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starting a new HD show using Fiber Optic runs to cams


Phil Palmer

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This coming week I will begin a new project using the new fiber optic system from Panavision.  I think it's been out a while, but I've not used it yet.  Anyone with experience on this would be appreciated.

The DIT and I had a long conversation last night, and my questions were answered with confidence.  But I'd like to hear some sound dept. points of view.

The 'on set' workflow is pretty simple.  I feed audio to the Fiber head units and it sends it to camera.  The DIT will generate TOD/free run code and I will either hard wire...or preferably jam a lockit from that, cross jammed to 29.97.  There is no confidence monitor, as the only return is EE, and it sounds bad anyway.  I'm getting people to sign off on the camera audio as 'Temp only'.  The DVD-RAM from my DEVA should chase video in Telecine, as we have the same codes, cross-jammed 23.98 to 29.97.  Editorial and post should be able to conform to my original multitracks and master, because all codes match up in this manner.

If I'm missing something...please let me know.

Thanks,

PWP

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This coming week I will begin a new project using the new fiber optic system from Panavision.  I think it's been out a while, but I've not used it yet.  Anyone with experience on this would be appreciated.

The DIT and I had a long conversation last night, and my questions were answered with confidence.  But I'd like to hear some sound dept. points of view.

The 'on set' workflow is pretty simple.  I feed audio to the Fiber head units and it sends it to camera.  The DIT will generate TOD/free run code and I will either hard wire...or preferably jam a lockit from that, cross jammed to 29.97.  There is no confidence monitor, as the only return is EE, and it sounds bad anyway.  I'm getting people to sign off on the camera audio as 'Temp only'.  The DVD-RAM from my DEVA should chase video in Telecine, as we have the same codes, cross-jammed 23.98 to 29.97.  Editorial and post should be able to conform to my original multitracks and master, because all codes match up in this manner.

If I'm missing something...please let me know.

Thanks,

PWP

Sounds good, and great to have so many fewer cables going to the camera.  The only issue I see is if they want to do an on-set playback they only have the bad sounding "glass" audio.  Do your feeds go to the DIT, and then to the camera via the fibre cable, or are you hooking up to the camera's analog ins as in the past?  I hope it is the former--that was the great promise of these fibre optic systems--the single fibre cable to the camera w/ all signals in it.

Philip Perkins

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Guest Eric Lamontagne

I have been using Fiber for months now on two different miniseries. It's a great system when it works right. It does have problems with miniscule amounts of dust on the ends of the optical cable. this comes from not using the suplied end caps and or lack of respect of this cable. Camera Depts that i have worked with are used to dumping cables in the dirt, especially when the cable isn't theirs. Have a spray can handy if you are involved with fiber!

I use the viper system with sony SRW-1 off board recorders. No audio is caried on fiber as the recorders are off board. I get an excelent return audio (balanced line level) feed and mostly monitor it only. I am very curious about your set up. can you describe it in detail with the camera models and fiber components? What is the bit rate that your fiber system is cabable of? I assume that it has the best specs money can buy depending on your fiber gear on each end.

fiber cables come quite long so be prepared to travel audio cables at least as far as the fiber. I work with fiber spools of 1000 ft! Fiber is an extremely robust cable and I see that we might look into this as a viable form of audio carier, beyond toslink and adat.

Be prepared that audio might not be able to get to your cameras once and a while. Prepare to hand something to editorial with which they can sync, probably by clapper sticks, for the edit.

Eric Lamontagne

PS. request a "test" for workflow of dailies, post sync and auto conform.

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I am very curious about your set up. can you describe it in detail with the camera models and fiber components? What is the bit rate that your fiber system is cabable of? I assume that it has the best specs money can buy depending on your fiber gear on each end.

Be prepared that audio might not be able to get to your cameras once and a while. Prepare to hand something to editorial with which they can sync, probably by clapper sticks, for the edit.

