Posted by Tim S Kemp on 03/24/06 20:46

James <muzician21@zyahoo.com> wrote:
> You may have seen my post not long ago about running sound of a house
> PA board into a consumer camcorder to tape a friend's live
> performance.

> I know that with 2 consumer analog anything - VCR's, Cams, tape decks
> - running at the same time, it's guaranteed that the tapes are going
> to be off from each other and not be in exact lock step. Is this the
> same with Digital cams or is the fact that they're digital going to
> mean they're going to track precisely the same way?

I regularly use 2x XM2, a cheap canon consumer camera and an old Pansonic
camera, along with various rental sony / canon kit. Sometimes using
longplay, and over 1.5 hrs of tape none of the above drift. Tend to record
audio to minidisc, laptop or CD recorder HOWEVER have noticed some clock
drift on a CD player I was using for playback on a location job...

I never record from the desk to the camera for audio - XL1 is better than my
XM2 but still noisier than a pocket minidisc recorder. Record to camera to
give a backup and something to sync up to.

> I.e., when I get
> done, should I be able to load the contents off the digital tapes
> onto a computer and once some common point is aligned, they should
> both be in sync by default or no? I suppose I could manually shove
> the footage around to get it close enough for short periods but it
> would be a whole lot easier to just be able to transition from one to
> the other without all the jury-rigging.

Yep. Generally, although again I have limited experience. I always line up
the captures on the timeline using the audio (look for a peak in the
signal - or make one - a clapper is very useful). Once rolling don't stop...


--
Aggressive sweeping momentarily melts the ice, which lessens friction,
thereby lessening the deceleration of the rock, while straightening the
trajectory of the rock.

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