Re: field recorders, warning, sales pitch...

George,
Not to start a fight here, but you're obviously in a way different market than i am...
First:
[George Burbano] "But I can beat that edit in 10 sec. or less if the sound and video are recorded properly"
I beg to differ. Your proper workflow suggests running the cam 5 to 10 secs before sound. That means playback of app. 12 seconds before you get your cue. Then, place a marker or whatever (depending on your system).
Next, open sound file, find the cue, another 5 seconds at least. Insert, check for sync. At least another 5 seconds.
Make subclip and rename, (also depending on your system), another few seconds.
That is at least 25 seconds, even in a well prepared situation. No big deal when you're doing just a few clips, but when you have 100 shots and you have to finished your edit in half a day, spending almost an hour on syncing alone is, well, impossible (besides, that costs about 100 bucks over here...)
But this is not my main point:

[George Burbano] "As far as tapes go, never use a tape that hasnt been pre-striped.. That is before you use the tape, record a blank screen on the deck or camcorder, till the end. This way you will never have a timecode break.."
This is plain wrong. The only reason to pre-stripe is to give cams without a decent TC generator the ability to NOT have all tapes a zero based TC. All cams do assemble edits. If the cam op. looks back and does not park in the previous recorded footage but somewhere in the black, there will be (although a small) TC break, and definitly a control track break crapping out the batch digitizing.
Besides, when people use crap cameras that cannot even set a proper TC, they are definitly too cheap to hire somebody to pre-stripe their 2.31 dollar tapes for an hour in a deck that costs 10 times more than the cam...
With 20+ years of experience, i have never ever seen a cam original come in pre-striped....

This also isn't my main point...

[George Burbano] "Have someone write the Shot Sheet. (Write down the shot, TC start, Audio TC, etc..) The Sound person should be giving you a sound sheet also..)"
HUH? Another person on the shoot? Who's going to pay for that?
If you can manage a cable between the sound recorder and the cam, recording the LTC on one of the sound tracks is FREE.
If not, a transmitter (legal!) that can do the same without a cable costs, like 400 bucks? With that you save the labour AND the syncing problem. That's an absolute no-brainer.

The only time i've seen sound sheets are on high end (well, for me, in the industry it's mid end) docu's (budgets around 150K). Even there, the sound guy made them, not somebody else.

99% of the business has budgets under 20K (i must admit that's a wild guess). Speed is important. On most of the stuff i edit i do not even get to see the rough material.
No client of mine is willing to pay for me to manually sync, as it is way cheaper to transmit the sound to the camera, or have another system of syncing the sound recordings to the image.

Your suggestions are quite helpfull for those who have no budget but want to put in a lot of effort to get the best results.
Perhaps there are some old farts around that do not know any better and are willing to pay for lack of equipment, but i have never met them in my world.

Peace,



Bouke

www.videoToolShed.com
smart tools for video pro's