Jam Sync

[Noah Kadner]

Doubt it- no camera in this price range sends TC.

Noah

[Skip Cercelletta]

I don’t think that’s totally correct; is firewire not sending out TC? How else would it show up on the NLE? I’m thinking of getting MOTU’s Traveler https://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/traveler/ for recording the audio. CD quality audio is a little how u say.. junkie…. This box, so they say, will take any input and slave that sig to TC. I just thought now as I type, or try to type. that TC must be on the wire out to the computer. Well worse come to worse I’ll just go back to the old days and use a pair of sticks. Y did Panasonic even bother to put DV into the camera, could not you just record to the P2 card if you needed to go back to the past. I could have used that extra storage space in case I ever go back to smoking and need to hide my pack of smokes.

[Noah Kadner]

There is some sort of TC embedded along with the audio and video coming out of the Firewire connection however I’ve not ever seen any gear that could slave to it. Jam syncing is typically something you do with higher end cameras that have a dedicated time code reference connection. Here’s a link that might explain it in more detail for you:

https://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-editing.html#DVTimecode

Noah

[Skip Cercelletta]

Thanks’, I’ll have to look into it. Jan may have the answer if she happens to read this post.

[Tony]

Skip the answer is if you require on set external jam sync timecode between camera heads then you need to step up to the higher end model which allow this.

Options including using external deneke sync boxes which use an internal timecode generator which you lock to the individual camera heads. Using an external timecode box allow absolute timecode accuracy and avoid the problem of timecode slip during power down or up cycles, battery changes etc.

Other options include hard wiring timecode cables to the camera heads from a master timecode generator or daisy chaining between camera heads.

A real simple option is to use an external visual timecode slate and shoot that on camera as a sync reference. All cameras shoot the slate at the beginning of the take and do not stop rolling until the end of the take.

In a nutshell external timecode inputs on a camera head is reserved for higher end professional cameras. Such models include SDX-900, VariCam etc.

At the price point the 200 will be available it is unlikely it will have an timecode input or output capable of external jam syncing.

Tony Salgado

[Toke]

Sync is for on the fly editing tc-out/in is just to ease a bit editing afterwards, same thing that timecode in a slate if there is sound recording.
All of these plus uncompressed out/in (like sdi) are technically quite simple and cheap, but with them manufacturers have been maintaining camera price classes, but I suspect that these boundaries are slowly disappearing.

[Mitch Gross]

I recall at the Hands-On seminar Jan gave at Abel Cine Tech in NYC, the 200 can jam sync but only with other 200 cameras. I believe it was through the USB port. No standard TC in/out port.

Mitch

[Skip Cercelletta]

Thanks for all your posts first off. What I’m trying to do, I guess I didn’t get my point across that well. I ‘m trying to jam the camera with a MOTU Traveler so I can have better audio quality 196kH 24-bit, that CD stuff is getting a bit old for me. The Traveler will jam to anything on any in port you care to use. My thought was if the firewire is live when you shoot then TC sync should be as well going down the pipe. I know about the TC Slate we use them and have been using them since their inception. The slate is good to jam the MOTU but I still will have only the starts with TC and will always have to go back to the tags for ref.; now that would be getting old fast in the first order, unless there is some way to start the TC I see in FC and the rest would auto/in the entire clip. I’m not that familiar with FC. Worse come to worse I will slate for ref then bring in the audio and sync with PIC and lock, just like the Movie-ola! Just a pain in the nose is all. Sad to see only USB for the 200/ happens to be the only thing MOTO has no input for. JAN?????

[Mitch Gross]

If you can find a way to extract the tc out of Firewire that’s great, but I don’t know any portable field device to do it. And it would likely be a a bit delayed, consistently by perhaps a frame or two. But for what you’re describing it seems to me that if you just set the camera in Free Run timecode then you’ll only need to find the offset at the head of the first shot and then check it every half hour or so in case of drift. This system is fairly common and very reliable and it doesn’t require constant checking or every take syncing–no more Moviola days! (God do I remember them…)

Mitch