Options

Options for the DV Player, Tools and the Batch Processor can be found in the Tools>Options menu. This pops up an options dialog box with several tabs which are described below.

General tab

Microsoft DV Decoder Settings

This allows you to set the resolution of the DV decoder used to play AVI and Raw DV files. If you have a low resolution screen or an older PC you may gain better performance by selecting Half resolution.

Metadata Display Settings

You can set the format of the date as displayed in DVMP Pro to dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy. You can also specify that the File Progress Timecode is displayed as an absolute frame number instead of as a timecode.

Save All Settings As Default

If you tick this box and click OK then the settings in most of the tabs will be saved as default. Next time you start DVMP Pro this will be how the settings will appear.

Note that the settings in the Modify tab are not saved as you will probably want to set these to different values for each modify operation. By default all of the Modify boxes are un-ticked.

Scenes tab

This allows you to choose the items of metadata which define a "scene". The first time you run DVMP Pro the default will be for Recording date/time discontinuity only to be ticked, which means that a scene-change is considered to occur when the date and time jumps out of its natural sequence which will usually have been caused by the camera being stopped or paused during recording.

You can re-define a scene-change by ticking any combination of metadata items. Whenever the chosen items change value then a scene-change is triggered. For timecode and recording date/time  which are continuously changing then the trigger occurs when there is a discontinuity.

For Tape Index point, the trigger occurs when the marker is detected. For Dropped Frame then the trigger occurs when a dropped frame is detected.

Burn-In tab

This allows you to select which items of metadata are burned-in when using Tools>Burn-In Metadata or Tools>Direct File Processing>Burn-In Metadata.

The metadata items are:

• Timecode
• Date and Time of Recording
• User Bits
• Shutter speed
• Iris (f-stop)
• Image stabiliser on/off
• Gain in dB
• Auto-Exposure Mode
• White Balance Mode
• White Balance Setting
• Audio details

Just tick the items that you want to be burned-in.

You can also tick File progress. This is not an item of metadata, but simply a frame-count into the AVI file. It is the same as the File progress in bottom-left of the player's metadata display. You can choose File progress to be burned-in as a zero-based frame number or in the format hh:mm:ss:ff by ticking/unticking Display file progress as frame number in the General tab of the Tools->Options menu.

Frame progress can be useful if you just want to burn-in a simple frame counter, or a timecode which always starts from 00:00:00:00 at the beginning of the AVI file.

Burn-in Mode

The Burn-in Mode allows you to choose whether to burn-in all frames of the AVI file, or just burn in for a short period when there is a scene change. You can choose the duration as a number of seconds or frames.

A scene change is defined by the items that are ticked in the Scenes tab of the Tools>Options menu. The ticked items are effectively scene-change "triggers". If the Date and Time of Recording is the only item ticked then a scene change will be triggered whenever there is a discontinuity (i.e. an unexpected jump) in the recorded date and time. This is the most intuitive definition of a scene change, and probably the most useful, but you can redefine the meaning of a scene change simply by changing which triggering items are ticked in the Scenes tab.

Another useful example for video professionals is if you use run-time (or time-of-day) timecode where the camera continuously increments the timecode in real time whether the camera is running or not. There will therefore be breaks in recorded timecode whenever the camera is paused. So, by ticking only the timecode item you can define a scene change as a timecode discontinuity, then you can burn-in for N seconds (or frames) whenever the timecode jumps.

Text Properties

In the Text Properties section you can select the brightness of the burned-in metadata text and the text outline as a percentage. 0% is black and 100% is peak white. You can also set the transparency of the text - 0% is opaque and 100% is invisible.

Title Safe Area

The Title Safe Area confines the metadata text within the chosen central area of the video frame to ensure that it is not cropped by some TV displays. You can choose 80% (which means that 10% to the left and right, top and bottom of frame is kept clear of text), or 90% (where 5% all around is kept clear). If you are burning-in widescreen (16:9) video and you want to confine the text within a 4:3 safe area you should tick Always use 4:3 area.

