T Spear

Hi, I have been using a bunch of the BP TRX's for the past week and have been impressed. I had a couple of Ultra Syncs, but now just the one as one sadly took a swim with a wayward camera. I replaced one Ultra Sync with a couple of tentacles for only a tad more dollars than one ultra sync and they have been faultless. I enjoy the tentacle app far more than what is for me the clumsy Ultra Sync menu. The BP TRX is an excellent time code unit. You get to see the timecode well displayed, it is straight forward to jam and these days all of the devices out there have great clock stability. Yesterday I sent timecode and scratch audio effortlessly to a couple of cameras using the supplied cables and gave the director an IEM, all from 1 BP TRX master. Sure 2.4 will get beat up in tough environments and I tested the units in IEM mode on a drama that I just finished and the range wasn't great, especially with a high powered Teradek smashing out 2.4 and plenty of UHF harmonics as well. One use of them that I am considering is to tap off the transmitter/receiver setup that I use for video village and then output the receiver into a BP TRX set to master transmitter and you can then pass around 4 comms to the crew that stick to the huddle around the monitors. Good value. I would like it if you were able to send stereo audio to one unit in tx/rec mode (transmit/record) and then be able to pair it to more than one receiver unit (receiving and then outputting stereo audio). At this stage tx/rec mode is the only mode that can transmit 2 channel audio and have it received and output as stereo by only the one BP TRX set as a receiver. These tick a lot of boxes, the build feels solid, battery life is good and for me will be a get out jail free card for plenty of unexpected situations............ "our DOP has decided not to use the million dollar camera setup and use the latest iteration cine pocket thingy for the 'look' " "can we record our 2 guys on horseback from the ridge 1 mile away ?" "we are going with 4 cameras today, can you give us timecode?" and so on. Cheers Tony.

Hi Phillip, Thanks for your informative post. This is as I expected. I was fishing in case there was something that I had missed in my setup. And Ollie you are right about the Avid issue but the dream is to keep the whole post team smiling. Cheers, Tony

Hi, I am trying to solve an issue with files recorded on a 644 when imported into an Avid pic editor. My setup is a Sound Devices 664 with a CL12. I have a lectro venue going into line inputs 7 through 12. Say for example, I record a poly wav file with a mono mix on TrL , a boom on input channels 3 and record 4 radios on input channels 7 8 9 10. Then when these are imported into the Avid composer window they appear as expected as A1 through A6, however in the source window, which the picture editors use to see the tracks they may want to audition, they are spaced across the entire tracks 1 through 12 as columns. Picture edit have asked for only recorded tracks to appear in the source view tracks consecutively. This was how tracks recorded on a Zax Nova would appear. Would anyone have experience in how to configure the Sound Devices 664 metadata to enable this? Thanks, Tony.

Hi again, As you can see from the pics my mix pre doesn't seem to know what time it is. Off to the shop. SD service is very flash. Thanks for your ideas and comments.

Hi All, Thanks again for your replies. There is nothing much you can do wrong with these Mix Pre2s if they work as they should. My one will be heading back to sd before I even got to use it on a really simple shoot. I have re updated the version 6 software and the timecode rolled as time of day and all syncing options worked however upon a power off and back on the line of zeroes returned with the same timecode issues. I have uploaded some screen shots. My main question was that has anyone had this issue or similar with timecode and a mix pre 2. Thanks.

Hi Thanks for your replies. I wish that it was as simple as being in record run. Have tried all possibilities mentioned and more. Looks like I have a sick puppy.

Thanks for the replies so far. My preferred workflow would be to have the mix pre run as time of day timecode and jam my for camera timecode units by switching the mix pre stereo audio out to ltc out and jamming my timecode units to the received timecode outputting from the mix pre 2. I have set the timecode to time of day 25 fps and the stereo out to LTC out. The mix pre counter stays on 00:00:00:00 No timecode is detected by my ultrasync or moz gear. I can only seem to get the display to show timecode when I set the aux input to timecode and input timecode from any one of my units. Ultra sync or Moz Gear. My mix pre 2 seems to only work like a mix pre1! Not being able to jam the mix pre from the aux input or output timecode seems to confirm some issue. Has anyone had timecode issues similar to this? Thanks

Hi folks, My mix pre 6 II is not behaving at all with timecode. I can not even get it to roll time of day timecode let alone jam.The screen just reads all zeros. Once trying to jam the screen actually came up saying 25 to 25 (as in frame rate)is not supported! It is on the latest version 6 I can set the aux in to receive timecode and the display then matches my ultra sync one but am unable to even jam to this. I have owned and extensively used SD gear since the beginning (442) and have never had any timecode issues. If anyone can offer up a possible fix in menu settings that I am unaware of, or has had this issue addressed by the good people at Sound Devices please let me know. Thanks.

