audio - video help

[stirinthesauce]

We have a video shoot Friday where we are supplying the audio. Up until now, the vast majority of our work was audio only. The occasional backing of audio for video for smaller outfits where timecode was not an issue being sent to the cameras. Here inlies our problem to which we seek a solution and hopefully some good feedback from ya'll.

We have to supply timecode to the cameras and our rig simultaneously for synching in post. I believe we need to send blackburst to the slate and wordclock to our interface. My question is this. What exactly do we need and how do we set this up to operate correctly?

In anticipation of this, we sold our nanoclock and bought a rosendahl nanosynch. Unfortunately we will have to rent a solution as it will not arrive in time. Luckily I don't believe rental on this item or a comprable item should be hard in Nashville. So our second question is, any other devices that will fit our bill for this gig?

Thanks!

-Jon

[stirinthesauce]

All right. Well, believe I have this figured out thanks to some conversations with others. I'll post the info I recieved so others that may come across the same problem can reference this or I others can chime in with their experiences, tips, advice, or corrections to what I post.

First you have a video synch that produces blackburst. You send blackburst to each of your cameras, audio rig and time code generator. This is for your "speed." Then your time code generator will send time code to each of the cameras and produce a wordclock signal sent to your audio rig. This is for "position."

At least this is how it looks on the diagram I have and how it was explained to me. Any more input would be greatly appreciated.

[tnjazz]

I think what we're looking for now is some recommendations on both of these pieces. A good sync box and a timecode generator. If anyone has any suggestions. we're all ears.

Many many MANY thanks to John Paterno for taking the time to explain this all to me in detail on the phone last night so that Jon and I can help our video guys make this work and have a successful gig. It's always fun to get hit with a surprise like this less than 48 hours before a big gig!

This video stuff is pretty nutty. Now I know why I went into AUDIO!

[Gerax]

Hello

I've been researching this same kind of infos a month or so ago before a gig I had around the half of December. It was a 4 camera shoot with me recording multitrack for a DVD release. I've been scrambling and talking a lot with the video crew about what solutions to choose to have a smooth running gig.
I've figured out what was the best setup, which ideally was to have the video black fed from the video crew's timecode and black burst generator (which was also feeding the 4 video cameras) and slave my setup to that with the use of a Sync device like the Digidesign Universal Slave Driver (getting black and TC and converting those to Word Clock and MTC to feed the recorders).
Well I had everything planned and mapped out, when the video guys (not newbies...an experienced team) told me all of this is almost unnecessary wehn working with digital video and digital post. I was a bit hesitant at first, but then I just fed a rough mix of my audio to each camera and that was it.
So far I've been mixing 3 of the show's songs, with extensive editing in Pro Tools (we recorded 2 dress rehearsals too, so as to have a virtual total of 12 cameras to choose from, with me recording audio too of course), and I have had very minimal sync problems, mostly due to the fact that the arranger of the music wants to do lots of cuts and build the songs piecing together cuts and edits from all of the takes...I've been at the video post studio where they are editing picture, and they can cut and manipulate video tracks just like we do with audio in Pro Tools. So getting the sync is not a big deal once they refer to my rough audio they capture with the corresponding video. Once locked the picture I get a DV or Mpeg video file which I load in my PT system and just sync its audio track to my editied track, and once I've gone down at sample level it's done, voilà, I just have to mix to picture. It could sound strange, but it works great without the need to resolve to timecode and video black at all...

Hope this helps

L.G.

[stirinthesauce]

Thanks L.G. for the reply,

The few shoots where we have done audio for so far have not been an issue and the final mixing crew would do it how you described. However, the terms were laid out in the contract, so, if we want to play ball this is how we have to do it, by the label's terms. This will be an HD shoot. We were trying to anticipate this and jump the gun by purchasing a nanosynch but the timecode generator was another link in the chain we were unaware of.

So, off to the rental company for the video crew