Tascam P2 BWFs and Fostex DV40

[Philip Perkins]

I've just heard that there seems to be a problem with the Fostex DV40 reading the BWFs from the Tascam P2.  Everyone is mystified about why this is, but for now this is not the machine to use on a film shoot where the audio will be synced in a normal telecine bay.  The use with any sort of video shoot or film shoot where the audio will be synced in a computer is fine.  A bummer, to be sure.

Philip Perkins

[Jeff Wexler]

Thanks for the heads up. I hope someone will figure out what the difficulty is. I remember the hopes early on that if all the recorders would just write boradcast wave files, everything would be splendid --- after all, a .wav file is a .wav file, right? Unfortunately, all sorts of weirdness and incompatibilities began to crop up as more and more machines from several different manufacturers started showing up. I still believe the promise of fairly unified, predictable and reliable systems can be realized in the near future --- I just hope it is sooner rather than later (since there really isn't any turning back to linear DAT machines since many of them are seeing their "end of life" right before our eyes. I for one will not mourn the retiring of the DAT format. Having been one of the very first to use the DAT format I am equally pleased to be one of the first to abandon it completely several years ago with the original Deva.

Regards,  Jeff Wexler

[Philip Perkins]

Mike Paul just tested the files from the P2 with the new (v 1.04) firmware, and it now WORKS.  Test was with 48k 30 NDF BWFs (stereo) and DV40 v. 1,76, pulled up, down and not.  Before, the DV40 couldn't see the files on the disk.  The only change I see to the BWF file in BWAV reader is that they added a tTAPE name in the description.  Courtney--I have some new P2 test files I can email you if you are curious.  Anyhow--we're back in biz.  DV40 was able to navigate to audio files w/o moving them up a level in the file structure.

Philip Perkins