Tascam HD-P2 or Edirol R4 with a VX2000
 

As everybody knows the VX2000 audio has some problems....

I have the opportunity of use a Tascam HD-P2 or Edirol R4 for record the audio in a short video. How can I do for to assure a perfect synchro between sound recorded in the field recorder and the video.

I have no idea about so a detailed tutorial, explanation and recomendation about the correct process I must follow for that will be very useful.

thanks

FP

The easiest way is to use a clapper board procedure like they do in the movies. This gives you a visual and audio cue that you can sync. Just have your talent clap their hands once while on camera after you roll tape, then in post, sync the sound of the clap with the visual clap and that will get you very close. You can fine tune from there.

~jr

John's right, clapper is going to be your best bet unless you have editing software that can read BWF. http://www.edirol.com/press/html/200...ipping_pr.html

The R-4 has LANC control and can REC Start/Stop with the camera.

i do not see what you mean by "audio problems" on VX2000.
As most consumer market camera, the preamp is a bit noisy but if you go manual and feed the camera with a clean line-level signal it is ok.
the best yo can do is to mix everything on a good audio equipment and feed the camera with it.
You will get uncompressed 48khz recording perfectly in sync with video and no extra work required.

i actually just did this for the first time this weekend and my understanding is that it will work with any video camera that has an s-video out that sends out video while the camera is recording. here is what i had setup:

* Canon GL1 (NTSC version)
* Tascam HD-P2
* s-video Y/C splitter cable - went from GL1's s-video output to the HD-P2's video sync BNC connector (the Y (yellow) cable is the right one to use)

i then hooked my bass guitar into a P.A. and sent it's output to the HD-P2's XLR input and proceeded to play for 85 minutes until the DV tape in the camera was full.

on the Tascam i just had to set the clock source to "Video" and then to be safe i set the timecode framerate to 29.97DF. but the big thing here that threw me off is that in this scenario there isn't actually any timecode sent so you don't actually need to press the timecode button on the front of the unit. (if you do then the Tascam won't even let you record anything because it won't detect any incoming TC.) all you do is make sure the GL1 is sending video (i.e. it's turned on) and then the "settings" line will stop blinking and you can start recording on the Tascam.

but best of all is that i then dumped both the DV tape and the WAV file into Final Cut and lined them up, and it stayed perfectly in sync for the entire 85 minutes. that is a beautiful thing!

steve

The important things here are to get the sample rate set properly (48 KHz) and to have video available from the camera. Any video signal will do - composite, component or S (just be sure that the luma signal is connected if it is S or composite). Make sure the TASCAM is set to clock externally. You can enable or disable timecode as you wish but do not hit the timecode button on the front of the recorder as if you do that it will try to chase whatever is coming in on the timecode connector. If no timecode is connected you will not go into record.

If you do things this way the camera and recorder will run at the same rate for as long as you record. All that is left for you to do is align video and sound at one point. Everthing else will be together.

Another point is that you can do voiceover/ADR using the same setup. As long as the recorder has the video signal it will run at exactly the same rate as the transport in the camera wheter the camera is in record or playback modes.

If you do decide to use timecode the files will be tagged with that timecode. There are various bits of free and inexpensive software which will create time tagged Quicktime files from the BWFs. If you don't have any of these it is a relatively (you need to be able to convert hex to decimal) simple matter to locate the time code info in the file header data and then assign the starting timecode to the file in FCP.