Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: (HDCAM) 23.98 Jh-3 Output Irritations...

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Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 07-08-2009, 12:37 PM:

We are equipped with a JH-3 HDCAM deck in our booth. Most of the time I don't have any trouble with it, but occasionally we get a tape recorded at 23.98.

I route it to the ACS-2048 scaler, which sees it an passes it forward to the digital projector with no problems, however for some reason or another none of our confidence monitors or our private vip lounge monitor can see the feed. All of these are taking a component video output off the deck. I tried a workaround by using composite into the confidence monitor, but still I get nothing. This is getting quite irritating. Is there a deep menu setting on the JH-3 I need to enable to turn on composite out?

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-08-2009, 01:25 PM:

Are you using the 23.98PD format (under menu item #13) or just 23.98? The "PD" option is for 3:2 pulldown, which will allow the image to be displayed on standard NTSC monitors by converting it to 59.94i. Otherwise, you will need an HD monitor that supports 23.98 natively, or a scan converter that will give you 59.94i output.

The better decks (at least the HDW-D1800, when equipped with the pulldown card) will let you select SD output with pulldown and HD output without. This is preferred, as 3:2 pulldown can add motion artifacts to the image.

Every JH-3 that I have seen will do pulldown, but it's possible that it requires an optional card.

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 07-08-2009, 01:40 PM:

Ah-ha!

That worked!

So my strategy then is to use 23PD when cuing the tape up, or when there is a private viewing in the VIP lounge, and then use 23.98 when I'm sending it to the auditorium screen, for the highest possible quality.

Thanks!

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-08-2009, 02:23 PM:

Excellent!

Note that the timecode display will be slightly inaccurate with the pulldown option enabled. It's not a huge issue, but it's something to be aware of if you need to cue the tape to a specific point.

The easiest way around this issue is probably to connect a computer monitor to the VGA output on the JH-3. This will display 23.98 material natively, and avoids the need to enable pulldown or find an HD monitor that will display it. (There may be some SD monitors that will handle 23.98 progressive, but the PVM-8045q and PVM-14M4U definitely will not work.) Alternatively, if your scaler has multiple outputs, you can configure the monitor output with pulldown (if your scaler allows it).