Harris K

Constantin, maybe this should move to DM because this risks losing educational value for anyone. Fair enough. An uneven, non-uniform surface. Maybe a perfect 90 degree rotation is unlikely, I really don't know, but the reflections are occurring in three dimensional space, and the incident angle will happen in three dimensions. I always remembered this as minimum distance being at least one wavelength apart, though on re-researching this now I'm seeing a variety of sources claiming 1, 1/2 and 1/4 are each the best practice (although this seems to be largely sound people discussing it so now I really don't know). So at minimum I retract my confidence in my assertion. I agree, and agree that in a single antenna situation first and higher order reflections are also a problem. However, in a system with two antennae in the same space being summed, you're almost guaranteed to have slight timing differences between the two, which upon summing would be a great way to try to create phase interference. There is not, to the best of my understanding, a concern about comb filtering as in audio, so agreed there. Edit: This was exactly wrong, you will absolutely see comb filtering. It won't produce the same audible effect as in audio.

CJH, I apologize for swerving this thread away from the intention so hard. I haven't really tried single zone multi anntenna, as my understanding is you'll just be opening up to a bunch of phase weirdness one way or the other when risking the same signal hitting two spaced antennae and being summed. I'm not sure how the BSRF AS-84 would be handling this electronically, so take me with a grain. But from the rest of your original post, it sounds like you have a lot of room to play. Having your antennae ~650mm apart is roughly the bare minimum for the spatial separation of an antennae receiving 490mhz to be theoretically be doing anything at at least one full wave length apart. It is not the ideal or the rule or anything like that. Taking advantage of your diversity capabilities is getting those guys into different places for ideal reception. Single zone is not a good idea, to the best of my understanding. Which is also to say, you probably can't find much info on it because it's not a strategy that makes sense to implement. But if you have the units, play with it and report back.

Since no one else piped in: You're absolutely right that an RF wave wouldn't change polarity or phase in a pure vacuum. In the terrestrial spaces we're dealing with, there are many contributing factors. Air isn't a vacuum, there's plenty of matter for our wave to interact with on the way to us. While this generally won't be a significant factor at the distances we're dealing with, as temperature reach extremes and humidity increases this will play in more. There's also impedance to consider. In air this pretty much won't matter, but as our signal passes through other objects, reflection and distortion can occur There's also electromagnetic fields in a space to consider. Our hero signal passing through other fields can alter its polarity and phase. Again, this effect will usually be minimal in our use cases, but is impossibleA to quantify in the day. The biggest factor for us is probably surface interactions. A perfectly smooth surface exactly parallel to the emitting antenna would reflect our signal phase shifted 180°. When our reflective surfaces aren't perfectly parallel, the incident angles will be greater or lesser than 180°, and as we're in a three-dimensional space our polarity is going to be affected as well. With a less smooth surface, the interactions will get more complex. While not affecting the polarity of our direct wave, there's also first order and second order reflection interference to consider, which spatial diversity of receiving antennae would also help. I'm pretty unclear on how much of a factor this is in the scenarios we're dealing with, so if anyone knows better or can point to a resource I'd love to learn more. Sorry for the wall of text.

Polarity does seem like a better descriptor, but I'm repeating the language used by someone else, so blame him. My understanding is that reflected signal's orientation will change relative to its incident angle, so the concern is when you don't have direct signal from the Tx. Moreover, in the real world there's no way to calculate that new orientation in an actual and complex space, so that's where it starts becoming more art than science. If I'm wrong about anything here, I would appreciate being corrected.

A while back I had a long chat with a NASA engineer about how they approach diversity radio receiving for interstellar communication, and I've kept a paradigm he gave me in mind since then. In those types of radio systems, they consider two kinds of diversity: spatial diversity and phase diversity. Spatial diversity they are thinking of in terms of countries and hemispheres, but the approach they have is a lot simpler than I'd assumed. Get the second antenna where the first one won't be receiving. It's not very magical, but it keeps working out for me. Phase diversity is also kind of simple. When you can't space out your antennae, you can diversify to optimize for the orientation of the Tx signal. We all know it's best practice to have your Rx antenna in the same orientation as you Tx antenna. However in the real world, if you're not getting line of sight then it's impossible to determine the phase of the original signal by the time it's reflected to you. I tend to think orienting your antennae for phase diversity doesn't make sense indoors, but can start making a lot of sense in certain exterior situations or for bag work where spatial diversity is close to zero. Anyway, I guess my point is sometimes it makes sense to be dumber about this. The intention of diversity radio systems is to set yourself up for success. If both your receiving antenna are in basically the same problematic position, you're not really giving the diversity system any advantages.

That slipper thing is a hot tip, I'll look into that Robert.

Hey all, Have a common problem with an interesting suggestion. In a few days, my current film has a day of stedicam walk-and talks to camera all down the same very reverberant concrete U-shaped hallway. We end up seeing almost every surface of the hallway during the shots, so noise abatement has been tricky. Production has nixed carpeting the hallway, for both look and cost. Art is being very supportive in trying to get soft-material deressing for the walls. And production okayed covering the ceiling in painted convolution foam. Also, the moving crew all agreed to get foot foamed (haven't specifically heard about the stedi op, but I'm choosing to be hopeful. Despite all this outpouring of inter-departmental support, it's still going to sound pretty crappy. Long story long, here is my question: DP offered to have one of the grips Hollywooding some kind of sound-blanket baffle rig behind the steadi, and I have no idea how useful this would be, and how to best implement it. I'm pretty sure it would be help a bit, but I'm vaguely hopeful someone has done something vaguely similar and can offer advice. After typing this out, i realize I have a tremendously supportive team on this, and should shut up and be grateful that i got this far. Any input very welcome!

Rado, I just started at the antenna cabling picture for five minutes. I appreciate all the conceit that had to be made, and you handled it in a gorgeous fashion. Well done.

Olle, no harm done, worthwhile question. I don't think I set up seperate scene folders, but worth checking when its off the truck. I was looking for take 6, though, so probably not the solution. Hitting play from take list did nothing as well, unfortunately.

Indeed it was. This is only a issue in trying to transport past the most rev ent take.

Hey all, Just finished my first week on the job with the 633, and I'm fairly happy. That said, had a small issue. Went to playback an earlier take, and when hitting the transport knob to the left, the machine just blanked out on file info. That is, no file was selected, and I was then unable to access the most recent take for playback. Double checked the manual, was operating coreectly. Thinking this may be a firmware issue, curious if anyone else is experiencing it.

Hi All, Inquiring about hot shoe mounted shock mounts. As far as I'm aware, the InVision is the best around. Is there anything else that should be on my radar?

I love the idea, and I could ultimately justify the price although it feels a bit high, but I'm concerned about applying low center of gravity weight to that connector via a metal hook and cable. Feels like a fail point I don't want to realize, though it's a phenomenal idea that tidily fills a significant need. I want someone else to buy it first.

When I got my Fat Max, I added some mounting points for bungees and boom bobbers. The bungees hold the bag down securely on top of the case. It holds steady through moves, the boom holders are oldy for resting though. Bungees have to be removed to open the Fat Max, which is only a minor annoyance. This set up has served as a great "project cart" for a bunch of shoots. I know the fat max will lose a fight to something one day, but that day has yet to come.

Just to add, agree with meter on top, connector on side, preferably towards the top of the battery. Also agree on d-tap, and five point meters would be awesome. Excited to see direct input from a company who's products I use every day.