Hi Patrick Sorry I am unable to compare the invisity vs the roger. Thanks Tony.

Hi Doc, Your maths isn't far off, and the numbers are kind of scarier in New Zealand dollars, but my post is not about the dosh it is about a system that worked well for us. Of the 11 musical tracks on the movie only 2 used a speaker for playback.(these tracks featured a whole band so 2 earpieces didn't cut it) Of course you could always cable to the base station to save a channel of wireless. The production was very happy with the results and paid rental for the entire system. Thanks, Tony.

Just finished a tricky musical and would like to pass on a few things that were really helpful during the shoot. Although most of the playback was off a protools rig when we had to get more portable such as self drive car scenes and really long steadicam street shots, playback was really simple using a mobile phone and the free app Go Button. Awesome for simplicity. Pro Tools was also great as a playback system just using a laptop and sending one track to my recorder (editorial) and the other to the talent in ear system with a specific eq and a bit of compression. The Phonak Roger system was amazing and helped us gather a vast number of useable sync performances. Back to basics the fabulously staunch K&M 259/1 mic stand is amazing. In cars this is so easy to sneak in, chuck a sandbag on it and get a real mic in to the right spot. And it is really great for wide shoots for table scenes. We kept a mic (generally a MKH 50) on a wireless link on one of these stands at all times and snuck it all over locations and sets to pick up a lot of great dialogue. As always having enough carpet and sound absorption around was great. Nothing seems to change the ol bathroom boom as much as filling the bath and sinks up with cushions, carpet, anything available. Try it next time you find yourself cringing during a scene being blocked in a reverberation bomb of a bathroom. There were a lot of 60s heels and hard shoes on the shoot which we quickly fixed sound issues by having a small cloth some meths and after a very quick clean would stick on a bunch of pre stuck felt pads used for the bottom of furniture. Very cheap packs available at hardware and dollar shops. Much faster and than cutting pre stuck and often ridiculously priced felt and foam. As always nothing in our job is rocket science, just solving problems easily and often quickly. I have always appreciated some of the great info found on this site. I hope this is of value to some of you too. Thanks, Tony Spear.

Hi Patrick, I have just finished 8 weeks on a musical feature using a phonak base station, a couple of Roger ear pieces and best of all using a roger repeater to extend range and reduce dropouts. We managed to get a huge amount of perfect sync takes and I was really impressed at how well it worked indoors and out. There were 400 metre steadicam shots, singing through a number of rooms in sets and many tricky locations. The repeater (not much bigger than an iPhone and self powered) was often strapped to the boom or placed in a convenient place to provide some amazing coverage. I suspect the repeater is of more value than getting an epic 2.4ghz aerial setup which often annoys our friends in the camera dept. I initially tried out the Phonak media hub but it provided no level control and just wouldn't cut through a noisy environment. The base station proved to be a huge improvement. The key was to keep the base station easily portable so I self powered it with a v lock through a voltage adaptor to give it the 5 volts it needs and transmitted the playback to the base station with a lectro srB set. This was often chucked on a C stand and moved easily around sets and locations. Phonak earpieces roll off at 100hz and 7khz so we always sent it a mix which had a pre eq to allow for this. (I have attached a pic) We found the a steep roll off at 100 a small bump around 150 and the usual dip around 400 with a shelf boost of a few db for highs and then steep roll off after 7 really helped the actors out. We also cut the lugs back quite a lot as these were an issue with being in shot at times and reflected brightly when back lights hit them. While the system can not be described as hifi it is a massive leap on induction quality and the linking of earpieces and repeaters with the base station is really efficient and are "remembered" by the base station as well. If you need any other info, let me know. Thanks, Tony Spear

Hi Folks, I got a quick reply and great help from Sound Devices with a couple of things to try. A quick blast of air and a clean with isopropyl and the SD slot is up and running.

Hi, Thanks for the reply. The CF card is immediately recognised. The machine is not "frozen" so holding the menu button seems to do nothing. Thanks again.

Hi. My 633 has an issue with not recognising any SD cards. The screen shows SD media offline. The cards are on the approved list and are immediately recognised when inserted into my 644. Has anyone experienced this and know a possible fix? Thanks.