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Alexa - the movie might not be film


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Echo what others have said, and add only that one sync box comes to us from camera (morning and after lunch) for jammage, and the 2nd assistant takes care of the rest for both Alexa cameras. No complaints from post. 23.976 / 48kHz.

Did a project earlier this year that was often going back and forth speed-wise where the DP 86'd any Lockit on the camera. Wish I'd given over camera sync to camera people since re-jamming after these frequent speed changes was a PITA. Best case in that scenario would have been a box on the camera for sure.

Love the sound-friendly Alexa.

-- Jan

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Maybe I'm a Luddite, but my last show used Alexa and film. We treated Alexa like a film camera and just shot TC slates, no jamming of the camera. It worked well. After days of testing of different sample rates and frame rates, ultimately post said it made no difference, as long as they knew. I'd assume 48/23.976 as a digital standard but with file-based editing, no one is necessarily locked to a standard anymore.

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Yep, the last couple of projects I've done this month, I brought Denecke SB-T's and a wireless camera hop, and the DP looked at me like I was from Mars. They told me, "we like it film style." Easier for me!

BTW, I really, really like the pictures from the Alexa. And I've seen everything. I think the new Sony F65 will be a big hit if it lives up to expectations.

Interesting how the cost of even the big-time cameras is dropping. These are very competitive times. (And yet other things -- lights, lenses, and microphones -- pretty much stay the same, year after year.)

--Marc W.

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There's no real reason to put a syncbox on the camera, Jeff. It should hold a jam for the 6 hours to lunch and will hold a jam for 10 minutes without a battery. At least that's been my experience with the more recent Alexa firmware builds.

Just got off an Alexia shoot, and the 1st AC, Peter, was adamant you have about 15 seconds worth of "accurate" time code during a battery swap. He called and grilled Arri because what he was seeing (and post was complaining about) was different, and finally got them to admit it's just a capacitor that's holding the charge, so as time goes on things will drift. Peter said it starts to loose in the 100ths of a second immediately, and after a very short period of time things start to get off sync.

Just passing info along, Peter's had a large number of Alexia shoots and I trust his word. I just synced up a lockit, and left it with the camera department to re-sync after each battery change. Worked like a champ.

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Just got off an Alexia shoot, and the 1st AC, Peter, was adamant you have about 15 seconds worth of "accurate" time code during a battery swap. He called and grilled Arri because what he was seeing (and post was complaining about) was different, and finally got them to admit it's just a capacitor that's holding the charge, so as time goes on things will drift. Peter said it starts to loose in the 100ths of a second immediately, and after a very short period of time things start to get off sync.

Just passing info along, Peter's had a large number of Alexia shoots and I trust his word. I just synced up a lockit, and left it with the camera department to re-sync after each battery change. Worked like a champ.

I'm only going by what a colleague and I were told by Arri, the rental house and a couple of DITs I've worked with and they may well be misinformed. A look at the service manual or a block diagram of the system would provide a clue to the way it really functions. But if the capacitor powers the generator, it should run accurately until the capacitor's charge falls too low to run the generator. But I will happily follow your guidance until I hear different and handing off either a generator or the right slate-to-camera jam cable to the camera nancys is the easiest way to go.

One would hope Arriflex would actually provide a reasonable power supply, capacitor or battery, to keep the onboard generator accurate among other reasons. I'll also note that on all the Alexa gigs I've been on so far, the camera never went without a battery during the day, with the camera powered by a block or a belt and an on-board mounted for changes to save rebooting the camera. This may have to do with folks being spooked by other digital cinematography cameras' poor performance on the whole boot and reboot issue or just to save time.

A good friend owns a pair of Alexas and he or his tech may well have real documentation regarding the 10 minute window. Given the ease of fan cleaning and/or replacement Arri designed into the camera, I'd hope they would provide a route to reasonable generator stability. I will say by way of what Arri knows or doesn't know about their own products that when I accompanied the camera assistants up to Arri in Blauvelt for the checkout of a big package of 16SR III's for a job shortly after that camera was introduced, the factory guys didn't know that a camera that was being jammed with 'code needed to have a mag with film loaded to prevent an error message popping up in pretty short order.

Best regards,

Jim

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Arri have been using their own variant of Ambient Lockit technology for some time in their film cameras. I just don't understand why they think 10 minutes is long enough to hold timecode.

Back in about 2008 or so, I supplied an Ambient Master Controller to the VFX department of a feature film. Arri had just put the Lockit technology in their Lens Data System boxes. A database with the timecode and all the lens settings could be output at the end of the day via USB. When power was removed from the camera, code was lost after 10 minutes. The idea was that someone in the VFX department would pickup timecode on the Master Controller from the sound mixer at the start of the day, set the timecode on the LDS boxes and then re-jam the boxes after battery changes throughout the day.

