Recording to the RED
westendr...@comcast.net
I'm doing a shoot Friday with the RED (Build 17, not sure of the
version), and the client wants to record the 4 direct outs from my 442
to the line in's of the RED. Obviously I'm trying to discourage him
but he doesn't want to mess with separate audio files in post. So the
questions are:
1) Can the RED now be trusted to record quality audio tracks?
2) If I can record audio on my 744T, what is the best way to sync the
744T and the RED?
3) Do I still need to use the attenuator/impedance matching cable SD
recommends?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Ken Dabek
West End Recording
Richard Crowley
<westendr...@comcast.net> wrote ...
On tour in Romania with a RED and having problems keeping it from
crashing on long-form (2 hour) concert recordings. Shorter takes OK
Appears to have some form of on-screen metering of audio levels now.
But it seems to have some sort of built-in limiting because even when I
try to overdrive the inputs, can't seem to get it to redline at 0dBFS ??
Using the audio cables from RED since you need to adapt to the mini-
XLR connectors anyway.
posted from Targu Mures, Romania
dre...@gmail.com
I have done lots of shoots with the RED, i definitely don't trust the
RED for audio, i would go to the 744t and either use a timecode slate
or jam the 744t to the RED.
johnpaul215
My understanding is that build 17 would mean it is NOT the new audio
board. I did a shoot with build 17 in February. The owner of the RED
(on set as a DIT etc) told me they were a ways off from calling in his
for return, but i think they had started? They do them in order of
serial number, and it's possible they are going to encourage people to
just upgrade to the Epic anyway.
1) People have gotten totally usable audio off the RED, but it sounds
like everyone runs a dual system.
Personally i talked to production and convinced them that the audio is
unreliable and we should just run a mono scratch track (either by a
single XLR or a comtek). Big thanks to Gotham Sound and Off Hollywood
Digital for their Audio on the RED seminar last fall. You can watch
that presentation via the Gotham Sound website.
2) do you mean while shooting or in post? To keep the timecode synced
you still need something like a Lockit or the cheaper Denecke SB-3.
The RED loses TC when you do a battery change. A slate isn't a bad
idea for backup. Do you mean sync the audio? You would need a 4
channel snake, and maybe another line for monitor return. RED also
warns people not to use the headphone jack "for critical audio
monitoring". Are there audio Line-outs? I don't even remember if there
are, if they work, and what you can assign to them. Sorry. I found a
system that worked and we went with it. I was happy, production was
happy, camera department was really happy when we just used a comtek.
3) With the original audio board it seems like Sound Devices still
suggests their version of the padded cable. http://www.sounddevices.com/notes/cameras/red-one/
The two RED shoots i did were features, and i convinced production
that we should only send the RED a scratch track. I checked to see
that there were levels, but i never monitored them.
People say that you should think of the RED like you are shooting on
film. The ability to sync TC (with a 3rd party box) and put on some
audio is just pure bonus. I know it's not my place to say it, but if
somebody wants to convenience of HD cams and the ability to record
reliably usable audio, there are a lot of other cameras out there. The
image of the RED is amazing, but at this point it still requires doing
things a little different. I will say that i have never heard anyone
regret shooting on the RED based on image quality. It really does look
fantastic.
-johnpaul golaski
Oleg Kaizerman
few years ago when everyone ( especially USA native) TRIED TO CONVINCE ME
HOW BAD AND NOT RELIABLE THE SOUND what off course complete bulshit and
since then I did few thousand hours without one problem ,
so john build 18 with new audio boards sounds as good as cina alta and
you don't need padding cables .
you want to do few shekels tell the production it not reliable ok but
suggest that the camera able for scratch track only - comman .
by the way my current gig is on red and if it wasn't steadycam 80% of the
time my deva was staying at home
"johnpaul215" <xjohn...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:80be8d09-2227-41e9...@c36g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
johnpaul215
> the fear of recording or not recording on red remind me stupid debates
> few years ago when everyone ( especially USA native) TRIED TO CONVINCE ME
> HOW BAD AND NOT RELIABLE THE SOUND what off course complete bulshit and
> since then I did few thousand hours without one problem ,
>
> so john build 18 with new audio boards sounds as good as cina alta and
> you don't need padding cables .
> you want to do few shekels tell the production it not reliable ok but
> suggest that the camera able for scratch track only - comman .
> by the way my current gig is on red and if it wasn't steadycam 80% of the
> time my deva was staying at home
I guess Ken never said what type of project he was working on, but he
said it's build 17 and my understanding is that build 17 definitely
means old audio boards. I heard build 18 (with the new audio boards)
bring the RED up to the standards of other HD cams. I just haven't
worked with one of those yet.
My RED work was doing features. One of them was really 80 percent
handheld (no budget for steadycam). The other had a few steadycam
shots that were 4+ minutes. Not going to run any cables there. I
recorded audio to my PD-6 and production wanted isolated tracks. There
were cases where we were using more than 4 tracks of audio anyway.
When i am doing a feature, i always record to my PD-6.
If i was doing some sort of one day corporate or ENG job, then who
knows. I have never done anything like that on a RED. I've also never
shot anything in a studio on a RED. It's usually a bit more hectic
than that. I also have done a few features with a producer that used
to prefer my not to run any audio to the camera. We did a film with a
Vericam and he wanted the camera's on board mic running for reference,
and me to mix to my 2-track recorder. No cables between sound and
camera.
I also got burned on a feature where the "pre-editor" mashed all the
audio to one track and told production i only gave them a mono track
(that somehow included the camera mic). My copy of the audio
recordings were important in that case.
Of course i say all this while doing a docu-reality ENG job where i
don't even carry a tiny backup recorder in my bag.... but that's
another story. You do what the job requires.
