Zoom H4n - does synch drift?

O

Omar67

Active member
Hello,

I 'm running a really long uncut shoot and I want to have audio back up that will maintain synch. I had heard that this recorder (or perhaps an earlier version) would drift by a couple frames so half an hour into the program the visual from my studio cameras and the audio from this device would no longer be perfectly matched up.

Is this true of the current version? How long can you shoot continuously before the synch drifts by a frame?

Thanks.
 
No sync drift for me. I've recorded 12 minute clips and there wasn't a single frame difference from start to finish.
 
My understanding was that this issue came about in relation to the 5D MKII, which records its 30fps video at an actual 30.00000 frames per second instead of the NTSC industry standard 29.99 frames per second. When put into a 29.99 fps timeline along with audio from the H4n, the audio will drift. 30.00 is not, after all, the same as 29.99. This is not the fault of the H4n, however.

The 7D, unlike the 5D MKII, shoots 24p at the industry standard 23.976 and 30p at the industry standard 29.99, meaning that you will have no sound sync issues when using the Zoom H4n with the Canon EOS 7D.
 
Not sure what it's worth but I recorded just over an hour with a GH1 and a Zoom H4N as a test a month ago. I loaded both up in Vegas and it synced perfectly, even with the the GH1 auto spliting the video files at the 4gig mark. I was pretty happy and impressed. I have no idea if that will translate to other editors (Vegas has a very strong sound background and is very flexible about frame rates of materials) .
 
The sync problem should only be seen with the 5Dll and no other camera...that is until the firmware upgrade happens with the 5Dll.
 
Canon XHA1s and Zoom H4n synch drift is about 2-3 frames per hour in my experience. The older H4 was over 10 frames
 
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