shooting S8 film with the DVD medium as the final product.

[eric@earthid.org]

first off, thanks for helping me with my other threads ... very helpful and i apreciate it respectfully. i am hoping to avoid the 'good judgement comes from experience and most experience comes from bad judgement' scenerio as it relates to my current ebay(ericmartinjarvies) equipment purchases. about this thread, let me explain and elaborate<p>

i have purchased 10 beaulieu cameras (ZM, ZMII, ZMIII, and ZMIV models), over 20 c-mount lenses(nikkor 8mm, pacific optical 3.45mm, angenuix 5.9mm, century 3.5mm and 5.7mm, and 10, 12.5, 25, 26, 50, 75, and 250mm switar/yvar preset/macros, and century optics wide angle and 16x9 and some older anamorphic kowa lenses), adapters, converters, battery solutions, filters, matteboxes, shades, etc.<p>

i am now bidding on mics, audio recording equipment, digital slates, and lighting equipment. i am still not in complete understanding of the whole crystal-sync, denecke tsb3 timecode slate, and the actual sound recording device(be it a nagra tape, tascam dat, or a walkman minidisk or dat device) situation. let me explain. i have absolutely NO intentions of going to the big screen, or any film projected screen with my final products. instead, am making childrens DVD titles going strait to you guessed it ... the little TV screen. so what is my best route here folks? i plan on editing everying on this nle computer system i purchased and making my own master dvd. in doing so, i am natually going to be editing ALL of the sound and film images on the computer. so i will need to transfer the S8mm film to digi-beta, and then digest it onto the hard drive as TIF's or TGA files at the highest possible resolution quality. this will require a telecine. so, assuming i have the converted film footage, what about my audio? do i even need timecode? if i record my audio using a little walkman DAT, am i going to have a difficult time sync'ing the sound to the film? can i avoid having to purchase the crystal sync's, the audio technica mixer, the tascam dat(or nagra tape), and the timecome slate? or do i have to telecine the sound at the same tiem as the film/visual? please explain all wise and mighty ones who has already paid the price of ignorance on this subject matter. <P>

i mean, if i can simply use clapper slates as the films visual mark and the sound recorders audable mark, then that would save me a ton of money. doe the latest sound editing software allow for easy correction of sound sync? <p>

-film gets transfered using telecine to digi-beta. it is now 30fps?<p>
digi-beta is digested onto computer at 30fps<p>
-audio was recorded onto a walkman and is simply digested onto the computer ... but what is the fps equivelant with the audio i have recorded?<p>
-once both video and audio are on computer(i am not using the word digital becasue the audio originated as a digital recording), now using finalcut pro, can these be sync'd in this environment without much effort(or using any other nle software ... i am open for suggestions)<p>
<p><p>

ok .. i hope this was articulated correctly. please help me as i am again suffering from fits of ignorance.

[Lucas Lightfeat]

Hi Eric,

If you are in a PAL area of the world, I would advise you to get your best camera crystal converted to 25fps, or 24fps for NTSC. This is important. Why have you bought 10 cameras? I advise you sell at least five of them and pay for crystal sync for the rest, and film, glorious film.

Record to DAT or Minidisc. I suggest you forget about Nagra and timecode altogether - they are very expensive, cumbersome and quite un-necessary. Timecode is really for theatrical release, and Nagra is just an expensive pain in the analogue arse. Seriously - Buy a good proffessional white slate with magnets. Syncing up will be super-easy in PAL, and after "pulldown" during telecine, fairly easy in NTSC too.
Once sound and picture are in the NLE, you just slide them to the slate clap in a few seconds, and lock them together - so long as both are recorded sync, you'll be laughing at how easy it is.

One last thing - buy really good shotgun mics, and commission a damned good sound blimp for those noisy cameras of yours.

Good luck,

Lucas

[eric@earthid.org]

hello,<p>
i have purchased 10 cameras from ebay assuming 1/2 of them will have problems. i will take all of them and test them and figure out what works and what does not work. i will then restore them using the worst of the lot, until either all, or the majority, or or god forbid, half of them are working exactly as they should. i live in mexico and it just makes more sense for me to do it this way ... they are not that expensive at $200-300 a pop. i will be using 2 of them in the water. two on the wings of a plane, and the others for regular dry ground stuff, including on motorcycles and car, which will be subject to wrecks due to the nature.<p>

ok, regarding the crystal sync, i have found 2 companies that sell these devices ... super8sound.com will sell me the actual circuit and the film group will not sell direct, but will install in their facility accordingly. i am not certain what the differance is between the two, but i think i will buy one of each and take them to a circuit construction engineer frind of mine and see if i cant make my own for less money.<p>

why do i need to sync the film to the audio if using a dat to record? why not just record and listen for the clap and align the film up with the sound via nle? why is the crystal sync needed? i still do not understand why it is needed if editing digitally and going to dvd, and not to film.

[Lucas Lightfeat]

why do i need to sync the film to the audio if using a dat to record? why not just record and listen for the clap and align the film up with the sound via nle? why is the crystal sync needed? i still do not understand why it is needed if editing digitally and going to dvd, and not to film.

The crystal sync units are needed for your cameras because they do not run at exctly the speeds they say they do, unless they have crystal units. It may say 24fps, but it will give you 23.4 fps or 24.6fps and be uneven, so it will drift out of sync in a couple of seconds without a crystal, which will regulate it at exactly 24.00000 fps or 25.00000 fps for PAL transfer. This is true of all Super8 cameras without crystal units. It is important. I own a crystal unit from TFG, and it is fine, but if Super8sound can give you an internal unit at a similar price, I would go for that.

Lucas

[ericMartinJarvies]

thanks for your help. so, no matter what, it is absoluty crucial to have a constant frame rate? one can not simply use the slate mark on the image and the slate sound on the audio to set the in and out points, and simply stretch or squeeze the sound on the computer? what you are saying is, perhaps the frames inbetween will not be a constant speed, it could jump up and down?

[Lucas Lightfeat]

Sure, you can stretch and squeeze it, but it sounds like you've got the money and want to do it properly - I mean, timecode? You don't need timecode at all. If you're going to digibeta, get a crystal unit or two - it is a matter of priorities, and I would say crystal units are important, as is sound muffling, so get a good blimp too, good mics and a recorder with XLR inputs, such as the Marantz PMD 650.

Lucas

[ericMartinJarvies]

ok, so timecode is not required. simply consistant frame rate from the cameras. i have purchased the SENNHEISER 816T MIC and a nice boom pole for it. it has the zepplen and a furry wig of sorts. should i purchase more then one of these? or other types? also, what about the actual recording unit ... is the sound recording quality any differant between a walkman dat and a portable dat like the tascam? if i use more then one mic i should use a mixer inbetween the mics and the recording unit, correct? so what do you think about the sound recorder ... what will give me the best recording quality? then, how does a walkman dat recorder rate against the other portable pro dats like the tascam?<p>

so i will crystal synce all the cameras then.