Multi professional cameras /
multi sound recordists

The scenario

Who’s on the shoot?

• Multiple sound recordists with mixers and back-up recorders (e.g. the SD552) using wired or wireless audio into a professional broadcast camcorder.
• Multiple cameramen using standard ‘start/stop’ tape run or ‘time of day’ timecode.

The challenge

Backing up sound to be in sync with the pictures of its associated camera. If running ‘time of day’ timecode, all pictures and audio needs to be synced throughout the day.

The set up

There are two alternative setups:

Option 1: Cameras and sound record as independent units running start/stop ‘tape run’ timecode.

• Treat each camera and sound as a ‘filming pair’ following the same steps as Sync 1.
• Each ‘filming pair’ needs to use a different RF channel.
• If the sound recordist switches to work with a different camera, they simply change their :wifi master to the channel the new camera is running.

Option 2: All cameras and sound recordists work as pairs within a multi-camera/cross-shooting environment.

• Treat as a Sync 2 multi camera/single sound scenario, with camera A as the ‘master unit’ and other cameras and sound as ‘slaves’.
• At the start of the day, sync all ‘slave’ Buddies from the ‘master unit’ Buddy.

The sync

The TOD timecode, user bits and frame rate of the ‘master unit’ Buddy will appear on the Timecode Buddy display screens attached to the ‘slaves’.

When ‘slaves’ are in signal range of the ‘master unit’ they will stay synced. If a ‘slave’ moves out of range, it will continue recording identical timecode accurately on its internal timecode generator (losing less than 1 frame in 24 hours). When it picks up the radio frequency again, its timecode output re-syncs to the ‘master unit’, without any jumps or corrupt timecode signals.