inSync reader I. C. asks, “I am using a MOTU DTP (Digital Time Piece) with my DA-88 and it works great in my studio. However when I send my DA-88 tapes back to the film house I work with they say that the tapes either have no time code on them or that the time code is wrong. I can’t seem to get to the bottom of this. Please help.”
Wow! Synchronization issues can get quite deep, but I think this one is relatively simple. The bottom line is that the film house needs to use the ATC (Absolute Time Code) on your DA-88 tape and program an offset (probably of one hour) into their equipment to get your tape in sync. If they are not willing to do this very simple task you are left with two other solutions: 1) Stripe SMPTE on a track of the DA-88 tape from the DTP for them to use, or use a Tascam SY88 sync card instead of the DTP on these projects.
The problem is that the DA-88 sync port does not carry SMPTE. It only looks at the control track. With an SY88, SMPTE can be recorded in the subcode (see WFTD archive “subcode“) of the tape, but without it there is only ATC so that is all the DTP has access to. In your studio you have worked around this by simply putting an offset in your DTP to make the DA-88 start at the proper point in the film. SMPTE times for film and video usually start at 1 hour or more, but DA-88 ATC ALWAYS starts at 0, hence the need for the offset. When your tapes arrive at the film house they are expecting to see a proper SMPTE time in the subcode of those tapes for their SY88 cards, but since you did not synchronize the machine with an SY88 it isn’t there. Again, they should be able to easily work around this if they want to – the question is if they are willing. Good luck. Hey, maybe they should get a DTP too!