Ben B

I'll try the locked screen widget on my next project. I'm not really using the auto-mileage as i get a fixed rental fee per day regardless of the mileage. I think we do things a bit different as in the US here and those features don't really apply as well as for you guys. I have to try the receipt capture feature though. The way we work here is we have to fill out an excel file provided by the production to give in our working hours. The way most of us do it is we have an app (all a different one) to keep track of the working hours on a day to day basis and fill out the excel on the weekend. So what most of us are looking for is an easy app to put your hours in during the day with a clear and simple weekly view to have an idea of your overtime and a sort of backup if any disagreement arise with production later. What do you mean by localisation? to keep track of the company moves for example? Other language would be a plus, although english is already good enough for everyone. I really like the small graph thing on the weekly timecard page! Otherwise i find your app already fulfil everything i need for an on set hour tracking app.

Great news! I love this app. I've been using it for a few years and have been asked by many on set colleagues where can they get it too. The fact that i couldn't find it on the apple store was I thought a region thing but now i can recommend it again to anyone who ask.

I shot a short film "undercover" in a Carnaval a few years ago. Everybody is dressed up in costumes and party in street all night long. The whole crew and cast was dressed up as well. I used lav only on the cast. Thanks to the costumes i could hide the lav in plain sight and got great dialogue. i had a MS rig in my hand to get as much sync ambiance as i could. The sound ambiance was pretty special there so it helped a lot to match the background in the edit. The camera was also hidden under a costume and nobody noticed anything (the alcohol helped as well i guess...). You could also rig every cast member with a Tentacle trackE or similar and have some sort of small stereo mic rig on you for maximum low profile.

I shot a feature on the Arriflex 416 a few years ago. We had a timecode slate and that was basically it. We had one small SD video feed for the script and director but i basically mixed the whole film without picture. We didn't have any video recorder so no playback was possible but i guess if you have one i'd send a scratch track to the video recorder so they can playback a take with sound. Make sure not to miss the slate call and to slate every shot obviously but otherwise, in my experience, it was pretty straight forward. The camera is pretty quiet for a film camera but i still heard it on quiet scene. There's not much you can do about that.

Side note regarding the XTAR 4150. I got a couple to try in my A10Tx. I put my order without searching a lot about them, thinking they would be basically almost the same as the 14500 (besides the voltage) and they would charge in my ISDT N series charger. Because they have a regulated output cell, they do not work with the ISDT N Serie charger. You have to get their proprietary charger XTAR L4/L8.

I had one of 2 my A20 mini suddenly loose RF signal completely. Had to send it to SD to get a hardware fix. It's apparently something they know about and will fix under warranty (at least they did for me). A bit annoying because it takes time to fix the issue but when i got the unit back they worked perfectly again.

For this project i was using the folowing: SD 888 with the Nexus on top 2 Lectro SRc into a rf distro then into the cascade out of the Nexus 2 Wisycom LFA with a +4dB gain to make up for the cascade out loss. I did remote my antennas a few time using my cable roll of 25m BNC. It worked perfectly. The only thing which was not working yet was the remote control of the LFA while using the cascade out. Apparently it's a known bug and SD is working on it, at least that's what they told me when i wrote to support. I did not use Dante or analog connection since the Nexus was plug into the 888 through the Quickdock.

Hi all, So i finished my first shoot using the Nexus and A20 mini along with SMQv. Overall i am still very impressed by the Nexus/A20mini combo. The range was a bit less good than the test i did at home but that was to be expected. The A20 mini were doing pretty much as good as the SMQvs. What i really liked was the Nexlink. It worked perfectly and i was able to control the A20 mini at all time on set. It's very reactive and gave me the opportunity to switch off, change rf power in a blink of an eye between takes. I was using 2mW as my default setting which covered maybe 60% of the situations. I pushed the A20 minis to 10 or 20mW every now and then and rarely used the 40mW setting (it did save me from moving the antennas closer to set a few time). I did notice that the A20minis had a tough time going through metal (car, fences and so on). In these situations the SMQv were definitely better. I used the Nexlink a lot. Mostly to change rf power, turn the units on and off and name them. I didn't change the frequency than often but when i did it worked perfectly as well. The only small drawback is when you turn a unit on for the first time, it take a bit more time to be "online" and useable as a SMQv. No problem for the start of the day or in between scenes but for the quick last second decision Plant mic for example, it took some getting use to. I usually started rolling and by the time the clap was clapped and action was yelled, the mic was working. The battery was a non issue for me. I used the NPBX1 from Sony and with some battery management (turning on and off with Nexlink) they lasted me until lunch 99% of the time. When the did not, i changed them and we were good to go. So basically i used up to 3 batteries per unit per day. Gain forward is definitely a game changer for me and i can't wait to have all my Tx with this feature. I kept 4 channel of SMQv but switched now to an all SD wireless as i was really super impressed by them. I would grab my A20 mini first and get the SMQv for the scene were i needed more than the amount of A20 mini i had. I can only recommend this system. For narrative shoot where you work under a controlled environment, it the perfect tool. For a documentary shoot, with unpredictable condition, access to the person wearing the Tx, etc, then maybe less (although with the battery doubler the maybe yes).

