that is, you took a pA and via the pulldowns through the camera and deck, operated in a 24p environment.

I do not know how exactly how the AVID responds to this nor do I know what a deck would do in this case, but I have heard time and time again that 24pA must always stay 24pA and same for 24p... and that to mix and match will cause a stuttered image.

I don't have access to my system right now, but I'll check on the 24p/pA question ASAP.

Did you digitize at 24p or 30p? if at 24p, was the pull-down removed from the footage (or does avid do that automatically?)? Did you re-add the 2:3 (or 2:3:3:2 for 24pA) pull-down before going to tape? If it was shot at 24pA and and edited at 24p that could be the problem, or shot at 24pA edited at 24pA, with the pull-down removed, and then a regular pull-down added when going back to tape (which might cause a problem) which the deck/camera would add automatically.

It was shot in 24p (I don't think it was pA), digitized at 24p (rather, 23.976), and I believe the pull-down was removed from the footage during capture - but I'll have to check. I did not re-ad pulldown before going to tape. (Unless Avid does it automatically.) How can I do that?

Any recommendations on a settings change I can do if it is 24p with no pull-down to get it to tape clean?

I had no idea shooting in 24p would require so much work on the tail end! I should have done my research beforehand. Thanks for all your help so far! I need to check it on my system, but I don't have access to it until Sunday or possibly Monday.

-Jeff

OK, here's what I did to solve it:

I output a reference file of the project and opened it up in the free MPEG Streamclip. (If you have Sorenson Squeeze you can use that as well.) I deinterlaced it and created a new file. I opened the deinterlaced quicktime file in Avid, then output that to tape. Looks great!