DjGo

Uh-oh.. I discharged the Citytek battery and now it won't charge on the IDX-charger... My question is answered..

I believe the answer is no.

IDX batteries have some extra black magic stuff going on, and their chargers are built with this in mind. I have both the IDX JL2-Plus with 2 x IDX NP-L7s and a SWIT charger for my SWIT NP-1's.

When I bought the SWIT batteries the distributor I spoke to told me they wouldn't charge on the JL2-Plus. Not sure about the GMP's but I suspect it might be the same deal as the SWIT/IDX compatibility.

I could be wrong though. I haven't actually tried to charge my SWITs on the IDX charger

Hey thanks Jason.. It probably would be to much to ask to try charging the Swits on the IDX-charger...but, I think it's not necessary because I found a second-hand City-tek battery and the first thing I tried is charging it with the JL2-plus.. Charging didn't give any problems so I have good hopes.. I still don't know if it's a risk to do this cause I'm not familiar with 'battery-intelligence' (overcharge-protection etc. ) .. for me it's a gamble because I'm a trial and error-kinda guy...

Hello group,

I don't know if this topic has been covered, but I have a quick question. Is a IDX-JL2plus charger capable of charging other brands Li-Ion NP1 batts? I try to figure out, online, what pin-configurations different brands NP1's are using for charging/discharging etc. without much success... IDX-np1s are hard to come by at the moment, and different brands like Swit, GlobalmediaPro and Citytek (I think the last two are the same but relabelled) offer the batteries I need for a good price, when compared to what I payed for the IDX batteries..

Thanks in advance,

Diego

Michael, sometimes the LCD on the RED will make a similar noise as the camera fans.  On my last shoot, I was confused as to why there was so much camera noise while rolling.  As it turns out, the LCD they were using just whined loudly due to how it's brightness was set.  I had the AC adjust it till the noise vanished.....

Yeah, wow, I experienced the on camera whining-lcd monitor on all Red shoots.. it's indeed the brightness setting.

As much as I like to experiment, it's something I have to do in my own shop. Allthough some might find this technology obsolete, I'm fascinated by it: the idea of an inductive loop in a car, powered by a car-stereo-amp is fantastic.. Give all the talent in the car an earpiece and rock 'n roll.. so cool, but not before trying it at home offcourse ;-) instead of using IFB-receivers for each talent, only one is needed to feed the amp, that's great.  In the meantime I'm ordering neckloop/earpiece-combo.. have to start  somewhere. Thanks for all the great info.

Diego

Necklace inductors are not the best.

mike

.. in general? or the Sensorcoms..? thanks for the insight.

Diego

One of the other options to get rid of the neck loop is to run a couple coils of zip cord around the room or area the inductive receivers will be working.  Connect this loop so that it goes in series around the area and hook each end of the loop to a large amp.  The low impedence of the loop allows the amps energy to be "transmitted" into the loop and the inductive ear piece works anywhere inside or with in range of the loop. Works surprisingly well.

Jim Mansen

Wow! I'm just a noob when it comes to inductive 'transmission'.. that's pretty helpful! thanks.

Thanks for the replies gentlemen, that's what I value so much in this forum, the immediate feedback, what a great place!

The Sensorcom-inductive earpiece-neckloop-set is pretty lowpriced (around 190 euro's), it's just that I never heard of the brand. For that kind of money it's worth the try, and I assume that the soundquality will not be much worse than the Comtek/Phonak route.. I've used the phonak-invisity for the same reasons, and aside from being a very expensive option, I have had some interference problems with them, and that's  no fun at all for the actors.. I agree that the off the shelf earpieces can poke out one's ear a bit so close-up shots are a concern, but the director and DP are more than willing to work around that, so it doesn't have to be a problem. The earpiece will probably only be used a few times during the whole shoot (long feature), and to me it's the only way to playback music on set where only the actor has to hear the music... I agree that for tv-series where such devices are used frequently on the same actors, a custom-molded earpiece is a better solution. I have two latex custom-mold plugs to protect my hearing at concerts, and they are nearly invisible..

Could that be this one:

At one time I had to place the transmitter on the inside  of the left upperleg of an actress, I used an elastic band with a pouch. While I placed the band the actress asked me if the antenna would show up from under her skirt, while I was attaching the transmitter, antenna down. So I asked her:"would you rather have the antenna facing up?", I think my remark made her blush..

Hi,

I was wondering if any of you have experience with the ICM20 inductive earpiece? they're made by a UK company called sensorcom. How do they perform? I would like to use them for cueing and playback purposes where the actor has to sing a long with a song and have his dialog in the same take..

Thanks all,

Diego

I bet this is a driver issue (it always is). Do you have all the latest Digi drivers installed for the netbook (Win XP I presume)?

If you can run a stripped-down version of Pro Tools LE on the netbook, then any program should theoretically be able to see the MBox.

For the record, I'm strictly a Mac guy when it comes to Pro Tools, and my brief exposure to Digi on Windows was an excursion into Total Bloody Hell.

--Marc W.

I downloaded the latest standalone-drivers, Pro Tools is not needed on the machine to use the MBox.. I suspect it is indeed a driver issue, but the mbox drivers do show up in Reaper just not in VTSrecorder.. I'll send Bauke, the founding father of videotoolshed, an email..

Well, I hooked up my Mbox2Mini to my netbook and VTS doesn't recocnize the audio interface. But VTS does work with the onboard netbook microphone.. I wonder if VTS looks for a more serious audio interface than the MboxMini..

Jeff, Videotoolshed is a very cool company that makes a few reasonably-priced plug-ins and add-ons for Final Cut Pro like

FCP auxTC reader, which allows editors to use audio timecode recorded on a spare audio channel on a digital camcorder. They're a Dutch company, and the developer hangs out on RAMPS and answers questions from time to time. Looks like a decent company.

--Marc W.

a little off topic perhaps, but..

a director/editor friend of mine is raving about FCP auxTC reader. We're shooting a doc right now on a Sony EX1, audioreferencetrack on ch 1, timecode from 788t to ch 2 on camera.. He imports my poly BWF's in FCP (which doesn't have a function to read TC from an audiotrack like AVID) and FCPauxTC does the rest... It works like a charm.

I like the idea of having a small netbook with an application like VTS-recorder running as a backup recorder daisychained to my 788t when working of a cart. Boomrecorder is still MacOS only. I just downloaded the trial version, it looks promising.

I like your cart very much! How is that CL9 working out for you? It's probably going to be my next purchase for cart-based work..

Diego