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Herwig

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    Toronto
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    Mixer
  1. I typically charge $20/day for rechargeable batteries and $5/day for media if I am providing. It's cheaper for production compared to purchasing alkalines, and typically cheaper than production buying a comparable number of rechargeables and chargers. The fee allows me to keep a generous supply of batteries and purchase new chargers as needed. It's a win-win arrangement, and drastically reduces the amount of batteries going into landfill.
  2. My experience: I recently bought 2 CF card adapters for the primary drive slot of a Deva V. I bought 2 Kingston 64GB 266x cards and test recorded with them over the course of a week without incident. 3 days into my show I had a failure of the CF primary card – would cut right after hitting record, gave an error message which I later learned meant audio data corruption. Everything up to that point had been mirrored so that was a great relief. Used a spinning hd while further testing the other Kingston card without incident, and am now using that one as the primary. I tried recording on the failed card variously using the other main slot adapter, in a different Deva V, and on a different firmware version (was warned that 7.57 is flaky for some users so rolled back to 7.56). Tried recovering the files from the failed card using ZaxFile_505 which only recovered some of the files from each of the 3 folders, perhaps because I had continued to try to record on the card – but still not an issue for me since I had mirrored. Tried reformatting the failed card in the Deva primary slot, and later in the mirror slot and finally in a card reader, but it fails to format. I can't tell if the card was faulty from the beginning or if the corruption has made it unusable. Fwiw I’ve had 6 Kingston mirror cards (8GB 133x and 16GB 266x) for years; only 1 has stopped working.
  3. Okay, as I had planned I tried another Deva for a couple of days, this on version 7.47, but there was no improvement in the random offset. When I went back to my recorder I returned for a couple of days to the version that I used to run before this particular show (7.41) and that too made no improvement. I spoke to the manager of media services at Technicolor here who said that the issue I described is a known issue with Devas at 24fps, 48048-F. He reported it was common for there to be random offsets of 0-6 frames plus or minus. He's found that a SD788 running simultaneously would be dead on. As I mentioned earlier in the thread Technicolor was not involved with my current project but has handled my material many times in the past. My show is now finished. Post was perplexed by the issue but not overly concerned. They synched to the slate clap. I let Zaxcom know about the issue early on in the show. I will follow up with them to see if it is being addressed. Herwig
  4. Yes Whit, I plan on going back to 7.41 to see if there is a change; I still seperately plan on swapping out the Deva as well. To explore more I took about 20 mirrored files from the CF card and played them in Wave Agent and made note of the time codes as best I could at the slate clap. I then compared these to the code on the Deva display at the clap when playing off its hard drive. It's rudimentary yet I noticed that the code from the mirrored files was consistently ahead of the original by approximately 4 to 8 frames. Same results when mirrored without both F mode and pull down. If F mode only engaged mirrored tc was significantly ahead (55 secs in one take) and if pulldown only engage then mirrored code was significantly behind (30 seconds in one take). Herwig
  5. Yes, cameras are definitely at 24.000 fps. They are pulling down to 23.98 for editing. I don’t think the length of the takes is showing a trend since they say the time code is randomly off, or even on at times, but I will check on that. Most of my jobs in the last year and a half have been with Alexas at 24fps. These include a series, a feature, and second unit on 2 other series, and all used this same workflow of cameras and sound at 24fps, sample 48048 f-mode with pulldown, and these all went through Technicolor in Toronto. Another feature was shot at 24fps, 48kHz, no pulldown and edited at 24fps, and post was done in Spain. The only things that I can tell are different on this job are that I upgraded the Deva firmware from 7.41 to 7.56 before the shoot began, and that Technicolor is not involved, although the synching is being done by the same techs who were on the last series. On that last series there was an occasion when I got reports of weird time code offsets after returning from hiatus. It was eventually determined that the Avid had got a firmware upgrade from 5.5 to 6.5 during the break and was handling the 24 fps audio differently, and that got sorted out in a couple of days. A few years ago when I had similar reports of random time code offsets I switched recorders and the problem went away. It turned out that the Deva had issues and eventually got a new DSP board. I will have further discussions with post, and will try Rich's suggestion of eliminating f-mode. I am still planning to try a different recorder later this week to see if makes a difference. Herwig
  6. " out of timecode slates, two cameras, and the Deva, only the Deva is slipping? That's a big clue. If that's the case, then I'd get one external timecode box, jam everything off that at the beginning of the day, and run the Deva in external. " it does read to me that the DEVA TC is the odd one out! that could be the case... that could happen..." When I used an external sync box on the Deva it made no improvement. I think my next step will be to try a different recorder.
  7. No, cameras are not changing speeds. Also, the reports say cameras and slates are consistently in sync, so not sure of the benefit of putting sync boxes on the cameras. But thanks for the suggestions.
  8. I'm experiencing strange time code offsets on my present show. Deva V, v. 7.56, 24 fps, 48048, mirror f-mode with pulldown to CF card, 2x Alexa's at 24fps, syncing in Avid v. 5.5.3. Test shoot in preproduction showed no problem, but since starting both cameras and slates are reported to be in sync, audio tc reported off randomly, sometimes 1 second, sometimes 2, and other times accurate. Zaxcom suggested removing pulldown switch which didn't help; I also tried feeding Deva tc from ext sync box which also didn't help. More recently report has been random offsets of 1-12 frames. Any ideas as to what's up? Herwig
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