A couple of Tech's from Arri Austria were on hand to set up the system. I did ask why they couldn't put a storage battery in the LDS box to hold timecode for a much longer period.......

David Madigan

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" But if the capacitor powers the generator, "

...as on the Nagra IV-STC

Yes Mike,

But remember how long between battery changes on a Nagra?

I'm quite used to alternating batteries twice a day on the Cantar, but even the power hungry 4sTC lasted for a week or three IIRC.

Regards,

Jim Rillie

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They finally made a decision: we're shooting FILM!

I was starting to get excited about doing this movie with the Arri Alexa, but it is not to be. Dean Semler (the DP) really wanted to shoot digital but he wanted to use the Genesis camera he is most familiar with. Walden Media (the Twentieth Century Fox company that is producing) wanted to shoot Alexa digital because it is the latest and greatest and they see themselves as a very progressive company. Billy Crystal (who is the producer and it is his project) along with the Andy Fickman the director, wanted film.

Thank you to all those who helped me get up to speed with the Arri Alexa but it will have to wait for the next movie.

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You still can't beat film for ease of use and picture quality. There's an interesting story in Studio Daily this past week on the difficulties faced by Kodak, several labs, and other film-based companies...

The Genesis camera is really, really dated at this point (like 7-8 years old, which is an eternity in digital and computer technologies). I would lean towards the Alexa for dynamic range, but stuff is changing at almost a daily basis in this part of the business.

--Marc W.

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I'm generally a film guy by experience, but at this point, it's kind of like clinging to analog sound. You can make a good case that the best analog beats the best digital, but digital's ascent is kind of a fait accompli at this point; it's a hard battle to fight in production or anything else. (I still wish the West coast Kodak VP had taken me up on my suggestion back in 2003 to print up T-shirts for SMPTE and NAB that said, "I Look Better on Film." Too late now.)

Good digital can still be very, very good, and there are some advantages to it. And I've seen some horrendously badly-shot film in my time. It's still more about the DP than it is what camera he or she uses. (One of those arrows & archers deals.)

--Marc W.

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Yay FILM!

It's not completely dead. I'm sorry if I'm geeking out too much here, but it's been a while since I worked on an actual 'film'... I guess it's just kinda refreshing to hear it's still being used? Don't get me wrong, I like the Alexa (still not a huge Red fan) but I still like film over all. So Jeff, does this mean you're recording at 30fps ND / 48kHz and sending out to Telecine for dailies? I'm jealous.

~tt

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Hi Jeff,

We're doing a film w/ the Alexa now. Dion Beebe and his boys from camera have made it a pleasure.

I jam TC to 2 lockits and my slates at 23.98 which I also record at.

We are at 48K.

The camera boys jam the cameras and re jam when they need but keep the cameras up so that they can keep the capture module that allows them to shoot raw, can't think of the name now, up and powered.

I rent the company 1 lockit per camera and once I jam it an hand it to the 2nd AC my job is done.

The Alexa's hold TC well but I'm not entirely sure the length of time they will hold it when the battery is disconnected.

Scott Harber

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The alexa held syn for us great, we would jam in the morning and again at lunch and again if its a long day... It needed rejamming when shooting off speed but it worked great on a shoot that was hell on earth, 18-20 hrs a day. Never got complaints about sync, and compliments on the audio at the end of the frist week. 24.0 F 48k 24bit One thing that was weird is that when jamming it would show sync but the numbers only matched on the monitor the ones on the side panel were exactly a second behind. I noticed this on two separate shows, one where we jammed with the slate one where we jammed with an sb-t.

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I've done three features on the alexa this year, and I noticed if you are using an ambient lockit box either on the camera or to jam, you won't be able to use the 5 pin to 5 pin cables, you have to use the bnc to 5 pin cable. This is because the camera won't accept the jam if ascii (pin 5) and smpte are both present. You could potentially make a 5 pin to 5 pin lemo cable and leave pin 5 disconnected, although I haven't tested this, it should work just fine.

From what I've read, this is because the alexa automatically assumes it is the master if it sees an ascii connection, even when jam sync is turned on. I'm guessing this isn't an issue with smpte because in and out are on seperate pins, but both direction ascii is on one pin.

So I should be ok using a SB-3 sync box output (BNC) to a 5 pin Lemo (same cable used on a RED One)? I'm doing a 1 day Alexa shoot, and don't want to snip a wire on my lemo-lemo cable. Short of patching together TC adapters, the sync box is probably my easiest way to name the camera to my Deva (Deva has lemo TC port).

thanks

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yes

Thanks Robert, this worked perfectly. We did a series of quick interview type things that included some changing of the frame rate, so I just left my SB-3 on the camera and the AC could re-jam every time they went back. He didn't leave the Lemo connected to camera, just plugged it in when he needed to jam.

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