Time Warp for football

[bbailey]

I've been running slo-mo for years using a DVCAM deck and a Panasonic controller. The controller allows you to select up to five "in" points for the clip you're going to replay. That way, if you selected a point that turned out to be way too early you could call up one of the later ones. It works great. But I just purchased a TCB and am really enjoying it.

I planned on using the EFX bus out to my DVCAM and punched up on the preview bus for replay. I direct cut the cameras on the program, or "live", bus. Seemed like a plan until I started reading up on the Timewarp.

The only thing I would appear to lose with Timewarp is multiple "in" marks for the clip. But I'd gain three speeds that can be changed during the clip's being aired and a way to slow the playback to a frame by frame forward or backwards thanks to the jog and shuttle pot.

The pluses seem to greatly outweigh the negatives. But I was playing with a recording I did last week at graduation and treating it as a replay. Using the "J,K,L" keys I can speed up and slow down the playback to simulate a replay. In my football productions I use a freeze at the end of my replays from the DVCAM deck. Once the clip freezes I would punch up a trajectory transition to move the frame off of the live feed so that there would be no question as to the fact that you just viewed a replay and not live action.

When I push the pause button on the TCB switcher interface to stop playback of the clip, it freezes but with jitter. The jitter is too noticeable to use in my broadcast. I did notice that if I were using the "JKL" keys to cause the clip to stop, there is no jitter.

Now for my question...with Timewarp, if the clip is paused using the Timewarp surface control, which freeze will I see, the one that jitters or the one that is stable?

[SBowie]

That was an excellent question. I just tested it here with a clip with drastic motion between fields. I am seeing discernable interlace jitter when stopped or paused in all cases - TW, Desktop DDR buttons, Jog/Shuttle or J-K-L.

I think you'd have to switch away from the DDR to mask this, unless you stopped on a fairly steady frame.

[bbailey]

Steve,

I was very excited in the thought of being able to utilize the TimeWarp with my new TCB in order to spice up our football games.

I was hopping you could tell me if this method would work. I connect the replay director's monitor to the EFX out of the Tricaster Broadcast. I would select DDR1 as my replay player. During live action I would have DDR1 active in the preview bus and would be punching cameras directly on the Live bus.

My transition would be set. The speed would be selected at 50% in the TimeWarp.

As for the capture and playback from TimeWarp, my plan was...the replay director would pause playback at the point in live action you would have normally pressed the "in" mark. At the end of the live play I would transition to the DDR1 and ask the director to hit the play button on TimeWarp. At the end of the playback I would ask for a freeze and then transition back to my live camera. If the freeze was "clean" I believe I'd prefer this method to using the 'cue" method described in the TimeWarp manual. I was also looking forward to utilizing the other speeds during playback and with the help of the jog/shuttle, be able to examine things such as stepping out of bounds, both feet in on a reception and other stuff. But it sounds like the device is really meant to be used with the "cue" and that one could make speed changes but the freeze is a no no.
Is that pretty much right?

The freeze thing appeared thru my testing without using a TimeWarp. Did you do your test with a TimeWarp? If so, I wonder why my test worked using "JKL" and your didn't? A DDR playing back in normal speed and then hitting the J key once, then again, again and then once more brought my scene to a stop and there was no noticable jittering. But if I played the same scene and pressed the pause button, the freeze jittered badly.

Looks like the fix might be that when pause is used in the TCB or the TimeWarp, it should be reading a field rather than a frame. Can this be accomplished by your programmers?

[bbailey]

Steve,

My replay director ask me to ask you if the TimeWarp can control the video feed outside of a DDR clip. In other words, and this has happened, we are playing back a DDR clip using "cue". At the end of the clip the "cue" causes the transition to activate and we're back to live action but the next play has already started. Without an "in" mark can the TimeWarp shuttle back to the beginning of that incomplete play so we can replay it from the beginning? If so, how does this work?

[SBowie]

At the end of the live play I would transition to the DDR1 and ask the director to hit the play button on TimeWarp. At the end of the playback I would ask for a freeze and then transition back to my live camera. If the freeze was "clean" I believe I'd prefer this method to using the 'cue" method described in the TimeWarp manual.Someone else may have "Cue" tips, but I agree it takes a little attention. I like the way XD300 handles it ("Autoplay") better - less cumbersome imho ... maybe that'll be something that trickles down to the other models, hope so - but that doesn't help you right now.

Did you do your test with a TimeWarp?Yes, I did.

I wonder why my test worked using "JKL" and your didn't?Not sure ... I'm using a sample clip with extreme motion, which makes the issue very obvious (when output is judged on an external interlaced monitor) - same j-k-l technique as you.

Looks like the fix might be that when pause is used in the TCB or the TimeWarp, it should be reading a field rather than a frame. Can this be accomplished by your programmers?Scan doubling a single field is a common and often perfectly acceptable way of eliminating interlace jitter on held frames. I imagine it could be done, though I'm not a programmer. I do think it's a very good idea, and urge you to post it in the feature request forum.

[SBowie]

In other words, and this has happened, we are playing back a DDR clip using "cue". At the end of the clip the "cue" causes the transition to activate and we're back to live action but the next play has already started. Without an "in" mark can the TimeWarp shuttle back to the beginning of that incomplete play so we can replay it from the beginning? If so, how does this work?You can Mark In and Out points to create another clip while playing from the DDR, but I don't think this will give you what you want. If - instead of cutting back to live - you marked an Out (to finalize the clip that was recording while you were playing back the slow motion replay) and then played the bit you'd missed, you still run into an issue trying to catch up to live play at the end of that second clip.

