whats the whole deal with the manual saying do not use cables longer than 3 feet?

ima have to connect some pretty long XLR cables, one with phantom power and the other without. does longer than 3 feet drop quality??

thanks
~janson

It's BS. You can run cables as long as you need with no trouble.

wrd, thank bill,

also, b/c recording on two different channels, (i never had the ability before) when capturing into FCP, does the clip come with a video track, and 2 different audio tracks b/c of two different inputs?

one XLR input will be a guitar and another will be a microphone.

As long as you set the audio to 2 mono during capture (in FCP's log and capture window) the audio tracks will be separate. If you don't, not a big deal, you will just have to unlink the tracks by selecting them and pushing Option-L.

wrd, thank you a lot Edward,

hmm, but there is no way to hook up two stereo inputs and have 4 different tracks of audio with one video stream??

Not with the A1. Two audio channels for recording is all you get.

ok
thanks Tripp.

whats the whole deal with the manual saying do not use cables longer than 3 feet?
My manual says 3 m which is about 10 feet. Probably to reduce the problem with trip hazard, weight on the camcorder jacks, and issues with cable management. Longer cables work, but can be a pain to deal with in mobile situations.

However, the 10 foot figure is generally in line with the frequently recommended maximum cable length for unbalanced consumer line and unbalanced microphone connections, and it is also possible it is an artifact of that.

I think it must be a typo in the manual, 3 ft isn't very far with a hand held mic on location doing a piece to camera in a noisey environment!

I've used 5 metre very successfully, and not particularly good quality cable either. I think we paid about £30 for it ready made!