Eric Lamontagne

PS. request a "test" for workflow of dailies, post sync and auto conform.

Thanks Eric.

I'll be doing a workflow test tomorrow morning, so I'll know more details of the system after that.  I will be running audio to the DIT, then he will be sending it down the fiber to all the cameras.  I'll be setting up near him, mostly...but not always, so I've got 2 NTSC feeds from him along with my audio going to the engineering rack.

More after our tests...

PWP

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More after our tests...

PWP

Thank goodness for tests, and a back up plan....

The Telecast fiber system has been out for a while, but is in use mainly with news, sports and truck systems.  Pananvision is starting to integrate them into their location packages, and we are one of the first to get it out in the field.

My confidence level was very low after a day of intermittent audio to the camera 'head' units.  Lots of switching out of base stations and swapping fiber bulk heads, etc.  Then, as if by magic (?), everything worked...so we did a test.  But, I insisted on a double system at this point. We telecine synced the test and all the codes matched up....success.

On the first day, within 2 hours...we were shooting without the fiber...to move faster and grab shots of things.

The sytems works well if you don't tweak the fiber, and you baby the connectors.  We are already having trouble with the Stedicam rig.

First day's dailies were all fine due to double system recording with temp track run to the DIT rack.  Sometimes there is camera sound...and sometimes there isn't.  ;)

PWP

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Thank goodness for tests, and a back up plan....

The Telecast fiber system has been out for a while, but is in use mainly with news, sports and truck systems.  Pananvision is starting to integrate them into their location packages, and we are one of the first to get it out in the field.

My confidence level was very low after a day of intermittent audio to the camera 'head' units.  Lots of switching out of base stations and swapping fiber bulk heads, etc.  Then, as if by magic (?), everything worked...so we did a test.  But, I insisted on a double system at this point. We telecine synced the test and all the codes matched up....success.

On the first day, within 2 hours...we were shooting without the fiber...to move faster and grab shots of things.

The sytems works well if you don't tweak the fiber, and you baby the connectors.  We are already having trouble with the Stedicam rig.

First day's dailies were all fine due to double system recording with temp track run to the DIT rack.  Sometimes there is camera sound...and sometimes there isn't.  ;)

PWP

Ah well.  It was such a beautiful dream.  Proof again that nothing beats the speed and flexibility on set of double system sound recording......the beauty of self-contained systems....

Philip Perkins

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Guest Eric Lamontagne

Thanks for the update of your seeming nightmare. Fiber on location.....just a pipe drem for now? Sad to hear it's not to happy. Good for you on the double system. Pros always have a backup plan!

Eric

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Fiber on location.....just a pipe drem for now?

I did a TV pilot earlier this year where I sent audio to the DIT and he sent it to the camera via fiber.  The fiber part worked fine (I assume -- I didn't hear anything from post) although we did have a number of headaches with regard to interfacing audio and time code with the DIT's gear and audio interfaces, many of which were not really designed with most of the considerations audio gear manufacturers put into their equipment to eliminate issues.

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Thanks for the update of your seeming nightmare. Fiber on location.....just a pipe dream for now?

Eric

I hate to beat a subject up...but I gotta tell you what happened on Friday....

Been having lots of intermittent glitchy weirdness with the fiber links.  Images going in and out is the only sign we see, there may be more problems that we don't know...such as time code breaks and lost audio (temp track I must point out).

We've been out in the dust and sun.  Shooting at a gravel quarry up in Simi Valley, probably close to 115 degrees in the sun...who knows how hot it was in the black tent.  The tiny little window AC unit that was in there was not doing a thing.  Our DIT started to look ill...blam...he's out.  They scooted him off to the hospital.  No one in the Camera department has done HD, so this is all smoke and mirrors at this point.  The fiber is not working, big shock.  Luckily, the fiber heads have a downcoverter output so they hooked the cameras up to video village's NTSC monitors and finished the day.  Who knows what kind of time code reference there is on those tapes.

