Does 5D + Magic lantern + Juicedlink pre-amp = audio capture success?

[Ty Ford]

Jared,

Your job, should you decide to accept it, is to find out and report back here.

Regards,

Ty Ford

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field GuideWatch Ty play guitar

[Jared Cicon]

Great, and I was just about to ask you specifically about this after seeing that you offered the audio bootcamp. Okay, I’ll report back buddy.
Jared

[Ty Ford]

Jared,

You are in uncharted territory, the potentially bleeding edge of technology.

Those cameras were never made for audio, originally. I’m not sure defusing the AGC will improve things. I don’t have either camera here. So my advice is proceed slowly. I don’t particularly like the Juiced Link boxes either.

Do some tests, send some short 48 kHz, 16-bit wav files around to folks with good ears. We may find that this fix works, but it may not.

Regards,

Ty Ford

PS: Don’t experiment on a real job with a real client.

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field GuideWatch Ty play guitar

[Jared Cicon]

Hey Ty,
Okay. I guess I should just proceed with the ML update and see where it takes me. coming from a point of dissatisfaction with JuicedLink, what other pre-amp would you recommend? Please keep in mind that although most of the time, my sound guy will be hand holding whatever configuration I finally come up with, there will be times when it will all be attached to the Handy SLR rig that I use. Between the camera, the marshall monitor, ballast, shade, everything adds up in weight pretty fast so the lighter the better. Neither could it be a pre-amp that is overly bulky with relation to mass.

Thanks in advance for your help on this amigo. Flux capacitor replaced.
Jared

[Ty Ford]

Jared,

A Sound Devices 302 mixer.

https://www.sounddevices.com/products/302master.htm

Regards,

Ty Ford

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field GuideWatch Ty play guitar

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Brian Reynolds]

Jared, I was talking to a friend of mine who does Film / TV lighting recently about DSLR production, his comment “its on the way out”…the reasons being the problems you have experienced.
Panasonic have just released a camera that fills that market EXACTLY and solves the audio problems for less than $5k, and uses existing SLR lenses.

https://pro-av.panasonic.net/en/af100/

The difference between Knowledge and Wisdom is… Knowledge is the knowing of facts…. Wisdom is the sensible application of good quality knowledge…

[Ty Ford]

[Brian Reynolds] “Jared, I was talking to a friend of mine who does Film / TV lighting recently about DSLR production, his comment “its on the way out”…the reasons being the problems you have experienced.”

Brian,

Thanks for this. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Format wars continue. 🙂

Regards,

Ty Ford

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field GuideWatch Ty play guitar

[Jared Cicon]

Hey Brian,
Thanks for adding your voice to the discussion. I am familiar with that camera and I was a little disappointed that Panasonic didn’t achieve a full frame 35mm sensor like the 5D. While the camera does have redeeming value in the marketplace, it’s footprint is still quite large when compared to the 7D and 5D, which factored large in George Lucas’s decision to use Canon DSLRs for the airplane cockpit footage of his most recent feature endeavor.

Ancillary:
Those people who purchase the Panasonic will have to live with their purchase and build the inevitable support gear list during their ownership period, in much the same way I am with my 5D and 7D. I am not in a position or of the mind to abandon these cameras for the Panasonic flavor du jour. With that in mind it is prudent I pursue the best support gear strategy for the equipment I currently own and have become quite familiar with. I can offer that having produced national commercials with various types of equipment, I and am very happy with the performance and results I am getting from the 5D and 7D. so I am not sure these Canons will become obsolete in the way most gear does.

With that as a background, is there any help you can offer relative to my current needs?

Jared

[Bill Davis]

Jarred,

Simply accept this REALITY.

The Canon 5dMkii was an ACCIDENT. NOBODY (including from my reading, the original designers!) really expected the DIGIC processor at it’s heart to have the capacity to reliably blast frames using a significant portion of the HUGE raster of the sensor out at video speeds. There was much concern in the early days about chip overheating and other problems about using the camera for extended video shooting. None of that came true. Which was great. But the REAL astonishment was that nobody expected the results to be such INCREDIBLE, BEAUTIFUL video imagery. In short, nobody ever expected this thing to work like it does.

They were caught short – just like the ENTIRE market – when they learned just how STUNNING the video was from this camera.

For proof, look at how they’ve scrambled to re-program the camera to add video features AFTER THE FACT.

So we were all given a wonderful, dynamic accident. But it was still an ACCIDENT. There was NO parallel accident on the AUDIO side of this camera. It’s audio capabilities are MARGINAL at best. They’re about what you’d expect from a Flip camera. Limited bandwith, lo-fi, “always on” Auto Gain Control (AGC) audio that will NEVER be acceptable in any professional workflow – no matter HOW many interim boxes you attach to the gizmo.

The issue is that, on a scale of 1 to 10 – the VIDEO from a 5dMkii managed by accident to be a 20. Therfore all the ruckus.

However, the fact you have to FACE is that the AUDIO will never be better than a 2 or a 3. That’s the NATURE of the design of the audio section of the beast.

You can work your ass off to make that 3 the best 3 it can by by chasing it with tricks (pilot tones) and adding expensive mics and pre-amps, and other stuff – but ALL YOU CAN DO IS GET IT UP TO A 3 because that’s all the audio it was EVER designed for.

3 is fine for home birthday parties. 3 is NOT fine for real professional work.

So we use the Zoom or something similar because it gets us an audio 10 which matched with the VIdeo 20 is pretty damned amazing. And some folks with HUGE budgets use the video 20 of the 5d with a whole hollywood sound department to match the Video 20 with an Audio 20. Which is why you get HOUSE and Lucas Films in the game, etc.

But ACCEPT that the camera is an Audio 3 and will NEVER be anything else, no matter how much you WISH it would be. The lightening struck in the Chip and in the Processor. There was NO lighting left to hit the beast’s Audio circuits.

Sorry.

[Danny Winn]

Bill, I mean no disrespect and I do mean that, but do you even know what Magic Lantern does? It doesnt sound like you do because you mention that the AGC is always on which it is NOT with the Magic Lantern because this Firmware disables the AGC.

ML also added audio meters and turns the 5D Av jack into a headphone jack in addition to many non audio related features. Did you know any of this? Again, no disrespect but it just sounds like you answered this thread without knowing what was being asked.

A JuiceLinked unit in conjunction with ML drops the Audio input noise seemingly to 0.

Magic Lantern is a free 3rd party Firmware for the 5D not a Canon written product.

We all know that there are several ways of getting “Lucas” quality sound out there, but the question here is, does anyone out there have a lot of experince with both the options mentioned above and how do they perform?