I learned a while ago never to let director, tape or anyone else set up my DDRs. If they want to help, I'll load the FF, they can label the monitor wall. As for your situation you also want to make certain in the FF that both of your channels are set to the same time code whether it be drop or non-drop frame. The black frame issues you mention are remarkably similar to the ESPN/ERT college basketball and college football reels that have sync marks a field before your first animation image. I was advised the elements were built in the 24p world and in the cross converstion you lose any space they had in between the sync mark and animation. So if you played it normally you'd see a black "X" from the key channel just before your animation hit forcing you to timeline it out. As for the debate about running promos. I have no problem with it, way I see it, it gives me a split second of timing so that I can insert the promo when I want to, and not get upcut by a trigger happy EVS op. -Bob

randy, sounds like you were trying to do things right and nobody has the right to snap at you...maybe this producer had some issues of his own. in regards to what another td mentioned about setting up your ffwd...i remember that set, shoot, strikes are busy days and you don't always get a chance to crawl over guys who are busy labeling routers and patching their wall in a small tape room to mess around in all the menus of a ffwd. they could be nice and help you out with dumping, but i guess you can't rely on that. all that said, i am fortunate enough to work almost exclusively on shows where i have good guys loading clips and networking to my spot box, but i do know where you are coming from. jonas

"Is this a common request these days?" Short answer? Absolutely. Randy, this horse was beaten back in the old forum but this is just a fact of life for shows these days, man. My ABC CFB show has between 6 and 10 promos (elevators) that obviously change from week to week, another 8-10 sponsored show elements (Chysler Passing Playbook, Jeep Rushing Playbook, Pacific Life Game Summary...the list goes on...) ALL coming from my Fast Forward / Spot Box. This is on top of the 40+ various transition effects, title card, lineups, blah, blah, blah. My suggestion for you (since you asked :-) is to take charge of reel dumps and not leave that to someone else. If something gets screwed up in that process, guess who gets boned? And always, ALWAYS go back and check the first element immediately after it's passed to make sure it's OK, audio levels are correct, etc. Take it from a guy who once "trusted" my tape guy who said, "yeah, half way through and it's transferring GREAT!" Alas, NO AUDIO! One more thing, if the removable drives have been proven to work on other Fast Forwards, but don't work on this specific chasis, that's a red flag. Make sure that the correct drives are in the appropriate slots and check all of the video settings on the Omega. One setting could have been your problem and saved you some headache. Hope all else is well, John

[quote="Rick Tugman"]Randy it has nothing to do with the Lance. This sounds like you never set up your Fast Forward. You should have checked first of to see what mode you wanted your elements recorded in. Secondly, you should have checked the Fields in Playback! If they are different fields then how the tape was recorded you'll have problems cueing and it will seem like there is no blank space (if you will) between the slate and the beginning of the video on some elements.[/quote] Understand....unfortunately, I didn't touch the FF since the director dumped the reel, not me. I'll certainly be more careful in the future. Thanks for the info.

Randy it has nothing to do with the Lance. This sounds like you never set up your Fast Forward. You should have checked first of to see what mode you wanted your elements recorded in. Secondly, you should have checked the Fields in Playback! If they are different fields then how the tape was recorded you'll have problems cueing and it will seem like there is no blank space (if you will) between the slate and the beginning of the video on some elements.