As an ex-broadcaster, I was familiar with it. (And use it!) - However, I was looking forward to the next episode that explained how to avoid time code breaks... it turned into a holiday event..

aha! I see what you were going for.

Some cameras (the commercial grade, advanced amateur stuff I use) is typically stuff that gets used with external time code generators... or just free runs. (Sony EX, Canon AH1) - And of course, then there is the Canon 5dMk2, which says "What's timecode?"

I haven't gotten the Canon out of the bag in almost a year because frankly, PBS and others want 1080 source material, and HDV is "ok" only for short clips inside of a 1080i presentation.



The canon has the distinct disadvantage of doing HDV, which means 1:1 transfers, which drives me nuts. Nice thing about the others: plug the memory card into the computer.. Make a directory structure that shows you what you've done.. and let a copy happen.

(The Sony EX family uses a converter program to make the long gop mpg visible to editors like Vegas and so on... takes only a couple of minutes for 2 hours of footage, so I can live with that..but the converter uses metadata that is stored in different spots on the cartridges, making it *interesting* to back up. )

My suggestion there: create a directory for a shoot...
Then create a bunch of sub directories.. one for each load of a memory cartridge... Xcopy the contents of the cart to that structure (to the appropriate sub directory) - and then convert everything into the root....

Archive the raw footage off to DVD asap after that.. (dual layers hold the 8 gig carts rather nicely..)