creepyoldguy Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 So I have these sennheiser g2 packs lying around and decided to attempt a wireless timecode system with them. I built a lemo-1/8th cable to output from my fusion, and took the sensitivity down to -30 on the transmitter. Meters read a solid -10 or so when plugged in. The receiver is getting the signal cleanly with no hits, and when outputted to a ts-c in read mode, it will scroll if you touch the chassis of the lemo connector. If you do not touch the chassis, it will lock a static number once and not scroll. In gen mode it does nothing. The ultimate goal is to wirelessly jam a red camera, but the red won't flash its little chain symbol and it shows no indication of communicating. The welds are all perfect and denecke thinks it might be a problem with sennheiser's audio fidelity. Red's tech support was about as helpful as banging my head against a wall, and sennheiser had no idea what I was even talking about. Location and pro sound couldn't think of anything. So here's my guess: what about a 10k resistor on the hot and 1.3k on ground of tc going into xmitter. Cut 20 db out before messing with xmitter sensitivity. Maybe resulting in cleaner signal. Any other ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael McQueen Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 Dang, and my project for next week was doing the exact same thing.. I think padding the cable down might do it. You're leaps ahead of me. But I was going to call trew audio to see if they had any experience with said method before I broke out the soldering iron. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Blankenship Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 You didn't say at what level you were going into the Red. My understanding is it only wants about a 1v. RMS signal and a higher signal (approaching 2v. or more) can be problematic. This came to light when some of the earlier Denecke boxes sometimes had problems going into a Red. Too high a level was apparently the culprit. (There's a simple modification for the earlier Denecke boxes that will bring the output into spec.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
creepyoldguy Posted February 28, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 I've tried hitting the red at +12, +6, and 0. The slate jams the red fairly consistently via lemo, but nothing from the sennheisers... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg sextro Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 Make sure you are wiring the hot only to the ring of the 1/8 connector (the line level input part of the g2 is on the ring, the tip is for mic level) I've tried to do this myself in the past with the red camera and it did not work. I don't remember if I had the right cables. I have been able to use the g2s for my slates, but even then the setup is sometimes finicky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason porter Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 I built a cable (BNC to mini 3.5mm) with a pad (don't remember the value) for sending TC from an F-900 to the line-in on an Apple laptop (software converted the audio to TC, for logging) and it worked perfectly. If you are desperate, I can open up my cable and check the values of the resistor(s). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harris K Posted May 9, 2011 Report Share Posted May 9, 2011 I'd blame the g2. I tried something like this a while back and got wonky TC read outs on the.slate. I couldn't.figure it out at the time and put the idea to bed. Recently I've discovered that the g2's limiter freaks the heck out with "pumping" over very LF information, the kind you wouldn't hear as a wire on talent. I would therefore suspect that a consistent broadband signal, like smpte TC, would be pumping at the receiver end and be unreadable. This is conjecture, however. It would be very unpleasant, but since you know cabling is good I'd suggest A/Bing the smpte signals to determine if the g2 artifacting makes this undoable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Reineke Posted May 9, 2011 Report Share Posted May 9, 2011 Yes, as Greg S. posted, for line-level (-10dB) on the G2/3 body-pack transmitter, use the ring for hot. ( the unused tip should be tied to shield) The mic level input stage is easily over-driven with an LTC audio signal, regardless of the transmitter's sensitivity setting. In addition, the bias current causes additional unwanted noise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanieldH Posted December 18, 2011 Report Share Posted December 18, 2011 Has anyone experience with those? http://bluecowcables...?id_product=115 Or taken it appart? Any resistors? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadoStefanov Posted December 18, 2011 Report Share Posted December 18, 2011 John Perkin from Blue Cow Cables is very good. I have ordered from him and his cables are top notch. Highly recommended. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted December 19, 2011 Report Share Posted December 19, 2011 The receiver is getting the signal cleanly with no hits' date=' and when outputted to a ts-c in read mode, it will scroll if you touch the chassis of the lemo connector.[/quote'] As an occasional post guy, I'm really suspicious about wireless TC systems. To me, it makes a lot more sense to slap a jammed box on the side of the camera. You know that's not gonna fail, assuming they flip the right switches, nobody disconnects the cable, and the batteries are good. (And they remember to rejam if the camera's powered down, there's no crashes, etc. etc.) I think the Red expects to see a 1V TC signal coming in on the Lemo connector. If the timecode screws up when you touch the outside of the connector, then I'd say you have a grounding problem of some kind. I believe pin 1 and pin 2 of the 5-pin Lemo are used for TC in on the Red -- check the Red Camera manual to be sure: http://www.red.com/support/all/downloads --Marc W. