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The Sony Venice!


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Hello all,

 

I am 5 weeks or so into a TV show with the Sony Venice camera. Here's what I have discovered.

 

It's very quiet. Very very quiet. There are simple fan settings. Four, I think. Two that are for MOS stuff or hot exteriors. Two that shut the fans off while rolling. When the camera gets hot (which is does fairly easily in warm sets and rolling resets), the fan will kick on. We think it might actually be the recorder fan versus the camera fan, but we can't really run a test in the middle of shooting, so perhaps someone in prep can do a test to see what's kicking on. Either way, it's a fan that is louder than Alexa but probably similar to RED at 30%. Ok at a normal distance with one camera, but iffy up close with two in a small set. Unlike the Alexa mini that'll ramp up and down, making inconsistent noise, the Venice fan is consistent, with a pitch I can imagine being very easy to get rid of with basic NR.

 

In terms of TC. We started off doing off speed stuff, which threw off the TC. It just went off a bit, unlike the Alexa which resets, so we didn't always notice. So there are now tiny lockits riding on the cameras. Before the ACs or DIT were just jamming. Haven't heard anything from anyone regarding TC, so can't really comment on it. They must be syncing from slate or just taking care of business without troubling us. Never heard from them when we KNEW the TC was off, so there you go. Professionals.

 

It's big. Not really our problem.

 

It eats batteries like no business, and has some issues with power from our stedicam, which has caused some problems, including dropped clips. Our DIT reloads all the time, even though the card will hold 90 minutes!! He does it to keep up, but also because one bad clip can corrupt the card. The camera has shut down a few times. I think we have lost 2 cards with bad clips. They've been sent in for data recovery, but who knows. We made sure we had the shots we needed on the new card.

 

I don't run sound to camera, so don't know how good the sound is. But I'm guessing it's great. The Sony cameras have always been good.

 

Cheers,

 

Robert

 

 

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On 7/31/2018 at 4:09 PM, RPSharman said:

It eats batteries like no business, and has some issues with power from our stedicam, which has caused some problems, including dropped clips. Our DIT reloads all the time, even though the card will hold 90 minutes!! He does it to keep up, but also because one bad clip can corrupt the card. The camera has shut down a few times. I think we have lost 2 cards with bad clips. They've been sent in for data recovery, but who knows. We made sure we had the shots we needed on the new card.


Yikes!! Looks like Sony still needs to do some big firmware updates in the future.
Which I'm certain they will but still, wow
Is Sony gifting them some kind of carrot to tempt them to be an early adopter of Venice?
I know here in New Zealand one rental house did purchase a Venice, and had a very small hands look myself. But haven't heard of any shoots with it yet locally.

 

 

On 7/31/2018 at 4:19 PM, Philip Perkins said:

The horrible latency that was part of the F55 menu experience is gone. 

Nowhere near as bad as on the FS7, but I got used to it with time. 

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I was back on 2 "well-loved" F55s for the last two days, and the AC and I agreed that the weird latency of the menus is really maddening, esp when you are in a hurry.   Since these cameras had had a lotta lovin' the menu encoders were kind of worn, so the menus would jump around unpredictably even when you turned the encoder slowly....   Venice=Way Better.

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  • 8 months later...

I had great success ea time i have worked with it but only single camera - i know this may have been checked but any chance you working in 29.97 and 1x is set to drop frame? That always causes me to revert to internal if op has presets that set to drop frame as default

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I am starting a production next week for the first time using the Venice.
 

2 hours ago, Mike Westgate said:

A colleague told me of difficulties with the 5 pin XLR audio input being awkward

 

I have no intention of feeding audio to it but I find some of the comments from Robert interesting.

 

On 7/31/2018 at 12:09 AM, RPSharman said:

There are simple fan settings. Four, I think. Two that are for MOS stuff or hot exteriors. Two that shut the fans off while rolling. When the camera gets hot (which is does fairly easily in warm sets and rolling resets), the fan will kick on. We think it might actually be the recorder fan versus the camera fan, but we can't really run a test in the middle of shooting, so perhaps someone in prep can do a test to see what's kicking on. 

 

This is something we will test for this week during our camera sync sound test. Has anybody tested for this since Roberts original post? Any off speed shots will be done with a third body, the Alexa Mini. We are going to leave a Denecke JB-1 mounted to each of the two Venice cameras. Anything we forgot?

