We just discovered an audio/video sync problem in which the audio slowly drifts out of sync over time and may actually get corrupted.

Therefore we are temporarily pulling the latest firmware for the nano (1.1.150) and XDR (1.1.148) from the website until this issue is resolved (hopefully tomorrow). If you have a critical shoot we recommend that you roll-back to the previous version of firmware.

We apologize for any problems this may have caused. We are modifying our test procedures to do a more comprehensive test of A/V sync in the future.

Best-

Mike, I think I might be experiencing this problem. I noticed audio out of sync for the first time since I've owned the XDR. It wasn't over a long period of time though, this was on a 30 minute recording!

I'm still not sure of the cause. I am going to do some testing RIGHT NOW. I have an important shoot coming up and I can't have this issue to worry about.

Can I downgrade firmware?

Hi Aaron-
Yes, you can downgrade the firmware, no problem. We think the problem is now corrected, but will spend today in test, just to confirm. Hopefully we can post new code tomorrow.

Sorry for the headaches.

Best-

Ok Mike, I've tested it. This is a serious issue and it's much worse than a couple of frames out of sync. I pointed my camera at the TV and let it fill up 4 cards. I took the 4th card and measured the the audio drift.

It's 128 frames at the HEAD of the card. I'd say that's a little more than a small drift problem. You should be notifying every single one of your customers about this ASAP.

I'm going to downgrade my XDR right now. I can't express how disappointed I am about this. I'd be even more disappointed if I had been working for a client and discovered this after a shoot had wrapped.

Hi Aaron-
Understood, it appears the firmware fix is working properly. Hope to release tomorrow. We are sending an e-mail this afternoon to all the nano/XDR users.

I apologize for the problem.

Best-

With all the vocal people we have on this forum, I'm really surprised that I'm the only person who posted in this thread.

Perhaps we should wait for them to get home from work first???

I'm just glad no one ruined a shoot because of this issue.

I've rolled back my XDR firmware and tested with a 2 hour continuous record and everything looks and sounds A ok.

With all the vocal people we have on this forum, I'm really surprised that I'm the only person who posted in this thread.

Hello Dan,
I just complete a recording of a few show in SD and the visual quality was fantastic. I have just ingested my vision from the compact flash cards to discover my audio is 6 seconds behind the vision. Well after a lot of thought and looking at the setup the only thing that I can see that may have caused this is the prerecord buffer. I remember when the buffer was activated in case I missed a cue that the time code on the NanoFlash advanced by 6 seconds prior to recording. When playing back SD clips on the NanoFlash the time code is not present."
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Hello Aaron,
I posted my problem with the audio sync issue on the 29th November in the MPEG-2 Audio Sync thread. I also advised CD by email of my issue while it was a problem I was also recording to Dvcam tape as I had not proven the system works with my hardware setup. I was able to still complete my work although I would have preferred the image quality of the Nano.

Whoa Lance. I see that you did. I need to pay better attention to the forums from now on.

I've got a 10 day shoot for a short starting on MONDAY. It's a really low budget short but I can't imagine explaining to the client that their scratch tracks are really just that, scratch. They'll have to sync up their audio manually. That would not be a fun conversation and I'd probably even offer them some money back.

Hello Aaron,
I have found that the audio drift was not as bad with the prerecord buffer turned off but because the audio in channel two was intermittent and drifting at a different rate to channel one it was a nightmare to try to resync so it was quicker to re ingest from tape.

Yeah I ruined a recording the other night and I wasn't sure what the cause was. It was an ingest from tape via an AJA component to SDI. No prerecord buffer but the audio was totally messed up. I figured it was my AJA component to SDI causing the problem and it's a pain to drag all that stuff out and hook it back up to try and track down what was going wrong.

At least now I don't have to.

We passed all the A/V sync tests today with the new XDR/nano firmware. We did a number of short and long term tests. The audio stayed in sync and was not corrupted.

We have a few more tests tomorrow morning. Assuming everything passes, we will post the new code on Friday afternoon.

I apologize for the mistake. However, you will be happy to hear that HDMI pull-down removal is now working. We also added the 2:3:3:2 pull-down cadence (previously we only supported 2:3:2:3). Hopefully, we can now detect the pull-down cadence on the JVC 700 camera.

Loop recording, hot-swap and 8-channel audio are planned in the next major release.

Best-

HI Mike:
I'm glad you folks at CD were on top of this as quickly as you were. I did the firmware upgrade to this the other day and focused my testing on the new Jam Sync feature and not the audio testing. Please be advised that the Jam Sync feature is also not working on the XDR with 24 F but works well at 59.94i. I hope you folks will resolve the Jam Sync issue with 24 F soon.

Respectfully,

Dear Mark,

Thank you for the report.

We will test this today.

Dear Mark,

We have fixed the jamsync issue that you were having with Canon 24F.

We expect to post a new release, with this fix included, this afternoon.

Hi Dan:
Thank you for that info and all those fixes. :-)

Respectfully,

Still scared of the new fix, with 24 hours of regression testing.

We just posted new XDR / nano firmware that corrects the A/V sync issues. We tested the sync for several hours without any problems.