3Play is different in this respect - it normally records full time, so when you play a replay and get past the point you were interested, you have several options. You can let playback continue past that event and continue running in "Delayed" playback mode, hit the Live button to jump to realtime throughput, or jump, Fast Fwd or Jog/Shuttle to 'catch up' to live play.

[bbailey]

The XD300 as I understand is the HD tricaster but with only 3 camera inputs? Will it use the same TimeWarp interface or does it have a controller of it's own? Does it use the LC11 or again will it have it's own controller. See I've already been looking forward to when I switch to HD cameras and again, I missed NAB this year so I could buy my Tricaster Broadcast, which BTW I'm really lovin'. Of course, I'll need to wait until the XD600 comes out so I'll have enough inputs.

Back to the current problem...I could understand that if the TimeWarp is always recording, which is what I understand is the case, and the TimeWarp interface had access to the hard drive recording, you'd have complete control of any part of the recorded program for replay. But it sounds like from your reply, the TimeWarp only has control of playback of the clips generated into the DDR list and without marking an "IN" and an "OUT" the clip is not generated. Is that correct? Doing slo-mo replay for so long I can see that for general replay of clips the TimeWarp is set up very nicely. But I'm really wondering, for my use, if I'd gain anything over what I already have in tape replay? I want so badly for the TimeWarp to work for me. But I just don't know.

[Paul Lara]

I'm really wondering, for my use, if I'd gain anything over what I already have in tape replay? I want so badly for the TimeWarp to work for me. But I just don't know.

Also keep in mind with TimeWarp replay activated, you cannot record a contiguous file of the game. If that's important to you, then maybe your existing tape-assist workflow might be best.

[SBowie]

Back to the current problem...I could understand that if the TimeWarp is always recording, which is what I understand is the case, and the TimeWarp interface had access to the hard drive recording, you'd have complete control of any part of the recorded program for replay.Time Warp is very cool, but being basically an extension of the DDRs and Record function, it's only honest to say that this approach doesn't address every need on can think of. It's not really correct that it is always recording. It starts recording when you click Mark In, and stops when you click Mark Out.

3Play is different - it does (in normal workflow) record all the time, and the In and Out makrs are basically just timecode references. In addition, you can jump around freely in the recorded footage and play back from any point while recording continues uninterrupted. You can see how this is ideal, but of course it's a pricier solution.

[bbailey]

How does 3play activate a clip? Is it connected to the Tricaster thru an external input or does it use a camera input? Does the Tricaster "cue" work with 3Play as it does with TimeWarp or does it work independently? I believe it's SD or HD so I'm assuming it's going to work with an XD600? Just planning ahead.

[bbailey]

Looks like for now I'll be sticking with my taped slo-mo setup. I won't be recording the games in the Tricaster except as a backup of my DVCAM program recorder for two reasons. Firstly, I need 3 channels minimum of discrete audio. This is a tape delayed broadcast of each game so, although I come back to the studio with a switched and almost complete game each time, I add all graphics and commercials in a post-production setting. Having the crowd mics in stereo and the band at halftime separate from the announcers makes audio mixing better than trying to get those audio levels exactly right at the stadium. I do an assemble edit tape-to-tape for the DVCAM master that the CW broadcasts followed by additional broadcasts by the school system's TV set up. If I could figure out how to record the game to an external Hard Drive that my Final Cut system would recognize as a media drive, rather than my having to import files from the Tricaster or a Tricaster external drive, I'd use the Tricaster as the main recorder and the DVCAM as the backup recorder. But as yet I haven't found a way for that to work.

If and when an XD600 appears, I'll probably switch to High Def for the games. In the mean time I plan to check out a 3play.

[bbailey]

All my games from last year can be found at permianbasincw.com. You'll see a reference to "Saturday Night Lights" in the bottom right of the page. Click there to go to a list of all of last season's games where you can see how we utilize our tape based slo-mo replays. The first 3 or 4 games were encoded and uploaded by the local CW folks. The remaining season was encoded and uploaded to the site by us. I think the quality of the video is much better once we started doing the encode and upload.

I don't believe I mentioned it before, but my Permian Panthers are THE team the movie "Friday Night Lights" is about. And if you recognize the voices of the announcers on my games, you're right, they were the announcer's voices you hear all throughout the movie.

[Paul Lara]

bbailey,
Can you e-mail me (plara@newtek.com)? I have an opportunity for you.

-Paul

[tess]

I have 2 Tricaster broadcast for Pro hockey game's.
when i use the timewarp for replay i have jitter picture problem.
This problem is same on my 2 Tricaster and timewarp
I try speed to 25%, 33%, 50%, 75% with the same result jitter.
All cameras is SDI connected for the best result

Is it possible to correct this situation.

Sorry for my bad english

[bbailey]

Tess, this was my question as well. There isn't a current fix. Tricaster software will have to be changed so that a freeze will automatically show a field rather than a frame. Currently, with frame as the freeze default, you see the difference in time between the odd and even fields resulting in jitter.

[tess]

I wrote 2 times to Newtek technical support regarding
this problem.

I have no answer from Newtek.

I hope that work on this problem.

[tess]

I love my 2 TriCaster braodcast.

But I am very disappointed in the quality of Timewarp

to have known I would not buy the timewarp

[DVR]

We started using the Timewarp with the Tricaster Broadcast this season for high school football. Works great and is easy to teach to high school age operators.

We have what's probably a dumb question about using Timewarp: How do we know how much space remains on the DDR? Could we find ourselves in the middle of a game some night and the unit fills up? Or do the stored replays delete themselves each time we shut the Tricaster down? The manual doesn't mention this.

What's the easiest way to delete media?

Thanks!

[DeanAU]

The free space is listed on the record tab