Rendering tab

This allows you to choose between the VMR9 and VMR7 renderers. It is recommended that you leave VMR9 selected, but some older graphics cards (or buggy drivers) may play "blank" video using VMR9 - in such cases choosing VMR7 may solve this problem. Note that VMR7 may use video overlay if your graphics card supports it. Also VMR7 is not supported by Microsoft on Windows 2000.

Splitter tab

Here you can change the settings used by the file splitter. The file splitter tool is found in Tools>Split File

Trigger On

This allows you to specify what will cause a file-split to occur. You can choose to trigger a file-split on one of the following:

• Timecode discontinuity
• Date and Time of Recording Discontinuity
• Change of User Bit values
• Tape Index Marker occurance

For Timecode Discontinuity, you must select a number of frames - this is the threshold for the file-split trigger to fire. It is assumed that the timecode will increment for each consecutive frame, so a discontinuity will have occurred if the timecode jumps forward by more than 1 frame, or stays the same, or jumps backward. But by changing the number of frames in the edit box you can cause the split to trigger only if the discontinuity is the specified number of frames or greater.

For example, if you set a threshold value of 1 then this means the trigger will fire if the timecode increases by 2 or more frames between consecutive frames, or if the timecode is unchanged or goes backward. A value of 1 frame therefore means any deviation from naturally incrementing timecode. If you set the threshold value to 2, then the trigger will fire if the timecode increases by 3 frames, or jumps back by 1 or more frames.

If timecode disappears or re-appears, then this will always trigger a file-split.

Timecode jumping backwards can cause problems for later batch capturing which will assume that timecode always increases throughout the tape. If the next section to be captured has earlier timecode than the previous section then the tape will be wound backwards, but if the section is actually later on the tape then the required section may not be found.

To avoid this problem, DVMP Pro adds a letter suffix to the Reel Name whenever a split occurs on backward-jumping timecode. This will cause the batch capture facility to stop and prompt for a reel change. The operator can then manually reposition the tape at the start of the required section and allow the batch capture to continue.

If you choose Date/Time Discontinuity as the trigger then you must select a number of seconds - this is the threshold for the trigger to fire. This works in a similar way to the timecode threshold value. Comparing two consecutive frames, the date and time may be said to be continuous if it increases by 1 second or stays the same. There is no "fields" value, so a detectable discontinuity will have occurred if the date and time increases by 2 or more seconds or goes backward. By changing the number of seconds in the edit box you can cause the split to trigger only if the discontinuity is the specified number of seconds, or greater.

For example, if you set the threshold to 1 second, then the trigger will fire if the date/time between consecutive frames increases by 2 secs or goes backward (i.e any detectable discontinuity). If you set the threshold to 2 seconds, then the trigger will fire if the date/time increases by 3 secs, or goes backward by 2 or more seconds.

If the date and time disappears or re-appears, then this will always cause a split to occur.

If you choose User Bits change, then a split will occur whenever the user bits values change.

If you choose Tape Index marker, then a split will occur whenever a tape index marker is detected in the AVI file.

File name format

The File name format section allows you to choose a variable suffix for the output file names. File splitting can generate many output files, so a suffix is added to the end of each output filename stem to ensure that it is unique. You can choose the type of filename suffix from one of the following:

• Sequential file number (nnnn) adds a numeric suffix, starting from 0001 and incrementing for each new split file that is created.
• Timecode (hh.mm.ss.ff) adds a timecode suffix. The value is the timecode of the first frame in the split file.
• Date/Time (yy-mm-dd hh.mm.ss) adds a date and time suffix. The value is the recording date and time of the first frame in the split file.
• User Bits (nn.nn.nn.nn) adds a set of user bit values as a suffix. The values are taken from the first frame of the split file,

In applicable cases, if there is no timecode/date/time/userbits value stored in the first frame then the values will be a series of "-"s.

Existing files will not be overwritten. If when a new split file is to be created there is already a file with the same file name, then the new split file will have a numeric (n) suffix added to uniquely identify it.

