Feeding cameras common TC (was -Jamming Time Code?)
 

I'm not sure if this is the proper forum to raise this question, and I even think I know the answer, but technology progresses so rapidly, who knows? And I read that some of these drives have a way of recording time code but it's not clear what the implications are.

In a few months I'll be doing a three or four camera shoot. As of now we will be using XL-1 and XL-1s - in other words, MiniDV which has no NTSC timecode and does not, as far as I can tell, accept externally generated code.

I've shot multi-camera Mini-DV, and even DVCAM, but keeping the cameras in sync in post is always a huge problem, especially when we are editing 8 hours x # of cameras. I've thought of recording directly to disc, but other than saving us the time to digitize, I don't know if it'll help us.

IS there any way of feeding common time code to several cameras? It doesn't have to be NTSC as long as we can easily sync them in post.

Thank you in advance.

Hi Ozzie,

If you are going to be editing on an Avid. You can use portable TC generators mounted on all of the cameras and have them record onto one of the audio channels of each camera. Avids (at least Avid way back when I was working with them) could display TC from the audio track.

I hope that is a help

Daniel,

Thank you for the suggestion. Boy, that's really the "old" way. It's so crazy it just might work. The only concern with TC on the audio channel is bleed through, as in the old days.

Just don't turn the input volume up too loud :')

I would also be interested in any other solutions.

Hi Ozzie,

It might be worth your while to wait until the FS-4 Pro is released.