Suggestion: Drop Frame Log

[CJ Roy]

In my experience a good half of the AC's I'll work with will watch the LCD monitor with the image punched in. Therefor, they're not seeing the drop frame indicator, missing if there were dropped frames or not. Most DP's are too busy with other things, to keep an eye on it as well.

I've had dropped frames occur on helicopters (long story, january '08), car mounts, dollies, handheld, technocrane, steadicams and even being locked off on sticks, untouched.

By the time the footage gets back to us, and we're reviewing it in the flavor of our choosing, we'll then find some of these dropped frames, but not necessarily all.

Is there anyway for the camera to create a log, or note on each clip telling us that frames were dropped? If it could tell us how many, that would be an enormous help too.

Also, if the screen is punched in, can there be a notification on just the LCD/EVF that dropped frames occurred? Or something that makes the image expand back out to where the drop frame indicator could be seen?

Thanks.

-CJ

[Brandon Kraemer]

I'd like to resurrect this thread in the hopes of learning something about some footage we just received. Help from DP's or AC's, DIT's from a technical aspect is welcome. I know little about the functioning of the camera itself.

We just got a lot of footage shot on "cards". I do not know what camera build it was on, nor do I know the size of the cards or the manufacture of them. We have these questions in, but the rental house is in Europe and we will not get answers till monday.

The footage in question has a lot of dropped frames. Watching the proxies in real time, these frames look like data glitches. Watching them in Redcine framing through them, they show up black and the time code readout changes from white to red. Is this in fact how dropped frames look?

Is there, as the OP proposed, a log file created for dropped frames?

Is there a way for the crew to see that they are dropping frames in camera during the shoot or when reviewing footage?

Has anyone ever heard of dropped frames being created as the result of copying recorded media from cards to a hard drive? (seems unlikely) Or in other words, is the only way for dropped frames to appear, to be a problem in camera at the time of shooting.

Thanks in advance for answering what might seem like elementary questions about the functioning of the camera. We are obviously concerned about our footage at this stage.