Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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If you have a component output on your camera then use that, as it’s a much better quality picture than composite. You might find the answer here on this forum but for faster results you might try posting in the AJA forum or the Sony DV forum.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
I don’t know the first thing about the 500 (wish I did) but if you have a camera USB file transfer port that can be hooked up to your laptop try doing a straight file copy from the camera to your external LaCie. If your LaCie rugged is like mine you’ve probably got FW800 and are using that from the laptop. See if the laptop’s estimated copy time is less than 3 hrs. It should be far less, because a simple USB connection copying to a SATA internal drive is about 28 min. for 64 Gbytes. Don’t expect that kind of transfer tiime going from USB to FW800 but it shouldn’t even be close to 3 hrs.
If this setup I’ve recommended you try is faster, then it’s just a process of elimination as to where the restriction is within your regular file transfer routine.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
Clear scan is there for CRT and LCD flat screen monitors only. On my Sony cameras I leave clear scan disabled all the time because (at least on my EX1R and EX3) it will even affect the outside recordings with a flickering/rolling picture issue for the first few seconds. This may not be true for all Sonys with a clear scan option. The best solution is to fix any picture flicker manually instead of leaving it up to the camera.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
The moral of this story is that you can fix low audio volume in post but you can’t fix digital clipping in post. It’s sort of like a computer speed test: lower bars are better.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
First of all, I would not waste my time trying to figure out why they’re generating different looking pictures. That would be very time consuming and frustrating. Going on the premise that the 2 cameras are the same, and they have the exact same firmware version, I would go to the OTHERS menu and choose RESET ALL. See if that defaults everything back to factory settings. If you have any custom picture profile settings you want to keep then you should copy them to one of your media cards before proceeding with the reset for each camera. The instructions on how to copy settings to your media card(s) is outlined in the operators manual.
See if this solves your issue.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
The SmallHD line of field monitors are superb for the money. I was fortunate enough to corral one of the last DP1X monitors sold before they ceased production. You can’t go wrong with something like the DP6. It’s got HDMI. SDI (optional) component, etc.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
Good luck with your future audio recordings.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
Whatever mic you were using to record the loud music was too sensitive (too hot) for the job. The signal was over-driving the camera’s pre-amp and that’s why you got the distortion. You can try trimming the signal in the menu but I suspect you’ll still get distortion even at a quiet volume and with AGC active. To solve the issue you need to get a mic that’s much less sensitive. Since I don’t record loud music I can’t advise you on what to buy. for example, a good shotgun for recording the spoken word is not going to do a good job of recording loud music.
You also can’t fix digital audio in post once it’s distorted. Digital audio turns into hash as soon as distortion happens, whereas analogue audio is more forgiving and can be manipulated somewhat.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
You haven’t provided much information about what you’re recording and if you’re using line level input (from a house mixing board) or mic level from a radio transmitter or a hard wired mic. I think you might be talking about mic level but I’ll touch on line level just in case.
If it’s from a mixing board here’s some recommendations. First of all, a professional mixing board’s peak signal is +10dBu whereas your EX peaks at -12dBu. Most audio people round off the -12dBu peak signal from a video camera to -10dBu and refer to this as the “ten+ten” rule. As you can see, there’s a huge difference in signal strength between the two. Setting your camera’s inputs to line level will solve the mismatch in most cases but in others it’s simply not enough to knock the board’s signal down for the camera to deal with. If the signal coming from the board is distorting, no amount of camera gain lowering will fix it because the signal is too much for the camera’s pre amp. The solution for this is to purchase one or two inline adjustable attenuators like the ones at the link below:
https://www.audio-technica.com/cms/electronics/a05620466ab0ce16/index.html
These plug in to the XLR cables the mixing console has sent to you then in turn plug into yours before the camera. You can adjust them to minus 30dBu in 10dBu increments.
If you’re requesting advice about mic level signals then I invite you to read the recommendations at this link:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/142/878123
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com -
[Marc Lucas] “And do you suggest I use the Line input rather than Mic input.”
Mr. Mark has suggested that you set your G3 to mic level as well as your EX1. If you set the EX1 to line then the camera’s trim adjustment menu will be greyed out. Practice good gain staging. Start with the lav mic and transmitter. Make sure that your gain level is about mid-way on the meter for a normal speaking voice. This allows you some headroom for when the speaker (person) raises their voice. In that case the meter on the transmitter will be close to peaking. If the transmitter gain is set too low you’ll get hissing when you try to compensate by raising the gain on the receiver and/or EX1.
Set the receiver the same way. You want to hear the signal clearly with decent volume but never so much as to cause distortion of the voice. Lastly, set the EX1 trim so that the sound is clean in your headphones with the physical volume knob previously set to around 5 or 6. This allows you some final gain latitude (adjustment) should the speaker raise their voice more than you’ve already allowed. You’ll rarely have to touch the physical EX1 knob during the recording session if everything is set up with this type of proper gain staging. Always start your adjustments with the lav transmitter and work your way back to the camera.
Every recording/speaking person is different depending on how loud they speak. You need to do testing prior to pressing the record button. If you set the initial gain too high on the transmitter to cause distortion of the signal no amount of decreasing gain on the receiver and/or camera will solve the issue because the distortion is caused by over-riding the transmitter’s pre-amp. You will not solve this by lowering any of the other gain controls other than at the source.
Turn the EX1’s AGC to OFF. That way, in the quiet parts of the recording the camera will NOT increase the gain as it looks for another signal. This also increases the chance of audio ‘hissing’. Even with the AGC set to OFF you’ll still hear a small amount of “gain pumping” from the camera itself during quiet moments. This is a built in “feature” of the camera’s audio section that can still be rectified by further adjustment. But that’s another phone call.
– Don
Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com