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MT Groove Posted December 19, 2011 Report Share Posted December 19, 2011 I agree with Marc. Just slap a denecke sync box on each camera and one on your Fusion. Then you don't have to worry about timecode throughout the day. The cameras can power up and down without offsetting timecode, and same with the Fusion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadoStefanov Posted December 20, 2011 Report Share Posted December 20, 2011 If this is a single camera shoot you can just feed the Red TC in to your recorder. Works great. I agree with Marc. Just slap a denecke sync box on each camera and one on your Fusion. Then you don't have to worry about timecode throughout the day. The cameras can power up and down without offsetting timecode, and same with the Fusion. So I have these sennheiser g2 packs lying around and decided to attempt a wireless timecode system with them. I built a lemo-1/8th cable to output from my fusion, and took the sensitivity down to -30 on the transmitter. Meters read a solid -10 or so when plugged in. The receiver is getting the signal cleanly with no hits, and when outputted to a ts-c in read mode, it will scroll if you touch the chassis of the lemo connector. If you do not touch the chassis, it will lock a static number once and not scroll. In gen mode it does nothing. The ultimate goal is to wirelessly jam a red camera, but the red won't flash its little chain symbol and it shows no indication of communicating. The welds are all perfect and denecke thinks it might be a problem with sennheiser's audio fidelity. Red's tech support was about as helpful as banging my head against a wall, and sennheiser had no idea what I was even talking about. Location and pro sound couldn't think of anything. So here's my guess: what about a 10k resistor on the hot and 1.3k on ground of tc going into xmitter. Cut 20 db out before messing with xmitter sensitivity. Maybe resulting in cleaner signal. Any other ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taylormadeaudio Posted December 21, 2011 Report Share Posted December 21, 2011 when I first started mixing, I ran wireless timecode (Rec Run) from a Fostex PD4 to my slates via Comtek (M72/PR72)... it was often a hassle (wireless timecode is fickle, frequent issues with RF range and signal distortion), but it's what I had at the time, and they wanted Rec. Run for some reason (don't remember why.) I've since switched (pretty much everything) to non-linear / ToD and Jam-Syncing the slates and SyncBoxes -- SO much more efficient. I too would have a hard time going back to anything but ToD (free run) timecode. If I had to, I'd probably just go back to using the old Comteks though -- it worked ok as long as I was within the range of the Comteks. ~tt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanieldH Posted December 21, 2011 Report Share Posted December 21, 2011 I have this new reality production once a while now. 3 Cams, big but cheap Panasonic ENG-shoulder-cams. I'm on a 788t with it's Ambient TC as 24h-freerun-master. We sync all the time, especially after battery change of the cams. Thats their experience to do so with the cams. Since it's annoying syncing all the time, and I usually have some spare Evos around I'd like to use, especially since a new set of wireless is due. If they could be an alternative to buying 3 Lockits, t'd go for a soldering session rather than telling production to buy and stress them for other stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimPitot Posted December 22, 2011 Report Share Posted December 22, 2011 Has anyone experience with those? http://bluecowcables...?id_product=115 Or taken it appart? Any resistors? I use them all the time. Camera in rec run, rolling my 552 automatically. No issues, sometimes you have to mess with the input/output levels to get a good signal into the 552. Big thanks to TomBoisseau for the wiring specs and to John at Blue Cow for building the cables. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadoStefanov Posted December 22, 2011 Report Share Posted December 22, 2011 NO NEED for resistors. From BNC TC to G2/G3: hot center of bnc to ring , ground to tip and shield From G2/G3 to 552 Tip to pin 2, shield to pin 1 and pin 3 JUST BUY IT from Bluecow. The same cost as buying all the locking 3,5, ta3 and bnc. And the cable will last you forever. Has anyone experience with those? http://bluecowcables...?id_product=115 Or taken it appart? Any resistors? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_bollard Posted December 23, 2011 Report Share Posted December 23, 2011 I'm solidly in the Time of Day camp. Everything I've done this year, including a single camera documentary series has been ToD. Admittedly it's all been on Sony XDcam 800 - timecode is finally taken seriously by Sony. The doco series, 9 months, without a lockit box and no issues. If the camera can't handle tc properly by itself get a Lockit box Velcro'd on the side and use ToD. Editors no longer seem to have any issues with ToD. Not sure why but guess it had something to do most new cameras recording fiies as clips. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundslikejustin Posted December 23, 2011 Report Share Posted December 23, 2011 Editors no longer seem to have any issues with ToD. Not sure why but guess it had something to do most new cameras recording fiies as clips. The issues were with tape: Tape is a linear medium and TOD code isn't - every single new section of the tape would have a timecode jump that messed with the ingest procedure. Separate clips don't have this issue as they're non-linear as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted December 24, 2011 Report Share Posted December 24, 2011 Yeah, I'm flummoxed as to why some old-school editors are still entrenched in RecRun timecode. To me, Time of Day makes far more sense, especially in a nonlinear clip-based world. --Marc W. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Blankenship Posted December 24, 2011 Report Share Posted December 24, 2011 Yeah, I'm flummoxed as to why some old-school editors are still entrenched in RecRun timecode. To me, Time of Day makes far more sense, especially in a nonlinear clip-based world. TOD makes sense and makes syncing easier -- slap on a box and "not to worry." I have one client, however, who insists on record run. I think they like it for logging purposes while we're shooting. No sweat -- it's their gig and my job is to support that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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