I emailed Zeitx a few days ago, and received this reply this morning:

"The Lanc-Lump is currently out of stock until later this month....
Price is £120 (~$230)."

I just received the same message. Let's see...

Thanks Steve for this long answer. It is really incredible what I learn here, I really appreciate this.

Two things I still don't get:
In Avid there is a function called "Read Audio Timecode". You can use it to fill in AuxTC1 read from the LTC recorded to one of the audio channels. Then you can sync your Video to the audio based on the timestamp in the BWF header.
(In FCP there is no such function (yet) but there are the 1.5 software solutions I mentioned before, which auxTC looking very promising.)

Do you agree with me up to here? If yes, why do you say that timecode recorded to an audio channel of the camera serves no useful purpuse?

The second thing is about two devices _staying_ in sync: Ambient speaks of a drift of less than 1 frame per 24 hours. Even if this may not be a real world figure it still should be ok for a couple of hours, at least from what I read on these forums and here from my friends. So worldclock has no real world relevance for this kind of setup. I do not need perfect snyc, < 1 frame is enough.
Do I see something wrong here? You seem to know much more about these things than I do. Please correct me.


Martin

I can't speak with first-hand knowledge about things Avid and don't know what you mean when you refer to "fill in AuxTC1."

I doubt Ambient is fudging their figures but that's talking about a set of Lockit boxes tuned to a Clockit master staying together within a 1 frame tolerance for 24 hours. The question is, what is that precision going to be used for? If you're genlock syncing a camera to one of them or have several cameras and use syncronized Lockits on each so they're all synced to the master while a Lockit generating wordclock takes care of syncing the audio recorder, you're golden. But that's not what you're talking about doing.

I mean: FPC and Avid allow for auxilliary timecode, meaning you can have a timecode referring to your reel as well as a timecode referring to an external source associated with one single clip. So the "Read Audio Timecode" takes LTC from audio channel 1 or 2 and makes it available as auxiliary tc for sync purposes.

And what does that get you that a TC slate visible in frame at the start of the take and lined up with the corresponding time mark in the NLE's timeline doesn't? Without the camera and audio recorder's sample clocks being slaved to each other during the shot, the audio and picture can still drift out of out sync with longer shots and the LTC recorded in the camera doesn't do anything to help bring them back together. All it seems you've achieved for all the trouble and expense is at best you've saved a couple of mouse clicks in the process of matching the start marks for picture and sound for each clip imported.

Without the wordclock being jammed the audio will drift on very long takes but sending TC to channel two does provide a quicker post workflow in Avid, not sure about FCP. After you use channel two to set AuxTC you can then just use AutoSync and Avid matches all your audio and video instantly. No need to hand sync each clip.

I have used this workflow many times and it works seemlessly, except as you pointed out, the drift you get on long takes. But that will also happen if you sync to slate. If you slate the head and tail on a long take you can determine the drift and adjust all your long takes as needed.

William

Just FYI, Zeitx has not had the best reputation for delivering product.
There was a time code slate that had a very attractive price point, but many (all?) folks that tried to order it never got their slate. Just a heads-up if you are considering ordering from them.