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Hi,  I shot this a few months ago and cut it together for this Women in Science charity.  I used ML on my 5Diii primarily for the focus peaking and compression tweaks.  Audio was recorded using a Roland R26 with a boom attached.  I had some shoulder rig which I borrowed - I can't remember which one.  I bought a loupe for the screen which was absolutely essential - it was a magnetic one which didn't quite fit but i'm resolved to buy a better one for the next shoot I do.  Lens was the totally excellent EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM for the most part with a EF 50mm 1.4 for some of the picked up GVs.

I put it together with Media Composer through AMA which worked better than I thought.  I synched the audio to the video by hand, which took a while but once i'd started it was easier just to finish it that way - i'll be looking for software to do this next time.  (I was disappointed to be reminded that the 5Diii is really a prosumer camera in terms of consistent TOD timecode - I know with proper video cameras the TC will slip about a bit over the course of a day, but the 5Diii was out by up to 30 frames between stop/starts over the 3 hours I filmed).

I'm not really a cameraman - I'm an editor in my day job - and I had to work quite hard to make this watchable.  Also, being an editor and used to being in quite a lot of control most of the time, I was pretty hard on myself during editing.  Also note, i'm an offline editor meaning it doesn't matter too much if i'm colourblind - which I am - so I know the grade's not perfect - I used a scope.

Anyway - let me know what you think.

Dan.

What is TC for?

If you use pro audio gear, or even just a simple external recorder, it's a massive time saver to have a master timecode clock.

For example - although ML has greatly improved the existing audio capabilities of canon cameras, it's still not that great.  A step up is to use an external audio recorder - an ok one will give you decent mixing control, xlr inputs with phantom power etc meaning you can use boom mics, radio mics etc.  You can also have huge multi channel setups where you might have up to 16 radio mics plugged in to a hard disk recorder.  This is all very good but without a means of synchronising this audio with the video it all gets very time consuming when it comes to the edit.  You might also have several cameras which all need to use the same timecode clock but that's another story.

Timecode can be encoded into an audio-compatible track and recorded on any device which records audio.  A pro camera usually has a socket marked LTC out and whichever timecode the camera is using, be it a preset timecode or 'time-of-day' timecode is generated and 'played' through this device.  You plug this into your audio recorder on a spare channel and then you've got a rock solid frame accurate sync track for use in editing.

I use avid and if theres an LTC track on any of my audio feeds I can just click 'read audio timecode' and auxiliary timecode tracking info is made available.  Meaning if I jump to 13:21:11:03 on the video track, I can jump to the same place in the audio and instead of using 2 ropey audio tracks I can choose from 16 radio mics, boom mics and whatever else they might have plugged in.

This saves time because otherwise you have to line up the audio to the video by ear - easier if you shot using clapper boards but still pretty time consuming.  I shot something a few months ago using a Roland recorder stuck on the top of my 5Diii.  I experimented with an iphone app which produced TC audio through the iphone's speaker (I waved it in front of my boom mic and the canon's built in mic whenever i started recording).  It was a bit rubbish and I got bored of doing it.  The following week I spent a good day synching up my audio with my video before even starting my edit.  Something else i noticed is the camera's internal clock wavers quite a bit throughout the day.  I was recording audio in hour or two chunks but recording video in 1 to 5 minute chunks and the offset between the audio and video wavered by up to a 2 seconds over an hour.

So, this particular implementation of timecode would involve you plugging a line from the headphone jack of the camera into a spare channel of your audio recorder and enjoying painless editing.

Anyway - TC is really handy depending on what you're shooting.

I'll give this a go on Media Composer later on.

Will let you guys know.

Just looking at this battery grip.

http://www.phottix.co.uk/Pages/grips.html

I don't really know how power consumption works but if a normal canon LP-E6 battery supplies 7.6 volts with 1800 mAh then how does that compare to 6x1.5 volt AA batteries at 6x3600 mAh each? (Lithium AAs)

Bags of shooting time or nothing like it?

Dan

Thanks very much.  You are crazily across this forum!

Any thoughts on the other stuff would be v. welcome.

Dan.

I'm doing a charity shoot in a few weeks with my 5diii.  It's just a day shooting an event - probably 3 to 6 hours of rushes depending on my self discipline.  I'm really a video editor with a photography hobby so although I know what I need to get, I dont have that much experience shooting with the 5d.  I've got sound covered with an R-26 and a boom, and I've got a loupe/evf type thing (which is great actually).

Anyway, I wondered if anyone knows what kind of battery life I can expect shooting with a non-is lens using focus peaking?

Also, has anyone shot with/ can recommend a variable ND?

And finally - i'm probably going to hire some kind of rig with a shoulder mount and a focus doo-dad - any ideas from experience?

Cheers,

Dan.

Sorry, misread your post.  I'm really interested in the SSD option too.  It'd be the absolute perfect solution.

1% - In terms of audio - i'm actually interested in LTC generation in camera, sent out of the headphone jack into a recorder (along with all of your other sound of course).  I'm a video editor and this kind of stuff on professional cameras is dead handy for syncing audio to video. (sorry to switch topics)

Stedda - Not SSD, the built in SD and CF.  There are a lot of posts on this site from people trying to get the very best performance from different cards/camera settings etc.  This might be a way to beat the limitations of both controllers by combining them, whilst not a true raid system you might be able to lever extra performance providing you can switch the data between the cards quick enough.

I very much know you're the expert.  20 percent seems quite a bit to me.  It'd be interesting to know if it's technically possible.  If the split point was fixed rather than dynamic I could see how recombining the frames on the desktop would be pretty straightforward - I don't know much about the in-camera side though.

Has anyone thought of this? (of course they have)  If the bottleneck is in waiting for the CF card to complete it's write cycle could you split the image say 70/30 between the CF and SD then merge them on the desktop?  Is it just a case of diverting the stream from one device to the other?

My other idea - which may turn out to be just as valid - is a large plastic bucket just underneath the cf card door, catching all of the data as it spills out.

2k (or 3k or 4k) refers to the horizontal resolution of the image, not the overall pixel count.  The sensor on the 50d is over 4k wide.  Is it the live view buffer you're talking about?

I'm really looking forward to someone giving the 40d a good go as it's sensor is lower res but still over 3k wide (and i've got one).