 

Bill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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6 hours ago, Mike Westgate said:

A colleague told me of difficulties with the 5 pin XLR audio input being awkward

 

Any comments or experiences please??

 

mike

I wonder if this is refering to the position of it? Its down under the camera at a weird angle but works well nonetheless.

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28 minutes ago, Mike Westgate said:

Hi regarding the audio input of the Venice

 

Can someone post a picture of this input so we can all understand what we face please

 

mike

Maybe someone xan snap a better photo when your at the camera - This shows where it is located, accepts standard straight 5 pin xlr. Also shown is with wooden camera adapter

20190420_234113.jpg

20190420_234144.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/9/2019 at 6:58 PM, CHULESPADA said:

Shooting last three days with two Sony Venice cameras. The first one is loosing 1/2 frames randomly in different scenes. It’s taking “Ext LK-Icon” from a Tentacle. The other camera doesn’t even take timecode...

Any experiences out there?

YES!  I'm three weeks into a Sony Venice (latest firmware) and I've been getting reports from post that a certain percentage of takes are 1-2 frames out.  And it will happen in the middle of a scene, fine at top/out in middle/fine at end.  totally random.  I'm convinced there is a bad setting in the camera.  what frame rate are you shooting at? 23.97 ND, for me.

 

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Same report on my job. 2 frames out at completely random times. We’ve also been losing a lot of clips inexplicably. We had an instance today where the camera indicated it was recording, but the clip wasn’t present upon gate check.

 

We’ve swapped bodies three times, and have had a Sony rep to set to look into the issues. ...still so solutions. Seems obvious to me that this cam isn’t ready for prime-time yet

 

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  • 5 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/19/2019 at 1:04 PM, JonG said:

Here’s the audio input info. Not available in the manual, the DIT on the project I’m on had to request it from development. 

 

1EDFF7C9-3023-4304-A553-DD29F2AEAE31.jpeg

Thanks for This. Had to knock one up quickly for shoot last couple of days when the camera didn’t show up with an adaptor c@ble

 

 

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  • 8 months later...

Going to be working with VENICE. Any updates/gotchas on working with VENICEs since this thread last year? VENICE has had a lot of firmware updates since then, quite significant ones. 

 

On 11/2/2019 at 4:19 AM, JonG said:

@jozzafunk I’m using my Alexa cable from Remote Audio

So the normal Alexa 5 pin XLR cable works just fine?

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi all. I'm starting a long running show with three Venice cams soon and we're worried about how well they will hold their TC. WE'll be supplying both TC and GenLock from Ambient Lockits and I've every confidence in their ability to hold their code. Any updates?

 

Also, has anyone any insight on which is better to shoot with 23.98P or 23.98Psf?? I understand the technical difference from reading the various Wikipedia pages but is one more desirable than the other?

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...
On 7/24/2020 at 7:54 AM, stevejacksonsound said:

Hi all. I'm starting a long running show with three Venice cams soon and we're worried about how well they will hold their TC. WE'll be supplying both TC and GenLock from Ambient Lockits and I've every confidence in their ability to hold their code. Any updates?

 

Also, has anyone any insight on which is better to shoot with 23.98P or 23.98Psf?? I understand the technical difference from reading the various Wikipedia pages but is one more desirable than the other?

Hey Steve! Hope this shoot went well.  Any update on your experiences with the Venice with timecode?  What was your workflow that provided the best outcomes?

 

Thanks!

 

PM

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  • 3 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Hi, I just finished the first week of a long project shooting with 3 Venice.

 

We're using both tc slates (Ambient) and Nano Lockits on each camera.

DIT is the master TC, with his Master Lockit.

I'm also slave with one of the new Lockit.

 

We were reported by the dailies lab that all the clips are out of sync by 1-3 frames, not constantly. Each camera has a different behaviour.

I checked with the guy and it ended up that all the 3 slates and my sound recorder are perfectly in sync, so the problem appears to be in the cameras.

They're also using an encoder (I don't know exactly its function) which is also connected to timecode, I don't know if it can cause some issues.

The DIT says it is normal that the Venice could have some drift.

 

We still didn't figure out how to address the issue.

Hope it helps.

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  • 1 month later...

I recently worked with a Venice 2 which stopped recording audio, without warning, during a take. At first I thought it was my return monitor feed, but then I noticed the level meters on the Venice weren't registering any audio either. The problem was only rectified by selecting the Menu button on the camera, and then the audio re-appeared. Has anyone else experienced this?

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