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Recommend a Teleprompter?
Hello,
We’re looking for a decent, relatively affordable teleprompter for on-the go shooting with a PD170. Would like to use a Mac for creating the text. I have no idea what type is good or fair. Did a search on B&H and found what seems like a decent solution for around $1,500
Is this unit any good?
Thanks!!!!
Just this guy, Y’know?
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5 Replies
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I bought one from Stewart Instruments, the “ridiculously inexpensive” (TM) prompter folks. It’s not glitzy, but it’s solid and works as advertised. Mine is a CRT based model, they now also offer an LCD version that’s easier to transport if you prompt in the field a lot. If it’s only ever for studio use, you might stay with a CRT design to save money, they are also easier to loop-thru to extra monitors. I shopped all the brands before I bought mine, and I use Q-TV ptompters at work, my opinion is ALL the brands are horrifically overpriced.
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Thanks for the tips. I will check it out. We do need a portable one for field use.
I agree, they do seem overpriced for basically some mirrored glass and an aluminum frame (the LCD is something one can probably buy third party).
Just this guy, Y’know?
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Hey, hoopy frood;
For a long time our field prompter was a spare studio head assembly stuck onto a sturdy portable platform of it’s own, freestanding from the camera and lens. It meant you couldn’t prompt and do pans, tilts, or dolly moves, only small zooms, but we used the heck out of it. Nice thing about it was it would “fit” with whatever camera, large or small, you paired with it.
If you decide you want to save cash and build a head yourself, you can make one in this style without too much work. The main factor is what kind of cable you’d run to the LCD from the laptop, and will you reverse the LCD using hardware or the prompting software. I’m not up to date on the best mac side prompting software, but you will want one that can give you a choice of reversing the output and inverting it. LCD’s by themselves typically need to be driven by a VGA cable’s signals. Some of the extra cost comes from that hardware. VGA cables of a length practical for prompting are NOT cheap.
CRT’s can take regular old viddy-oh from a simple scan converter or direct out from some laptops with regular coax…
You can also make a tray that holds your laptop under the beamsplitter mirror and use *that* to prompt off of, but you’ll have trouble reading that and operating it. You can give the talent a ringmouse or wireless gyromouse to control the prompter themselves, and that works fine if the actor doesn’t need to show both hands. There’s always compromises to be made somewhere.
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Good software to check out is Prompt! Mac and Windows, it’s cheap with a free demo to try. https://www.movieclip.biz/prompt.html
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I recently used an LCD prompter with a Sony EX-3 and it worked fine, except for the degradation of the image! Does anyone know of a prompter that has a beam splitter that doesn’t so noticeably degrade HDV?
Adam Grossman
Good Dog Media
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