The Pocket is only $500 USD / £390 UKP this summer (very limited availability, buy now!) .

Frame Sync is the big problem:

Syncing two cams for 3D cannot be done in post - they need to be synced at the pixel level, ie. each camera should begin each frame at exactly the same time. In other words, this is a fractional-frame problem; but you can only correct whole frames in post (not counting pixel interpolators like Twixtor which can cause unacceptable artifacts in 3D).

Pro cameras are synced with 'Genlock' - basically a connection between the two cameras that tightly synchronises frame capture. Without this, the cameras have a random gap between frame starts, anywhere up to 1/2 frame. So if you shoot 24p, the cameras will be randomly out up to 1/48th of a second, and you have no way to predict what that error will be at any given time. In 3D this is catastrophic, at least if there is any significant motion in the frame. The delay pushes moving objects forwards or backwards in 3D, and can also cause a weird shimmering effect. And forget high motion which looks awful.

Solutions:

1) hardware mod: do true genlocking by linking the cameras' capture timers or master clocks somehow at the circuit board level). This is perfect, but tricky/risky and requires skill and experience.

2) Simul-power workaround (this is what we use on the Panny GHs, and works on many others): you power-up both cameras at exactly the same time (usually with external power and a dual-switch or a custom circuit). Many cameras synchronize their frame capture from a global running clock, which is initialised at boot and never changes. So it doesn't actually matter when you trigger record - the first frame capture is always locked to that clock (ie. it waits for the next frame 'slot' before starting recording). By simul-powering the bodies, those clocks start in sync on both bodies and frames are synced.

we don't know if this works on the Pocket yet.

Downside: as no two digital clocks run at exactly the same speed, the bodies slowly drift out of sync. How fast depends on how closely matched the bodies are - people usually try to get consecutive serial nos., hoping that the eletronics components are likely from the same batch and so a close match. My badly matched (2 month apart) GH2's are good for about 4-5 mins before the drift becomes bad. Apparently some drift far less. So you have to keep power-cycling.

Problem: The Pocket only powers up when a button is pressed ('soft' power). It needs to power instantly as soon as external juice is on (one idea, permanently tape the power button down - does it work?).

3) LANC. The Pocket apparently responds to the LANC 'record' command (but not power cmds). If we're really lucky and this resets the frame capture timers (unlikely), it might be enough.

4) Firmware:

If the capture timers are NOT reset by capture start, BMD could add this to a firmware update. Then LANC-initiated record would always start in sync (subject to gradual drift) - much nicer than having to power-cycle all the time. This might be super-easy for BMD to do.

Of course some kind of true hardware sync option (maybe via the USB or LANC ports) would be best! BMD could probably do it if they wanted to - contact them if you want this: http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/support (without demand it's unlikely to happen):

Exposure / Zoom sync:

Frame sync is the most important, but it would also be much nicer if exposure (iris, ISO, shutter-speed), focus etc settings could also be synchronised, ideally in real-time (one body acts as master, one as slave). Firmware or LANC command additions could do this.

With the pocket's small size, ultra-light and compact SBS (side-by-side) 3D rigs are possible. With 'body stacking', you can even get the lenses as close as around 70mm! With Speedboosters and fast lenses you can do lowlight and shoot wide (my target), and you have 10bit ProRes and 12bit RAW. Let's make it happen!

I shoot with a hacked Panasonic GH2, mostly Flowmotion V2. My upload codecs are usually h264 .mp4 varying from 24fps to 50fps. Nothing too extreme. When rendered and exported everything is pretty much synced. But on Youtube they are off.

I work on a Macbook Pro Retina (late 2014) 2.2 Ghz Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM

Does anyone know why or how to fix this? Or is it just me and am I going crazy.

It's a question about the sync issue. I do a number of long events, mainly plays, that run 90 minutes or so. I've been hearing that the Tascams drift out of sync after an hour or so. Haven't heard as much about the Zooms (save for people shooting PAL). So the first question is whether the Tascams have been fixed on this point, or if the Zoom H4N will or won't drift out of sync with my video.

I understand that I can plug these recorders into my camera's mike port, and record directly onto the video. If I do this, then I have two questions. The first is how the camera records this: does it record multiple tracks onto separate audio streams? Or does it consolidate it into a mono audio track? The second is whether the record can record its own multitrack audio file while it's feeding the camera something. (This'd make post-synching easier, and give me more options for audio mixing.)

On mac, when adding the AppleScript command lines

on run do shell script "open -n /Applications/VLC.app" end run

on open theFiles repeat with theFile in theFiles do shell script "open -na /Applications/VLC.app " & quote & (POSIX path of theFile) & quote end repeat end open

be sure that the path to VLC.app is the correct one ;-)
4 further comfort, place droplet in doc then just drop files
gashô

 
PC users may also want to have a look at open source Kinovea
If you do "test it" drop a line of feed, thanks

1. via an infra-red trigger, which currently i beleive only works with the 5dmk ii, or
2. through a wire from the Fostex to the remote port on the camera.

Oh, and they advertise it with "easy to use". It´s not. (well maybe when it´s set up and properly functioning; it´s easy to zoom, pan & tilt and make presets, however when you need to dig into the menus you need their equally abysmal manual) It´s the most counter-intuitive piece of equipment I´ve used.

I have a small mxf and quicktime pips session for pro tools alignment if anyone wants it PM me.

The standard method for ADR is to replay the video scene back to the actor on a monitor while they try to sync their replacement dialogue with the original recording. However this still somewhat hit and miss because the actor is almost always either lagging or leading their original dialog.

Why? Because they cannot exactly see the precise moment when each word begins until it has begun, at which point they are often late. Alternatively they try to second guess the timing and pre-empt themselves.

Instead of playing back their original scene as a cue give this a try.

Let the actor view the audio waveform of their original dialog on a NLE video monitor... a bigger monitor is obviously better than smaller one.

Minimise the amount of dialog on the screen at any one time to ensure the waveform of each individual word/phrase is clearly defined on the screen. If there is a lot of background noise contaminating the dialog then either remove it or at least minimise it so the individual waveforms for each word are clearly visible with well defined starts and endings.

Let them watch the screen while you loop the section of dialog several times over. Point to the cursor as it moves horizontally across the screen so they can see as the cursor hits the start of each section of waveform representing each spoken word of the orignal recording.

As they watch the cursor cycle across the screen they will quickly identify which section of waveform corresponds to which word they're hearing and thus deliver each word the moment the cursor just reaches the start of each section of the corresponding waveform.

With a little practice they should now find it easier to achieve fairly accurate sync and they can then concentrate more on the delivery and emotion.

Try it yourselves. You should find it is much easier to achieve accurate sync than by simply watching an onscreen video of the original take.

Of course capturing good sound on location is always preferable.