Is 702T good for dual?

O

olindacat

Well-known member
How does TC jamming actually work? Does this connect to cam via USB? Is a discont.'d mixer w/this okay, or should I be looking at a MixPreD? I want to devote a lot of time to the audio side. Can I grow into this recorder or is it too much for an ambitious newbie to handle? (Sorry for the rewrite.)
 
Last edited:
The 702t is an outstanding stereo field recorder. You can use it alone but feeding it with a good mixer such as a 302, 442 (now discontinued but available used), or 552 upstream gives you more mic inputs, more flexibility and more control. As for how to use the recorder's timecode facility, that depends on your camera as well ... if the camera doesn't have timecode I/O, the timecode on the recorder is moot unless you slate all your takes with a smartslate. What camera do you plan to use it with?
 
olindacat said:
I was going to use it with an NEX-FS100 and VG10 Steve (thanks :-)
Click to expand...

As those cameras have no TC inputs, what would you need the TC for in SD702?

Generally TC is not really much used, as with modern DAWs it is easy to align video and sound, and the clocks in both cameras and recorders are so accurate that drift is not much of an issue with normal length takes.
 
I see. I do my own editing and agree, but am no pro so I figured it might have to do with something over my head. I bought this used and haven't even opened the box. I'm frankly afraid of the thing! I also don't even have a mic!! I hope to practice with it exclusively until I figure it out. I guess I made a mistake buying this. Have posted it for sale but someone said to keep it. Just now I am very good at screwing up....
 
Absolutely keep it. It's a primo piece of gear. The audio quality is top-shelf, whether you use the TC features or not. Just because you can't use its timecode directly with your present camera doesn't mean that's always going to be the case. For example, you may upgrade your camera to a professional cam with TC I/O at some point in the future, in fact it's very likely you'll upgrade your camera far sooner than you'll need to upgrade your audio kit. Or you could shoot 'film style', photographing a smart slate displaying timecode jam syn'ced to the recorder's TC generator at the start of each take.
 
Steve House said:
Absolutely keep it. It's a primo piece of gear. The audio quality is top-shelf, whether you use the TC features or not. Just because you can't use its timecode directly with your present camera doesn't mean that's always going to be the case. For example, you may upgrade your camera to a professional cam with TC I/O at some point in the future, in fact it's very likely you'll upgrade your camera far sooner than you'll need to upgrade your audio kit. Or you could shoot 'film style', photographing a smart slate displaying timecode jam syn'ced to the recorder's TC generator at the start of each take.
Click to expand...

Thanks Steve. I get the sense that because I am very weak in audio that I have years and years to go before I will be able to leverage the quality of this recorder.
 
It uses a 5 pin lemo for its timecode I/O, and wordclock in and out is on BNC. Check out http://sounddevices.com/products/702t.htm. It has a user guide and some other helpful PDF documents. You can jam a timecode slate from it, and shoot like they used to do on film, but back then people were using timecode Nagras, or timecode DAT machines, and it was all linear, so in telecine, they would look at the timecode on the slate, and then punch up the timecode on their DAT deck, and the tape would go to that timecode, and off they went.

These days, in the non-linear world, you can get away with using a dumb slate for sync and manually line everything up. We aren't dealing with film cameras and tape machines that run at varying speeds any more, so sync for short to medium takes is a non-issue. Timecode is really handy if you are using a timecode capable camera, or doing a multi-cam shoot. If you have a timecode capable camera, and a timecode capable recorder, you just spot the video files and audio files into your AVID or FCP system, and (assuming everything was done correctly), they should just line up on their own. It really saves time on projects that have multiple cameras and have massive amounts of data that need to be synced quickly.

So, in short, keep your 702t, even if it's a few years until you use the timecode functionality. That fact that you have the ability to use timecode can get you a gig that otherwise might not have if you didn't have a timecode capable recorder. Of course, you need to be very careful to make sure that everything is running at the proper frame rates, or it ends up being a nightmare.
 
No problem. I spent several years sorting out timecode issues when people really switched over to shooting Hi-Def (instead of film) and were using timecode capable cameras with timecode recorders.

I can't stress enough how important it is that absolutely everyone is on the same page as far as what framerate is going to be used. I've gone to many a post house and many a production set to try and figure out problems only to find out someone had their framerate incorrect. Luckily, there are some pretty smart people that were able to write software programs that let me change the metadata on files, and literally change the framerate of a file after it had been recorded.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top