Appendix 1

The Filmmaker’s Guide to Final Cut Pro Workfl ow
just above the image. This requires capturing at 720 × 486. When capturing this video to drive, the
VITC is stripped unless the capture settings are set to preserve these few lines of sync.
Where analog recorders interleaved some information into the sync signal, digital recorders can also
interleave this information as well as a huge amount of information into the data stream. This information
is called metadata, data about the video data. DV cameras record a wealth of information
onto the DV tape along with the video. The tape track layout can be seen in Figure A1.9. This data
contains four separate time codes including time of day, date, all camera settings including white
balance, gain, menu settings, f-stop, shutter speed, and focal length. And there is space for “userdefi
ned” data, data such as key code information from fi lm transfer, user-defi ned time code, and will
someday record information that hasn’t even been thought of yet.
Figure A1.9 DVC videotape track layout. Much of the information stored with each frame is “metadata”,
information about the image
When DV tape is captured to drive, most of this data is ignored, but not removed. Even after editing,
this information can be extracted from any shot in the project. And the captured video can have even
more data added as it is captured to drive, compressed, or printed to video.
Error Correction and Dropout
Logic would dictate that as the recording is digital—only ones and zeros—that the quality of tape
and recording format would not effect the image quality. If the ones and zeros are recorded and
playback intact, then the image will look fi ne; if the information is not playable, there will be no
image. Not so. If a small amount of information is lost to dropout, the system rebuilds this lost data
through a process of error correction.
Because the digital data can be shuffl ed and mixed with other data, several systems can be used to
check for damaged data and repair or interpolate a repair. The fi rst system is called “checksum error
correction.” It uses a fi xed interval in the pixel information. All of the values of the pixels inside the
interval are added together. This number is recorded at the end of the interval as the fi rst checksum.
Then, all of the pixel values are multiplied by their position in the interval; the second pixel value
is multiplied by 2, the third by 3 and so on.
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