GH2 GH2 and best Audio Recorder with minimal drift

J

jimmiesner

Well-known member
I used to have an H4N with my GH1 and it would drift bad over an hours time. Maybe it was the way I was recording. But does anyone have a preference for an external audio recorder to use with the GH2? Possibly one that has minimal to no drift?

Jim
 
I use Sony pcm d50 with my GH2. When synchronized it doesn't drift for at least one hour (I didn't try much longer). You can check a sample at www.belcantanti.com (scroll down to Past performances -> La Cenerentola).

Alex
 
You shouldn't get any drift. Check your post workflow. I'd recommend the zoom H1 - I've done about an hour but not much longer.
 
You will sometimes get drift :) I haven't clocked the GH2 against my superclock, as it takes a whole afternoon (I know, why buy a superclock, in fact I would be happy to sell it) but normally RME is very, very accurate and you can use it as a front end for a Tascam DR 680. However, you have two clocks, the cam and the audio recorder, so you can't slave the cam to the superclock or ADC. WIth the RME, you can however compensate for drift. If you find that your camera has a slight drift relative to the converter, you can fine tune the sample rate, with no loss of SQ, untill they match. You can also reclock the audio losslessly in post by lowering or raising the pitch by a tiny fraction. That is, assuming the drift is constant. Do make sure it isn't something in the workflow, as Bill says, especially if you are dropping as much as a few frames.
 
mr bill said:
You shouldn't get any drift. Check your post workflow. I'd recommend the zoom H1 - I've done about an hour but not much longer.
Click to expand...

You will get drift... the audio clocking and the camera clocking are not locked to each other, hence a number of factors can contribute to the audio being out of sync with the video. Chief factors in drift are the crystal/clock components, tolerances the manufacture designed against, and environmental factors such as temperature, and drift associated with such.

One can be 'lucky' and the tolerances and drift of camera and audio recorder 'match' over a long time span. In the olden days, a recorder would have a 'pilot' signal, or some method to lock the camera rate to the recorder rate, and in the case of TV, the 'house' would have clocking available so that everything was running from a master clock.

The 'recommendation' for most is to not record for long periods of time, or with a camera recorded audio track, use some synchronization software, or 'manual', method to sync up the external audio with the camera reference audio.

If the drift varies over time, this is the 'worse' situation, and may require some amount of work to synchronize the sound to video.
 
I use the Zoom H1- zero drift. Though longest take I do is not more than 30 minutes.

-Noah
 
To be honest I don't remember it was over a year ago, and I have learned a lot since then. I am guessing I may have had that off set.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top