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Is there a way to record timecode audio?

aebbcc

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I,m tryng to sync drone footage using deity tc-1 timecode generators. Is there a way to record audio with the evo 2 pro V3 and or the smart controller se?.
 
I,m tryng to sync drone footage using deity tc-1 timecode generators. Is there a way to record audio with the evo 2 pro V3 and or the smart controller se?.

I have never heard of such a thing, doesn't meant its not possible but I've never heard of it. Why do you need such a precise sync with drone footage? I typically don't worry about TC level camera sync unless I am shooting with multiple cameras and multiple audio that needs to be synced precisely. I've never needed that level of precision with drone footage. If its for a wedding or something like that the drone will be too far away to see their lips move.
 
Yeah, it is for multicam shoots, mostly live concerts. It will help a lot for sync.
 
Yeah, it is for multicam shoots, mostly live concerts. It will help a lot for sync.

I think you are out of luck, when I shoot live performances I mainly rely on the fixed ground cameras with audio or TC sync and for the drone work I just mix in a few seconds here and there of shots of the crowd or the stage, I don't try to sync the two exactly.....with the drone so far away (since it can't fly over people anyway), and the wide angle lens, no one can tell they aren't in sync.

If it's an active band and someone is jumping around on stage, then you might want to get the sync a bit closer, but unless you can see their lips moving to the audio there is no way to tell that it is not exact.

There might be a way to set up a visual TC sync where you put a visual TC clock in front of the drone camera and start recording each time before you take off then use that to sync later.....but I don't know about you but they don't pay me enough to try to be that precise, if my clients had that kind of budget I would be lifting Reds into the air with proper TC sync.

Something like this is what I had in mind. You would run the TC signal into this device, then place it in front of the drone before each flight, hit record on the drone camera, then not stop recording while in the air until you are returning to land. Not very efficient, a lot of wasted video as well, and you would still need to manually find the TC points in the ground video cameras to sync with, but it would be precise and easier than manually syncing. I looked up Deity TC generators (I use Tentacle Sync) and it looks like they have a visual TC output on the side of them so maybe all you would need to do is sit one of them in front of the camera instead of buying something else.
 
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I understand, that will be a way of doing it. But if i could record audio on the controller like i`ve seen some people do it with some other drones, then i could feed audio tc directly through it and sync it automatically.
 
I understand, that will be a way of doing it. But if i could record audio on the controller like i`ve seen some people do it with some other drones, then i could feed audio tc directly through it and sync it automatically.

I am still not convinced that that would work for TC sync, I don't think the smart controllers record the cleanfeed or the high res version of the video that is recorded to the internal microSD card in the drone, so even if you managed to record a TC track to the video in the smart controller it still would not be useable since the full 4K cleanfeed version is stored in the drone. So after setting all of that up, you would have a low res video file from the SC with a TC but it would not be synched to the high res 4K version on the drone's microSD card.

I do not have an Autel smart controller so I may be wrong about this but I've never heard of smart controllers from Autel or DJI recording the full 4K cleanfeed signal internally to the SC.
 
Yes, it will be synced the low res controller version, but then you just need to replace it in the timeline with 4K one and that's all you need to do to sync the material.
 
Yes, it will be synced the low res controller version, but then you just need to replace it in the timeline with 4K one and that's all you need to do to sync the material.

But they still won't line up, the drone's controller video starts from the minute you power on the drone, the drone won't record the 4K version until you press record, in that scenario there is no way to get the starting TC in the drone's internal video, I typically don't start recording in the drone until it is in the air lined up with the proper composition, since the TC is only applied to the controller's video, you would still have un-synced video. You would have to put the controller's video on the timeline, manually sync the recorded video to the controller's video, then remove the controller's video......just as much work as just manually syncing without the TC.

I still think the only way to get it to work would be with a visible TC in the 4K video, and you wouldn't be able to stop recording until you were returning to land...definitely not optimal. The controller's video would not act like a proxy file for the 4K video because they are not the same thing.
 

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