-johnpaul
Rainman
I would love to see the cable that you plan to connect the mixer and
camera together with! That would be one big heavy cable. But perhaps
you are going to get four TA3 to XLR, then zip tie four mic cables
together of the same length and then have four more XLR to TA3 going
into the camera, That would suck even more.
Sounds like the producer does not know how to find the 'Auto sync'
button in the Avid or F.C.P
> 1) Can the RED now be trusted to record quality audio tracks?
Of course it can be trusted to record Audio, just hope that the audio
settings in the camera don't reset themselves when it crashes twenty
times a day
> 2) If I can record audio on my 744T, what is the best way to sync the
> 744T and the RED?
Run Time of Day on your 744T and jam the RED with timecode and then
Rejam the RED every time it crashes or they change a battery. Look in
the camera case if there is a dual battery holder, that way they can
swap batterys without loosing timecode.
> 3) Do I still need to use the attenuator/impedance matching cable SD
> recommends?
Just ensure that the RED comes with four audio input cables, usually
they only have one. Use the cables that come with the camera, as you
can't tell if they are padded or not. Just remember there are no
reference levels on the RED. You can't match tone from your mixer up
with anything on the camera as there are no matching -20 or -12
markings on the camera meters.
If you can't persuade the producer to change his mind on the cable,
make sure you leave plenty of time to test before you start shooting
and make sure you roll your 744T all the time as a back up.
johnpaul215
> I would love to see the cable that you plan to connect the mixer and
> camera together with! That would be one big heavy cable. But perhaps
> you are going to get four TA3 to XLR, then zip tie four mic cables
> together of the same length and then have four more XLR to TA3 going
> into the camera, That would suck even more.
> Sounds like the producer does not know how to find the 'Auto sync'
> button in the Avid or F.C.P> 1) Can the RED now be trusted to record quality audio tracks?
I have a feeling that people will be wanting 4 channel snakes, or the
wireless equivalent, more and more in the coming years.
> Of course it can be trusted to record Audio, just hope that the audio
> settings in the camera don't reset themselves when it crashes twenty
> times a day
My only experience is features, and there is not the same kind of rush
that other jobs would have. That being said, I've done two features on
the RED with builds 16 and 17 and we never had a single random crash.
The closest thing we ever had was bad boots after changing a battery.
The owner of the RED was on site as the DIT/unloader/tech/whatever and
showed the camera department how to tell pretty immediately when it is
a bad boot. The more recent builds have boot time down to something
like 90 seconds (as opposed to maybe 4 minutes in the past?). In most
cases people on set would never even notice if it took an extra 90
seconds to start shooting again. Considering it takes longer than that
for a light to be tweaked or last looks.... it's not a big deal.
While i have not had any crashes, i am not sure it's quite ready for
crazy run+gun reality/news/whatever shooting in case it did crash in a
bad way. The RED One is probably too heavy for that anyway. I'm pretty
sure ours clocked in close to 50 lbs with lenses and everything when
it was fully built. The DP learned to love that after doing tons of
handheld. That might be something better suited for the Scarlet if
it's really lighter.
> 2) If I can record audio on my 744T, what is the best way to sync the
> > 744T and the RED?
>
> Run Time of Day on your 744T and jam the RED with timecode and then
> Rejam the RED every time it crashes or they change a battery. Look in
> the camera case if there is a dual battery holder, that way they can
> swap batterys without loosing timecode.> 3) Do I still need to use the attenuator/impedance matching cable SD
> > recommends?
>
> Just ensure that the RED comes with four audio input cables, usually
> they only have one. Use the cables that come with the camera, as you
> can't tell if they are padded or not. Just remember there are no
> reference levels on the RED. You can't match tone from your mixer up
> with anything on the camera as there are no matching -20 or -12
> markings on the camera meters.
> If you can't persuade the producer to change his mind on the cable,
> make sure you leave plenty of time to test before you start shooting
> and make sure you roll your 744T all the time as a back up.
VERY GOOD POINT about the 4 input cables... the RED ships with one
padded XLR-TA3 and most owners don't seem to buy more. Check on that
beforehand if you are going to try to put four tracks of audio on the
camera.
-johnpaul
philper
camera. For lots of jobs that's fine, for a feature having the audio
on an audio recorder would be preferable in my opinion, I just think
it sounds better. My main beefs with doing audio to the Red are that
it's monitoring is very incomplete (stereo only), it has those weeny
connectors and the TC is even more flaky than other current video
cameras. My audio issues with the RED have mostly come in the
download and processing/conversion of the files, and that's the main
reason to run a backup recorder. But, in truth, I think it's a good
idea to run a backup recorder on shoots with ANY video camera anymore,
especially one that uses cards or drives that have to be downloaded on
the set and then erased for further use.
Philip Perkins
westendr...@comcast.net
record a back-up, but they still want to record all of the 4 audio
tracks to the RED so I'll still have to run a bunch of cable to the
camera, thank God I have a 4 channel snake that will make that
connection a little more acceptable. I also built 4 padded cables
yesterday so that shouldn't be a problem.
As far as syncing I have a Clockit that I can feed the RED's TC input
with but do you think it's necessary to genlock the camera with the
Clockit as well?
BTW this is a commercial shoot and the camera will be on a dolly most
of the day so it probably isn't much of an issue how much crap I hang
off of it.
Ken
philper
I would suggest not using the genlock function of the Lockit and just
using it to feed TC to the Red in its
jam-on-record mode.
Philip Perkins
Richard Crowley
> On tour in Romania with a RED and having problems keeping it from
> crashing on long-form (2 hour) concert recordings. Shorter takes OK
The videographer updated the RED camera to the latest build and it
seems to remain stable long enough for a 2+hour concert shoot.