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Black Magic Pocket - Audio/Timecode on 3.5mm Jack?


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Hey Everyone,

I'll be on a shoot soon with a Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera. Previously I'd been using a QRX100 (feeding the 3-pin mini xlr), however production will have two mixers on the coming shoot with only 1 QRX100, so I may have to use another option.

Hence I was wondering if I could send both audio and timecode from a Zaxcom ERX into the Black Magic's 3.5mm input jack.

 

In the manual it says that the Camera will accept timecode into the left channel of the 3.5mm, does that mean that I can use channel 2 audio on the 3.5mm?

 

Cheers!

 

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I just did some shoots with the current version of this camera and it all worked fine.  I sent audio to the TA3F jack and TC in through the left chan of the mini, then worked the menus to have the signals end up on separate channels.  The camera picked up the TC right away and made it into metadata TC for the camera files.  We mounted a small wireless RX (G2) + a small TC box (Moze) to the threaded hole on the cam for one deal, for the other the shooter had a camera cage that was easy to mount to.  BM has come a long way in the clarity of its menus--other co.s (like RED) should take note.  A side note--I ended up making my own mini>TA3M cables for the audio dfeed to avoid having to run through XLRs, which are kind of out of scale for this rig.

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The two current BM pockets use the same connectors and menus and both do the mini input LTC>metadata TC trick.   We never tried getting TC into the older version of the camera, I don't think it had the ability to convert LTC to metadata TC, ditto with the super-weird original BM4k camera (the one with the 1/4" input jacks).

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  • 4 months later...

I worked with the pocket 4k 3 days last week.  You jam it through the 8th in microphone Jack.  

 

I had a couple issues with timecode drifting so I would rename hourly and you will be fine for sure.  

 

I only jammed at battery swaps and at lunch and we had some drift on 3 out of 50 takes.

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  • 6 months later...

Something that puzzle me, we are using 3 UltraSYNC ONE (two for camera, one for Mix-Pre 10 II) and post says it's 4 frames off. Everything set at 25 FPS. Can someone tell producers, not using those cameras for "real jobs"? I hate them (lol).

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I've done quite a lot of shooting with the current BM pocket 4k etc cameras, sending them TC from a external TC box jammed to my recorder code, for several different clients and batches of cameras.  No complaints on sync.  The shoots were a mix of 23.976 and 29.97 fps, no straight 24 or other fps.  The BM cameras are a fact of my working life now--very common, esp here in low-budget-small-crew-virus-shoot-world.  I prefer working with them vs the DSLR or other strange prosumercams they replaced.  My advice to small and midsize market soundies is to make your peace with them, as you did with DSLRs.  They are very popular and shoots are using more and more of them at once in multicamera setups.

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On 9/1/2020 at 4:59 AM, VAS said:

and post says it's 4 frames off

 

8 hours ago, VAS said:

Post is complain a lot, but nothing we can do further.

If it is a consistent 4 frame off for all the files then it shouldn't be a big deal at all to fix this.
 

7 hours ago, Philip Perkins said:

No complaints on sync.


Yes, I've never heard of this issue with the P4K/P6K before. 
Maybe @VAS check what firmware the P4K are running? Perhaps the 4 frame offset was a very early bug that got fixed before any of us came across it. 

 

7 hours ago, Philip Perkins said:

I prefer working with them vs the DSLR or other strange prosumercams they replaced.

100%
The current BMD cameras are no ARRI ALEXAs, but they're vastly preferable to working with DSLRs, or heck even the very early REDs. 

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On 9/3/2020 at 3:26 PM, IronFilm said:

So you're using the second DIN connector instead of the usual main DIN connection on the USO?

 

Yeap, the second DIN - SYNC. What I have notice, between LTC & SYNC, the level is different.

 

LTC has Standard, Low, MIC while SYNC has Standard & High.

 

LTC Standard is around -15 while SYNC Standard is -20 at levels. With that setting, post says it's 1-2 frames off in some scenes.

 

Next episode of #problemsolving (lol) will completely eliminate the "Server" and "Client" status (so basically the communication between ONE's) and use it as standalone units taken TC from Mix-Pre 10 II. Let's see.

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