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AES inputs on cameras and feeding them & 2/4 channels


PCMsoundie

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Hey guys,

I wondered how often do you feed videocameras AES inputs?

Since the cable runs are so far from Production Sound Mixer to camera a 110ohm XLR cable isn't exactly Canare Star Quad cable with breakaway snake.

Sure With 110 ohm cable, the theoretical limit is around 100 metres for AES digital audio.

I know on some jobs over the years I wish I had access to a SDI Audio Embedder for a video line cut on Digital Betacam or HDCAM VTRs to have it all on one tape instead of analog feeds of ISOs to all cameras. Or even having AES outputs at the time which I could route various inputs to for 8 audio tracks on a VTR next to me.

I've done one job about 6 months ago where I was near one of the 4 cameras (no line cut) on a commercial and fed out of a SD744T 2 AES channels down 2 BNC cables over to the camera and then with an adapter BNC-to-XLR adapter and used short 110 ohm XLR Apogee wide eye cable for the camera input. It's a great feeling knowing that I can feed a 24-bit uncompressed LPCM to the camera and it will record in 24-bit without going through the analog circuitry. it was one of those one take kind of things and they wanted backups. Instead of getting 2 744Ts I suggested putting all 4 tracks on the Sony F-800 camera. The client was happy and it saved them money and they had a backup.

Are you guys starting to use your recorder's AES outputs to feed the Sony cameras more often rather than just LINE LEVEL XLR?

Sony has had them on cameras dating back to 2004 with the PDW-510 XDCAM.

With the Lectrosonics D4R & Zaxcom QRX100 receivers offering AES output sure you can feed 2 or 4 channels of AES input on the camera via wireless hops (on reality/documentary/feature film). With the cost of 788T and Nomads (and their size) it is really a no brainer for production to just have 8 or 10 tracks as a poly WAV file rather than only 4 tracks of audio on-camera.

Are more productions requesting 4 channels of audio on cameras? mostly reality-tv genre shows?

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I work quite often with the Sony cams on reality type shows. The norm for me seems to still be 2 channels of audio with channels 3 & 4 being camera mic. 3 & 4 is redundant, but that's how they want it. I'm using the AES outs on my QRX and the setup is clean and simple. I have an STA 042, that I have yet to set up, but I wold then go AES out of my 552 as well. Nice clean signal with less conversion steps. So far, I have been loving the AES/EBU settings on the Sony cams.

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