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The 1/8" inputs on the front of the Red Epic and Red Scarlet can be balanced or unbalanced, menu selectable. I agree, it's a screwy, non-standard use of a jack. I think they were so hell-bent on making the camera small, they made the jacks as small as possible as a compromise.

No kidding. I convinced the Scarlet owner to let me borrow his expensive box fan for the night, so I could troubleshoot (after a fashion) hooking it up over SDI to the AJA Ki Pro that I also have on loan. Call me Tom Sawyer. Anyhow...

Turns out patching the Scarlet and the Ki Pro is not too bad, and if properly configured does an automatic record when the timecode record flag goes off over SDI. Works even when you under and overcrank it, except 12 fps, for whatever reason. Has anyone ever bothered to send audio to a Ki Pro before? The little suckers have 2 XLR inputs and will also record 8 channels of embedded SDI, in case anyone rolls that way around here.

My biggest problem is just that the damn Scarlet is just a big noisy box that needs to be used in really good light. Having had to boom and lav an actor who was being filmed up-close with a wide lens on the Scarlet, I remember thinking to myself, "Sh*t, even when it's recording the damn thing blows like a hurricane."

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I personally would've been much happier with a camera that was maybe half a foot deeper and had a better fan, full-size XLR jacks, a dedicated BNC for a timecode jack and a BNC for genlock. But that's me.

The $3750 Pro I/O module is currently scheduled to ship in May. I think it will add XLR, AES/EBU, and some other stuff:

Refreshingly brief reduser discussion with a picture and an illustration:

http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?75772-Pro-I-O-Unit

Perhaps the delay and price of this unit is prompting the reduserusers to ask for an audio-only PIX from Sound Devices. Maybe SD could call their audio-only unit Portable-Oudio-Xtender. Then we could put a POX on all RED cameras.

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another update: checked SDI source on Panasonic monitor to see if audio would show up on playback (onboard monitor speaker) It doesn't. E-E audio is there, but for some reason sounds particularly shitty: overmodulated, what sounds like old school timecode bleed. Not a big issue, i was just curious. 1st. AC tried reducing monitor output volume in Scarlet menu, but with little difference.

On a side-note: picturewise the 1st AC's opinion is that Scarlet is much noisier in low light/ high ISO conditions than the old Red.

as previously noted, timecode with Ambient lockit is performing flawlessly using custom 4 pin to 5 pin Lemo cable.

This show I'm on is all handheld camerawork, It's still a heavy camera. Maybe not as heavy as the Alexa, but not light weight by any stretch ( I picked it up to check) with all the accessories in place. Incidentally, i added up the weight of a Senn. G2, Ambient Lockit and the wooden camera XLR thingy, and it's about 100 grams total, so the weight is not entirely sound's fault.

"Frankly Scarlet, I don't give a damn."

Chris

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another update: checked SDI source on Panasonic monitor to see if audio would show up on playback (onboard monitor speaker) It doesn't. E-E audio is there, but for some reason sounds particularly shitty: overmodulated, what sounds like old school timecode bleed. Not a big issue, i was just curious. 1st. AC tried reducing monitor output volume in Scarlet menu, but with little difference.

On a side-note: picturewise the 1st AC's opinion is that Scarlet is much noisier in low light/ high ISO conditions than the old Red.

as previously noted, timecode with Ambient lockit is performing flawlessly using custom 4 pin to 5 pin Lemo cable.

This show I'm on is all handheld camerawork, It's still a heavy camera. Maybe not as heavy as the Alexa, but not light weight by any stretch ( I picked it up to check) with all the accessories in place. Incidentally, i added up the weight of a Senn. G2, Ambient Lockit and the wooden camera XLR thingy, and it's about 100 grams total, so the weight is not entirely sound's fault.

I'd bet that the wooden camera XLR thingy will weigh less than whatever RED's Pro IO module ends up weighing...

I think its undeniable that the image sensors going into the Scarlets are ones that for whatever reason are not fit for the Epic series. It may also be that they've skimped on the input stage in other ways in order to save money (read: cut corners).

As for SDI audio, I was getting channels 1 & 2 on the Ki Pro I had connected between the Scarlet and my monitor (that is, the levels were moving on the Ki Pro meters, and when I played it back on my monitor I got sound -- from the Ki Pro, anyway).

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