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Newbie Playback Question


Arnold F.

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Forgive how basic this question is - hopefully it means a basic answer!  Shooting next month with the HDX900 and recording with the Fostex FR-2.  We have several music-video type scenes wherein a guy will need to lip-synch to playback, which will come from a laptop (not sure if it's a mac or pc yet) with Pro-Tools, and amplified over the music system of the club we're shooting in.  Does the playback get linked via timecode to the camera in some way?  Should I just send one track of audio from playback to one track on the camera?  Do I just hook a mic up to camera so it records the music that's being played back on set, as was suggested in an older post about a slightly different setup?  I want to make sure I'm on top of this.

many thanks...Arnold

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Does the playback get linked via timecode to the camera in some way? 

Not necessarily

Should I just send one track of audio from playback to one track on the camera? 

That's not standard procedure, but it can help as a scratch track for the editor...

Do I just hook a mic up to camera so it records the music that's being played back on set, as was suggested in an older post about a slightly different setup? 

If you do this you may run with latency issues, but nothing too hard to fix in post.

Just make sure that playback and camera are running to the same framerate (fps).

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The last music video I worked on that was shot on hi-def video went like this:

I confirmed that we were shooting on a Panasonic hi-def camera and the director spoke with post and confirmed that we would not be linking to camera timecode.

I prepared a playback tape with a mono mix of the song on track one and timecode on track two.  Since we were shooting on a Panny, I recorded timecode at 29.97 NDF, its native tongue (even in 24P mode).  Since this was video and not film, I didn't do any pull-up speed correction on the music and timecode -- necessary if playing back for film that would be transferred with pull-down to video. 

I recorded several minutes of time code starting at a minute before the 1 hour mark.  That way I could position the start of the song at the 1 hour point and still have plenty of pre-roll without timecode wrap-around issues. 

On playback, the time code went to a timecode slate as a visual sync reference for post.

I spoke with the project's editor and explained that he may need to establish an offset due to digital processing issues with the picture -- usually no more than a frame or so -- but that once he extablished the offset, everything should line up fine.

For your playback, be prepared to start at different points within the song for pick-ups, etc.

Good luck and have fun.

=======

WHOOPS!  I just re-read your original post (short attention span) and realize that you were asking specifically about playback within a recorded scene as opposed to for a music video.  So, please use anything that is helpful in the above and ignore the rest.

John Blankenship, C.A.S.

Indianapolis (Super Bowl Champions!)

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