VFR, sound and external recorders

H

Hywel

Well-known member
Hi All,

Quick question for external recorder users, specifically Ninja and other HDMI devices.

Can the device record picture and sound while recording variable frame rates in the camera? I know it won't record at the variable frame rate, but I'm thinking the camera must still put something out of the HDMI port for monitoring purposes (which is why they kindly added the "no audio" warning for us in the firmware update!)

I'd like to make more extensive use of off-speed recording, but as everything we do uses location sound, that is an issue for me. At present I get sound while I am recording off speed by using a second camera, and visually synching via the clapperboard. Doing it with an external sound recorder is a logistics headache (no common reference to tie in the audio to the appropriate video clip so a huge job to manually figure out and match up all the takes). And since I only have one AF100 at the moment, it means setting up an HVX200 which I am going to use ONLY for sound on the off-speed shots, which is a flog.

I was thinking that a fringe benefit of having an external recorder might be the ability to record in-sync sound and picture at 25 fps while recording variable frame rate internally, giving me a reference on-frame-rate pass of the footage with both sound and video to make it easy to match footage in the editor at a glance.

Anyone got any experience of doing this? Does it work even a little bit? I believe it will only work with HDMI as SDI is disabled when recording VFR, right?

Cheers, Hywel.
 
SDI and HDMI are both fully active during VFR. Yes you can record externally through SDI or HDMI (or, heck, VHS if you wanted to) by attaching a recorder to the outputs. As long as you're recording the footage internally you'll get the full-res 1080p. The outputs are sending out audio and the VFR embedded within a standard 1080/50i signal.
 
HI Barry,

Awesome, thanks! That's another added to the "tally of beers I owe Barry Green if I ever bump into him" :)

Cheers, Hywel
 
(posted for clarification) -- I think you understand this, but in case anyone else comes across this thread and is confused -- the HDMI and HD-SDI outputs are active, yes, but they don't support overcranking at the full resolution. HD-SDI cannot physically transport more than 1080/30p, for example. So when you go to 1080/50p, the HD-SDI and HDMI outputs will output a single field for each frame. At other speeds (such as 40fps) it will be a field per frame, embedded with field duplication, to round out the signal to a full 50i (or, in the case of 59.94Hz, it'll round it out to 59.94i).

Point being -- you don't really want to use the video from an external recording done in overcrank mode. But you can definitely use the audio, and the video will provide a reference point for the "real" video that you recorded to the internal SDHC cards.
 
Yes, that's exactly what I was getting at. The point is not to get useable video, it is to get usable audio in sync with SOME sort of video signal to acts a reference for the "real" video recorded to the internal card. It is just so much easier to slice-and-dice the sound to get the right sounds at the right places for your slow-mo stuff if it was captured in time with some sort of video reference.

For me that would be a significant additional benefit of running an external recorder because it saves me have a second CAMERA set up as I do currently in order to catch the sound with a reference video track :)

Cheers, Hywel
 
I've used the nanoFlash specifically for this purpose and it works very well. It's not that hard to get sync audio and re-interpret internal SDHC overcrank into glass smooth, hyper-real 1080 50/60p video.
 
Elton said:
I've used the nanoFlash specifically for this purpose and it works very well. It's not that hard to get sync audio and re-interpret internal SDHC overcrank into glass smooth, hyper-real 1080 50/60p video.
Click to expand...

I haven't done this yet. Do you happen to have a sample on vimeo, or somewhere else?
 
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