REALLY glad I'm running double system.  ;)

PWP

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REALLY glad I'm running double system.  ;)

On Monday morning, we ditched the fiber.  The Telecast system is not ready for film style production, in my opinion.  Too many issues and difficulties.

We're back to an HD/SDI cable and control cable coming from the camera.  I'm hanging a Comtek on each for reference.

PWP

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On Monday morning, we ditched the fiber.  The Telecast system is not ready for film style production, in my opinion.  Too many issues and difficulties.

We're back to an HD/SDI cable and control cable coming from the camera.  I'm hanging a Comtek on each for reference.

PWP

...and reason prevails at last.

Philip Perkins

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This is a valuable use of Jeff's site.  To ask for help, receive help, and post your experiences helps us all learn.

I hope all is going well on the show, and thanks again for taking the time to share your experience with us all.

I'll keep it up.  There are so many shows going to HD, and every single one seems to follow a different workflow.  Our telecine colorist has been able to chase my DEVA DVD-RAM's with the video, since we all have the same code....though cross jammed.  When the codes are off on any particular roll/take/scene (sound or camera), it's easy to find the problem. 

PWP

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Thank you also, Phillip, for posting this stuff. For the rest of us having not had the experience of working in HD to any great extent, it is valuable to hear about anyone's experience. This is not so much that you will come up with specific solutions or workflows (which I am sure the production you are on now WILL come up with something that works) that we can all follow --- as you have said, all of these jobs are still evolving and about the time what one viable workflow is established there is often a new piece of gear somewhere in the chain that requires a re-working of procedures.

Thanks again for the updates.

Regards,  Jeff Wexler

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Hey All.  Even though commercials are my game, I find myself on a 4 week mow/pilot for Cartoon Net. being shot with 2 HD cams, and all I can say concerning this work flow is have a lot of cable. A whole lot of cable.  I'm rolling back up for the HD cams on my system,( Cooper,Deva4,, etc.), but Prod and Post want me to treat the cam tracks as master trks. This is the flow I work with most in commercials, though I have done it double system on many shoots when telecine is involved. Normaly I send my mono mix to the camera by cable whenever possible, and split it at the camera, and then set two levels on two trks, trk1 at -20 and trk2 -18 or so as to help out on head room since all the cams and systems are all over the map in quality. I try to get a return feed, but it's not always possible, and almost always no  help anyways cause of the monitor quality, so you are always working on faith and back up system. I wish we had some sort of S.O.P., but it's not here yet. To me it seems like a giant leap backwards on many levels, yet the future on others. I've seen  and heard great stuff on HD, as I've seen us cluster F a simple shot because of the cumbersome nature of HD and the various systems out now. Boom operators hate HD in the hands of fools because of the extended roll times and cable issues, etc... I think we will lock into a standard someday, but it's not here yet. At the end of the this day though, I'm having fun working on a film again even though film is a old school term.

Maximum Respect.

Old School....

PS: sorry about the spelling in all my posts.

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Oleg, thanks, you are right about the 5 pin cable system 4 video cams being the best way to feed and monitor the cameras, unfortunatly I have 200/300 foot runs to two, sometimes three cameras, and I couldn't pull the trigger on  the cost of all new cables, but it would make life easier on this shoot for sure.

Regards, Old School

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unfortunatly I have 200/300 foot runs to two, sometimes three cameras, and I couldn't pull the trigger on  the cost of all new cables, but it would make life easier on this shoot for sure.

Regards, Old School

Interesting point about the long cable runs.  On the most recent shows, I've only had to run my audio feed to the DIT/engineering rack.  The rental houses have started making cable looms of HD/SDI cable, serial contral cable, and audio cable.  If and when the fiber systems get going, that will handle all the data as well.  Hopefully the smaller rental houses and individuals who have their own cameras will see the advantage of a single cable harness/loom to their precious HD camera.  I still have my own lockit box, as they always seem to forget to add that to the camera package.

PWP

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