Question about PIX220 and HDMI cable

V

vcfilms

Well-known member
Hey all,

I just got a Pix220 for my FS100 and it doesnt seem to be working properly with the FS. Does the HDMI cable need to be 1.4 for it to work? I have a Monster Advanced 1.3 cable and it doesnt show the signal or trigger record properly. Im using firmware 2.0.

Any help is appreciated.

Cheers
 
I have a collection of (the cheapest) HDMI cables purchased from our UK equivalent of Walmart (Asda) - all cables work fine with both my Pix220 and Zacuto EVF from my FS100.

I have enabled Rec Roll from TC on the pix, and the FS100 starts and stops recording on the the PIX220 automatically when I run the camera to record on the internal AVCHD. In fact, it's a bit of a pain if one replays the last shot from the camera as the PIX leaps into record again like an over-eager sheepdog.

This was with the 1.6 firmware when I bought it, through 1.9 and now 2.0. Also, no issues when upgrading the FS100 from v1 to v2.

I do hope you can figure something out. The theory has worked out in practice for me.

Also, I heartily recommend that you get a 5-socket XLR to 2x 3-pin XLR splitter cable, and feed your mics into the PIX then the PIX into your FS100 at line level. The audio quality, and the subtleties of the limiters, is almost a spiritual experience. :)
 
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MattDavis said:
Also, I heartily recommend that you get a 5-socket XLR to 2x 3-pin XLR splitter cable, and feed your mics into the PIX then the PIX into your FS100 at line level. The audio quality, and the subtleties of the limiters, is almost a spiritual experience. :)
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Hey Matt,

Thanks for the advice. This is a large part of why I bought the pix in the first place. I would love to take advantage of the high sound quality it features. Any gotchas I should know about when going into pix and out the fs100 for audio? Is there any delay in the audio signal or anything like that?

Thanks again
 
Well, since upgrading to 2.0, I noticed a 5 frame delay in audio - mainly because the whole setup reverts to factory when you upgrade, so I need to tweak that back in. FCPX makes this sort of thing a non-issue.

One huge 'mofo' of an issue which actually isn't an issue at all is that the PIX ProRes files, when played back on a Mac using the space bar preview or QT7 Player, has an odd 'doubling' sound to it, and it appears to be baked in. However, opening it up in your NLE shows the audio to be just peachy. QuickTime has had some silly issues in the past, and so I'm going to pin the blame on QT here, not Sound Devices.

There's currently no option to record one input to two tracks for that 'cloth-eared cameraman' trick of avoiding distorted sound levels without relying on the rather crude 'rubber sheet' of the limiter. Sound Devices rather patiently explained that their compression/limiting circuitry would take care of the most expressive of interviewees. Since then, I've had a couple of plosives on interviews and they passed without drama. Or distortion.

Bit of a mess with cables at the moment

View attachment 53042
 
MattDavis said:
Well, since upgrading to 2.0, I noticed a 5 frame delay in audio - mainly because the whole setup reverts to factory when you upgrade, so I need to tweak that back in. FCPX makes this sort of thing a non-issue.
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What do you mean by tweak that back in? How do you do that? I use Premiere so I'm not sure if it's a non-issue like with FCPX? I just want to make it as smooth a process as possible for my clients, should they decide to go with the internal codec instead of the Prores files.
 
Don't worry - there's a control inside the Pix to set the audio delay should you need to do it. That's what I need to tweak, didn't mean to imply that it's done in the edit - though that's how I fixed stuff the other day... I've been so used to the Canon T2i having its guide audio 1-2 frames (it wanders) off sync, I've forgotten that this is aberrant behaviour!
 
Hey Matt, is it possible to have the Pix do an "audio only" recording? I just sold my SD722 audio recorder to help finance the purchase of a 240 and I'd love to still be able to do some audio work with it along with video.
 
At thus stage no, unless one can source an HDMI pattern generator or something. I believe it's something that SD are considering, but it isn't as easy as it may appear.
 
Yeah, this really seems like a feature worth implementing. It would make a nice audio recorder when needed.

Does anyone know. The Prores Proxy recording feature on the unit at 36mbs. I'm thinking of using this for an event I need to shoot as it would give me 12 hours straight recording time on the Pix. How is the quality? It's good to use in this case (when needing long recording times) and the quality will still be better than the internal codec?
 
vcfilms said:
The Prores Proxy recording feature on the unit at 36mbs. the quality will still be better than the internal codec?
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Unless you have a lot of motion in your subject, or really need full 4:2:2 colour detail (chromakey), you'll be hard pressed to see the difference between the FS100 implementation of AVCHD and ProRes, though of course one of the manyfold reasons I purchased the PIX220 was for event records where I really didn't have the time to convert huge swathes of material, or had to edit a morning's worth of conference presentations into a Afternoon Kickoff video over the lunch. The ProRes option is for speed, not quality (as I'm editing directly from the SSD - not even copying/importing into FCPX).

For fun - http://www.mdma.tv/420v422, but I will improve this when I get a chance to set up a chromakey shoot.
 
MattDavis said:
For fun - http://www.mdma.tv/420v422, but I will improve this when I get a chance to set up a chromakey shoot.
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That's such a good test. I'd love to see what the parade looks like if you pull down the blacks and push up the mids so the quantisation is visible in the scopes. I wonder how much more 422 gives you against this rather excellent version of avchd?
 
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