The new firmware also adds pull-down removal over HDMI, corrects an analog audio input channel flip (L <-> R), adds 2:3:3:2 pulldown cadence, and corrects the LTC Jam sync for 24p formats.

The new firmware version is 1.1.154 for the nanoFlash and 1.1.151 for the XDR.

Best-

Hi Mike:
There's many fixes in such a short notice. Congratulations and thanks for this correction. The Nano & XDR took another step forward today.

Thank You.

I won't be on the bleeding edge with this firmware. We may need the jam sync on the shoot we start Monday but I'm going to convince them to sync the old fashioned way.

Hi Aaron:
If you are Jam Syncing to 59.94 i then don't worry, it is OK. If 24 p, then there is some pause for concern. However, I didn't do any testing with 24p - my testing was done with Canon's 24 F camera setting and using 3:2 pull down removal to achieve 23.98 fps on the XDR. I have no idea what 24p will do in Jam Sync since there's no 3:2 cadence to remove. Yes, I get your concern to not want to be experimental with a paying job until CD has got it right. (But they may not have 24p Jam Sync wrong to be fair) Why not try a test and see how Jam Sync is functioning with your camera ?

Hi Mark, I don't own any cameras that send out a sync signal so I have nothing to test against. If I were to sync at this job, I'd be syncing the XDR with the sound guys recorder and I'm not sure what capabilities he has on his recorder. We'll uncover that in the last production meeting before we start shooting. It's a single camera shoot so I don't worry about syncing with other cameras, just the sound guy so that post is easier.

We're recording scratch audio on the XDR in either case though so I don't imagine post will be too difficult.

accidents happen. always be careful before upgrading any firmware. I always run a backup recording with the sony sxs cards. glad I did. Just did a job for ESPN and I noticed the sync issues. always good to have a backup.

Hi Mark, I don't own any cameras that send out a sync signal so I have nothing to test against. If I were to sync at this job, I'd be syncing the XDR with the sound guys recorder and I'm not sure what capabilities he has on his recorder. We'll uncover that in the last production meeting before we start shooting. It's a single camera shoot so I don't worry about syncing with other cameras, just the sound guy so that post is easier.

We're recording scratch audio on the XDR in either case though so I don't imagine post will be too difficult....Hi Aaron: As long as the sound guy makes sure you and he are on the same TC reference (Not 24 F Right now !), then all should be well.

Hello to the CD Team,
Well done on a prompt fix to the audio sync problem your efforts a much appreciated. I have just complete three, three hour recording sessions with the NanoFlash in SD mode with the prerecord buffer on and the lip sync looks great. ( Problem solved)
I have compared the audio from parallel recordings to tape and a direct recording to hard disk via the Black Magic HD Extreme 3 card. I am unable to pick any loss of any frames.
Cheers

Hi Lance-
Appreciate the feedback. We now have long term A/V sync as part of our standard barrage of tests prior to each release. It's almost taking longer to test the code than to develop it.

Best-

Hi Mike,
I was in Toronto when I got the email from Tommy about the audio problem with .150 firmware one day to late.... The material I shot on set of "Cra$h & Burn" has that audio problem, but, the good news is, the audio will be used as a commentary over any of the picture material as it has been meant that way, no sync need it... Isn't that a nice coincidence?! Thank you for the fix. I posted a test result of .154 HDMI pull-down firmware on 2:3:3:2 tread if interested.
Cheers
Luben

Hi Luben-
Glad our mistake did not cause any real problems with your shoot. We are moving to a beta program on all future releases. We will post new code a week to two before formal release with a stern warning not to use this firmware for production use. We only hope enough users will in fact test the beta code and provide feedback with any problems/issues.

Best-

Hi Luben-
Glad our mistake did not cause any real problems with your shoot. We are moving to a beta program on all future releases. We will post new code a week to two before formal release with a stern warning not to use this firmware for production use. We only hope enough users will in fact test the beta code and provide feedback with any problems/issues.

Best-

Sounds like a decent idea. RED camera became stars of digital cinema by turning their entire user base into beta testers.

Hi Luben-
Glad our mistake did not cause any real problems with your shoot. We are moving to a beta program on all future releases. We will post new code a week to two before formal release with a stern warning not to use this firmware for production use. We only hope enough users will in fact test the beta code and provide feedback with any problems/issues.

Best-...Ahhh ! Finally ! Convergent Design does advanced beta testing before a release ! Watch me test ! Now this is great news ! This *is* the way to go ! :-)

Hello Mike,
I just put my Nanoflash back into service and I have noticed that we still an AV sync issue when recording MPG SD 7 Mbps. The audio about 1sec behind the vision I was under the impression that the AV snyc problems where fixed in Firware 1.1.154 ?

I have just created two DVD"s of the same vision, one using FCP and Compressor and the other using the NanoFlash recording directly from the time-line via Black Magic Extreme 3 SDI output. I must say I prefer the quality from the hardware conversion as it shows cleaner edges, better colours, less picture noise.

OOps sorry Guys ! I was responding to an old thread which I thought was a brand new problem. My apologies for this misunderstanding. I erased this post and replaced it with this info.

Thanks,

Mark