So far i've only been doing test at home. I did some walk test from my building with my girlfriend wearing one A20 mini on one ankle and one SMQv (100mW) on the other. I chose ankle because that's a placement i use a lot on drama and i think it's also one of the worst placement RF wise. Setup was the A20 mini into the nexus and the SMQv into an SRC in ratio mode connected to the cascade out of the nexus and nexus connected to 2 LFA antenna with 4dB of gain at the antenna. I was on the first floor with antenna through the window. Clean and coordinated frequencies for both Tx. I had the A20 on 2mW to start, but quickly had to increase to 10mW (as soon as we had a couple walls between us), and then 20mW when she got further away. The SMQv dropped out first and i pushed the a20 mini to 40mW and got more range. I had line of sight pretty much all the way. About 100-120 meters away (still had range on the A20mini) she got around a corner of a building. The range dropped significantly but still had clean audio and when she got on the other side of the building i had heavy drop outs. There i still had connection to Nexlink. I did all the changes on the A20 mini while she was walking away and they took effect very fast. So pretty much as advertised by SD. I am pretty impressed of the range of the A20 mini. I know my SMQv pretty well and they always got me enough range to do 99% of the jobs so it was a good surprise to see the a 20 mini go further. But that test wasn't on set with all the RF crap we have spraying around. I can see the 2mW being useful when the cart can be pretty close to talents and otherwise use the 20mW to cover 90% of the situations. But that is yet to be proven on set. The nexus performs flawlessly so far beside a bug on the antenna control when using the cascade out. The bug has been reported to SD and they should be working on it i guess. I'm using the combination of Nexus and SRc only for that film, i'll transition fully to A20min and A10Tx for the next film this year. I will start my first feature with that setup on Monday so i'll report back after the 6 weeks of shooting. We'll shoot indoor, outdoor, city, mountains, cars and all that so it will give me a good array of different situations. I'll report back then.

It seems the fix might already be here on version 1.30!

i see. i'll put 4dB of gain on my LFA and will get back to reading the manual then.

Will do. My goal is to primarily use the A20 mini. I kept 4 channel of Lectro as fall back solution that i know very well and for the occasional higher channel count scene. The 3.5 dB loss would affect only the 2 SRc plugged into the cascade out, am i right? My setup will be LFA into Nexus, cascade out into a RF Multi then into the 2 SRc. So far in the testing i did at home i have good range. I'll try a walk test this weekend.

I will be using the cascade out for that film. But if it‘s just affecting the remote control functions of the LFA it‘s a problem i can live with for this film. If the system works well on this project i‘ll be fully switching to the A20 so won‘t be using the cascade out anymore. i‘ll be happy to report after a few weeks of using the Nexus, A10 Tx and A20 mini.

Thanks for your review. I will be using the A20 Nexus for the first time in a real world situation next month and i also have the LFA antenna. In the test i did at home i didn't notice anything. Would you care sharing what your experience was?

Hi, I am reviving this thread as i just purchased a couple A10Tx for my booms. I also noticed the raised noise floor when using in combination with Schoeps CCM4 and CCM8. I am using the Audio Limited (Sound Devices) cable. Before i start taking that expensive cable apart, you say that bridging the ground to the XLR shell did the trick? Also the length of the cable, so a shorter one or a longer and having to keep it straight? Thanks! Ben