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davidm

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Everything posted by davidm

  1. My camera department wanted the R/A Lemo's. This meant the batteries could be mounted close to the rear of the Alexa Mini body. The plan was to unplug and replug on every card change. Once they assembled the camera, the operator wanted the weight further to the rear so the batteries were slid back on a rail and a straight Lemo for TC was fine. The R/A Lemo plugs in the link above will be knock offs. Not saying there's anything wrong with them but genuine R/A Lemo's cost more than US$19.99!
  2. PM sent by txt. Looking on the Lemo web site, this should be the connector: FPG.OB.305.CLAD31 http://intra.lemo.ch/PartSearch?ser=b&lang=en Ambient sell TC cables with R/A Lemo's. Cheers, David
  3. Hi Mike, My production just had a couple of R/A Lemo TC cables made up for an Alexa Mini. Looking on the connector body, that part number is FPG.OB. Trouble is, the Lemo right angle connection is at 180deg to the red dot and that means it covers the Alexa Mini data card cover. I'm told that you can't vary the cable exit angle. David
  4. The safety instructions in the Ambient manuals is a product compliance statement. Just ignore the safety instructions and use the Lockit in the same manner as you would with any other professional audio or video equipment. David
  5. My sincere condolences to you Jeff, and your family. David
  6. I have been using 8 x Inspired Energy batteries SMBus Li-Ion batteries with a pair of Ocean Server mains float chargers for 760Wh of power since 2008 as my cart power system. Disconnect and remove the batteries and they are legal to fly in your hand luggage as would be the case for any legal camera battery (V-Lok, NP1). http://jwsoundgroup.net/index.php?/topic/1703-cart-battery-power/#comment-11702 http://www.ocean-server.com/products.html#
  7. davidm