Pre-roll Delay

If your workflow requires later batch capture from tape, then problems can be caused if the tape deck pre-rolls back over a timecode discontinuity.

Setting a pre-roll delay of 1 or more seconds will cause the splitter to ignore the first 1 or more seconds of footage after a split trigger occurs - the first N seconds of a split will effectively be discarded. This means that when offline editing is performed on the split files it will be impossible for the editor to set an in-point which would cause later batch capture to pre-roll back over a timecode discontinuity.

If you set a pre-roll delay of 0 seconds then no frames will be discarded.

Output AVI Type

You can choose whether you want the split files to be AVI type 1 or type 2, or the same type as the input file.

Modify tab

Sometimes you may need to "fix" an AVI file by changing some of the DV metadata that is stored within.

You can change:

• Timecode
• Date and Time of recording
• User bits
• Drop-frame timecode to Non-drop or vice versa
• Widecreen flag

This will operate on the whole AVI file.

Tick the items that you wish to change, and change their associated settings as required. If an item is left un-ticked then it will be unchanged in the output file (i.e. the same as the input file).

Note that the settings on the Modify tab do not get saved by the Save all settings as default option (on the General tab). The default is always for all items on the Modify tab to be un-ticked.

Timecode & Date and Time

For Timecode and Date and Time items, you can choose Adjust by or Start from.

If you want the file to begin with a specific timecode or date/time value, set the required values in the edit boxes and select the Start from radio button. The first frame will have the specified value which will then increase unbroken for the whole file.

If you want the existing values to be increased or decreased by a specified amount, set the value in each edit-box to the required positive or negative amount and select the Adjust by radio button.

The Zero buttons set all the values on their immediate left to zero.

If you are using the Adjust by option, here's a helpful feature which avoids the need to do timecode calculations: you can set each value independantly to a positive or negative amount. So for example if your AVI file starts with the timecode 00:00:03;24 and you want it to start at 00:00:01;29 instead, then you would usually have to do some timecode maths to come up with the correct amount to subtract. But in DVMP Pro you can simply enter -2 secs and +5 frames and off you go!  This useful feature can also be used for adjusting the date and time values.

For the Date and Time item you can instead select Extract date and time from file name. This works like Start from except that the start date and time values are extracted from the file's name (not from the values in the Modify tab). You will usually want to use Start from instead as it is more flexible, but if you are processing multiple files using DVMP Pro's Batch Processing then it can be useful for adding a different date and time to the DV metadata for each file that is processed. For example, if you have captured lots of analog video to DV format it will not contain any date and time information in the DV metadata - you can then use Extract date and time from file name to add different dates and times to each file's metadata. You can do this by manually naming the DV AVI files in one of the following two formats:

my video yy-mm-dd hh.mm.ss.avi
my video yy-mm-dd.avi

The first format contains a date and time, and the second contains just a date. yy is the year expressed as 2 digits, mm is the month, and so on. The format must be exactly as shown in bold with each value 2 digits in length, and the date and time format must appear immediately before the .avi file name extension. DVMP Pro will extract the date and time from the file name and use that as the start values to modify the date and time metadata in that file. If the time is not specified then the time 00:00:00 is used as the start time.

For example, a file named

Capture 08-04-15 23:45:15.avi

will have date and time metadata added to it beginning with the date 15th April 2008 and time 23:45:15.

Set User Bits (00 to FF)

Here you can specify new values for the user bits. The value in each of the four edit boxes is a hexadecimal number from 00 to FF. (i.e. comprising the characters 0 to 9 and A to F). These User Bit values are assigned to all frames in the output file.

Change NTSC Timecode to

For NTSC files you can choose whether the timecode in the DV metadata is in drop frame or non-drop frame format. If you have Change NTSC Timecode and Timecode modification both ticked, then the drop/non-drop conversion is performed before the timecode modification.

This setting is ignored for PAL files.

Change Widescreen Flag to

For Change Widescreen Flag you can specify whether the flag is set to indicate that the video's display aspect ratio is 4:3 or 16:9. This can be useful if another program or utility had set this flag incorrectly.