    Ambient V-Slot

    On the Sony FS5 & FS7, the power pins have a slightly larger diameter and the shape of the V-Lok itself is different from Ambients reference IDX V-LOK. Ambient have e-engineered their current model VSLOT to cope with these variations. David
  8. Great find Hartley. Let's hope they can get their online store up and running as there are potentially some very useful components for cart building. Their aluminium sections are labeled with their own branding but seems to be similar in profile to Item rather than 80/20.
  9. I have had two 7" Marshall's fail and no response from the manufacturer to my enquiries for support. The Marshall's were difficult to mount from the side as they have beveled side and top edges. There is a mounting kit available that has screw in blocks with ⅜' threads in them for side mounting but his just makes the whole assembly wider. The Marshall's had better image quality the my current Blackmagic Duo.
  10. I update notes and fix slate / take number errors both before action and when there's only one fader open, during takes. If your recorder and cart ergonomics makes it easy to do edit metadata on the fly, then it makes sense.
  11. A headphone output variant of the LR receiver would be useful as a higher quality (digital hybrid) monitoring receiver compared to the R1a.
  12. ​Is that a 12 channel receiver or a 12 bay battery charger?
  13. I have modified several Mac Mini's in the past 9 years for my Metacorder rig. My current Mac Mini is a 2012 unibody Mac Mini Server. Todd Weaver's comment that it's an easy modification is correct. Just follow an iFixit guide on how to pull the Mac Mini apart. Gotham Sound has a guide on how to do the mod: https://www.gothamsound.com/library/mod-mac-mini-dc-power The original body Mac Mini mod involved cutting the brick power supply cable and connecting a 2K resistor between the thin "i sense" cable and earth to turn on the motherboard. This cold be done in a 4 pin XLR connector. The brick power supply outputs 18 volts but in practice the Mac Mini would run on 13 volts to 18 volts. A V-Lok Li-Ion worked just fine. The newer unibody Mac Mini's also appear to tolerate a wide voltage supply range. My Mac Mini supply is a Li-Ion battery system which has a fresh charge voltage of 17.5 volts. What I have found and this may only be relevant to analogue and firewire setups is that Mac Mini spits out noise on the power supply rail. This leaks into the audio if a common power supply is used. I use a power isolated Firewire cable and power the Mac Mini via an isolating 40watt DC-DC converter. The cleanest solution is to power the Mac Mini and video monitor off their own battery.
  14. The full April 1st text From the Lectrosonics web site...... Rio Rancho, NM, USA, North America, Earth, Solar System (April 1, 2015) -- In celebration of their 10th Anniversary of introducing products on April 1, Lectrosonics is introducing the smallest full-featured bodypack transmitter available - the SSM. Part of the Digital Hybrid Wireless® Series, the SSM is fully compatible with all current Lectrosonics receivers including the UCR411A, SRB, LR and Venue, and several older models. The SSM features a wide tuning bandwidth of three standard Lectrosonics blocks or up to about 76 MHz depending on the specific frequency range. RF power is selectable at 25 or 50 mW for flexibility depending on the application. Dimensions for the SSM are 2.52 x 1.48 x 0.57 inches or 64.25 x 37.6 x 14.5 mm. Weight is 2.3 oz. or 66 grams, including battery. Lectrosonics company president Larry Fisher commented on the revolutionary new process used to manufacture the SSM Transmitter: "With the advent of 3d printers, we asked ourselves if it weren't possible to make a 3d eraser, a device that would remove nano-sized particles from a product thus making it smaller. For instance, if you removed every other atom from a solid it would end up half the length, a fourth the area and an eighth the weight of the original object. We modified one of our laser markers to use black light instead of infrared light and found that, though time consuming, we could indeed reduce the size of an object without changing or destroying its desired properties. The 3d Eraser™ is a success!" The SSM features a rugged, all-metal housing and is available on four different frequency ranges for worldwide use: A1 (470.100 - 537.575 MHz or blocks 470, 19 and 20), B1 (537.600 - 614.375 MHz or blocks 21, 22 and 23), C1 (614.400 - 691.175 MHz or blocks 24, 25 and 26) and D1 (for export only, 691.200 - 767.975 MHz or blocks 27, 28 and 29). Tuning steps of 100 or 25 kHz can be selected in the menu, allowing for up to 3,072 frequency choices. The microphone connector is the industry-standard Lemo 3. An infrared sync port on the SSM allows for quick setup with compatible receiver systems. A backlit LCD allows for ease of setup in any lighting conditions. A micro-B USB port makes it possible for firmware updates in the field as advanced features are added in the future. "We applied this revolutionary new process to one of our SM series transmitters to create the SSM transmitter or the (S)ubtractive SM transmitter" explains Gordon Moore, vice president of sales for Lectrosonics. "There had to be some compromises in the length, width and thickness because of available batteries, but overall it was a tiny success. We found that the high cost of the subtractive printing process was partially offset because it was very easy to build the oversized transmitter before running it through the subtractive process of the 3d Eraser. We still expect to make a small profit." Price for the SSM MSRP: $1,998, Availability in Q3, 2015.
  15. Great thread, I was discussing the idea of boom removal with two post production producers this morning. While being fairly relaxed about the concept, they were concerned about the subtleties of camera operating. A static shot is relative in that a camera operator will commonly be making framing variations as each take settles in and then progresses. Can the clean plate and the shot itself have camera "operating" variations and still be efficient for boom removal? David
  16. I feed the timecode into the Mac Mini 3.5mm audio jack. Metacorder has an option to decode timecode from channel 1 of a Mac audio input. You don't have to aggregate the Mac audio hardware and the external interface. You can also use any analogue input on the 2882 or any other interface as the timecode source.
  17. I installed Yosemite on my Metacorder system a week ago and have done 4 days work without any operational problems. There is a GUI bug where word wrapped text such as "Overload Alert Tone" and "Circle Take" is improperly displayed. I have yet to report this to to Mark Gilbert. My system is a 2012 Mac Mini Mini Server & Metric Halo 2882 with wordclock & TC from a 744T. It's 10 years ago this month that I first started using Metacorder on a G4 PowerBook with a MOTU Traveller. David
  18. 1) A Lectrosonics IFB receiver that works in digital hybrid mode. 2) A hardware based audio recorder with metadata entry, editing and false start / duplicate handling thats as fast and efficient as Metacorder. Metacorder is 10 years old and still leads the pack. David M
  19. I have been using Xero for the past four years. Simply the best accounting solution that I have ever used. My accountant prepares my end of year company report and tax return and I do everything else. www.xero.com David M
  20. And the QU-24 doesn't have Dante. Another option might be the Soundraft Expression 16 which has both expansion slots for a Dante card and word clock in. DM
  21. Generally you should see the effect of the camera switching to the external sync. If you don't see the glitch then it can be an indication that camera isn't switching to the genlock signal but it's not absolute. I think the Sony does have an external lock indicator but I can't recall if this is timecode or genlock or both. Another check is to test your BNC-BNC cables with a video monitor rather than a multimeter. Use the BNC video out of the camera to feed a video monitor with the BNC-BNC cables. Multimeters show DC resistance, whereas the Genlock signal is at several MHz. If you can see the video with the BNC-BNC cables then they are truly fine. I test mine with a Lockit and an oscilloscope to check there's a clean & correct level signal. The Ambient Master Controller is probably your best bet at figuring out which device is drifting by comparing both the TC out of the camera and the TC out of the recorder over a period of time. DM
  22. I'm guessing that your dealer corrected the sync drift between the Lockit and the R4 by retuning the Lockit to the R4's speed with a Master Controller. If so, you could take the Master Controller to your shoot and compare the TC over the course of the day from both the R4 and Lockit to determine if one of them is drifting over a long period. The other thing to check is if the camera is picking up the trilevel sync. Look in the viewfinder while connecting and disconnecting the trilevel sync cable. You should see a glitch in the video as the camera switches sync source from internal to external and vice versa.
  23. Yes, the 5 pin timecode Lemo connector is easy to assemble but I concur with Mike Westgate's sentiments regarding the 4 pin Lemo used on the Epic/Scarlett for TC & Sync. It's a nightmare to wire.
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