William Demeritt

A note for other PRO users: I've had great success with the Sachtler Tilting Telescopic Monitor Arm in getting the monitor on the same plane as the batteries. I mounted it upside down and attached the Cinetronic universal yoke to it, and now my batteries are coplanar with my monitor.

I'll post a photo when I get home tonight if you want to see how it works.

Love my Cinetronic monitor, the support from Chris is great. Can't wait to see the next gen housing and digital level.

A few questions for the techies:

- What kind of sled do you have? Monitor?

- How is the AJA being powered? How is the monitor, camera, etc being powered?

I haven't had time to track down the problem, but I know when I run my Decimator 2 off the CAM PWR on my PRO2 sled, and use my Modulus 2000 with the 4-pin LEMO connector for power and video signal, I get video distortion on the receiver end. If I use the 2 pin AUX PWR port on my sled to power the Modulus 2000, I get no video distortion. Of course, it primarily happens with RED cameras, I haven't tested it yet with an Alexa.

Looking online real quickly, it looks like the AJA downconverters can handle PSF (Progressive segment frame, although I heard it once called Progressive shift frame) or regular P (progressive).

Bump, still asking for $1500 OBO, will throw in modified SD upper and lower junction boxes. If you're interested, I'll explain what "modifications" were made.

This is all fantastic work!!! I am thrilled to have a low cost option on the horizon. Can you post a pic of what got soldered to what on the inside of this box? I would like to see exactly where the pigtail was soldered!

 

Again, this is great!

Christopher,

I'd prefer not to show off what I did inside, but I will say this: if you look around for soldering tricks related to adding an external antenna to a wifi card or PCB, you'll see where I got my idea from and probably what I did.

Once I get something I'm confident with showing off, I'll show all. Thanks!

Ok , all y'all arm chair federal copyright attorneys here's the dilemma myself and the rest of the crew is in. We were hired by one production company to do a week long concert festival, 5 bands a day in South Dekota. That particular production company originally had the rights to all the footage and everything having to do with the venue including the take of entrance fees. They ended up selling all the rights and responsibility to another company a week prior to the event, not telling any of us on the crew. That company decided they didn't want to pay any of us. We all have a class action suit against them and they are in process of agreeing to settle for 60.5 percent if the total. Oh and by the way , the company being sued is in NJ, we worked in South Dekota and the Crew is from CA and NY and there were 12 cameras.

 

Can we all take ownership of the footage until we get paid?

I think ownership of the footage is secondary to getting your rate, unless you think the footage is a valuable asset with interested buyers already lined up. Ultimately, you want your contracted rate/money owed, regardless of the status of the footage.

What was the grounds for which they didn't want to pay? Didn't agree to the rates, so they refused all payment? Simply don't have the cash to cover the payment? Also, was your contract with the original company, or did they have you sign a new contract with the new company? Likewise, what has happened to the footage of the festival? Packaged and sold? Still being held onto?

I would imagine if the original company sold off all the rights, but let you continue to do the work knowing the new company had no interest in the footage and just wanted the box office, then the original company is still liable for your rates if they knowingly allowed you to work the job whose footage was doomed without canceling you.

If the new company accepted your contracts, but later decided the footage was to be doomed, then they're liable for your rates as per the contract regardless of if a useable product results (just as if you were hired for a 1-day commercial, worked successfully but the finished commercial was never sold or aired).

Just wanted to warn everyone again of this company. I did work for them back in May, and they even signed contracts with me to pay equipment rental within 30 days and balance within 90 days. So far, 90 days has come and gone, and they haven't paid either.

Avoid at all costs. Not only do they fail to pay, they also sell off your material to their clients. I'm currently pursuing action against them for failure to pay. As far as I can tell, they have nobody actually running the company. They're a sister/child company of Anthem Media Group / Allied Media Group based in Kansas City , but they seem to share the same office.

we should get together...I will bring tweezers

I'm scared, Sarge. You think we'll make it home alive??

I got a splinter once

That'll teach you not to bring your A game to a pub with an untreated bar surface. How do you get splinters out of your forehead?

I did the HD upgrade through PRO, so I'm selling off the leftover parts. I upgraded the center post cable of this telescoping centerpost (tools necessary to extend the post), but I'll throw in the GPI centerpost cable as well.

The XCS 3B.308 cable alone is worth $600 new, and it was in this unit for barely a month before I did the upgrade.

Asking for $1500 OBO. Located in Los Angeles, happy to arrange for local pickup or shipping.

A flight BJ was on had to make an emergency landing at LAX.

I think it was considering crashing, but they checked with Russell Todd, and apparently BJ's schedule is too busy to squeeze in an air disaster.

From what I hear, BJ would consider an air crash if given the choice between that or another 3D feature.

I've had a number of cables made by Siggy Saladin at Clairmont Camera. Contact me via PM or email if you want his contact info.

Eric, what size SSD do you use in your BlackMagic? How much recording time do you get out of it? As prices of SSD's drop, my preference of the Atomos Samurai (as of yet unreleased) over the BlackMagic is slowly skewing just based on cost. Recording time and the affect of 4400rpm spinning platters inside 2.5" HDD's also plays into the decision.

... it's the data coming out of the HDMI ports on various cameras. Bottom line, you never know what you're gonna get.

I think the bottom line should be that HDMI should never be used in a professional environment for video acquisition with any intention for post production. I really can only see recording off HDMI if I'm trying to record footage for quick playback, or I want to take footage home with me. Otherwise, HDMI is a nightmare best left for the consumer world.

You both have much to teach us.

Can someone teach me how to convince fellow operators that they're not making any friends, nor growing their business, by working with the philosophy of "well, someone is going to take the $200/day gigs, so why shouldn't it be me?" or "sure, 4 other operators passed on this recurring gig because they did it once and the rate was too low, but it's just fine by me! Suckers!"

I saw John Perry had this setup on So You Think You Can Dance a few weeks ago, and I was quite happy to see the transmitter was relocated to that new spot. I haven't flown a P1 in a few months, but I'm looking forward to it.

No but it looks cool. 2500 bucks and it's a back up hd monitor and recorder (and sd monitor as well?)......... if you get one, let me know how it works.

4.3" TFT screen with pixel resolution of 480x272. Not sure if that makes it a worthy backup monitor, HD or SD. recording purposes it looks cool though.

Looks interesting, albeit kind of pricey. Atoms Samurai will allegedly have all of this, and use SSD or HDD's, and cost $1495 without the 128gb SSD included (worth $200). Or, the Hyper Deck Shuttle costs $345 for uncompressed. Looks like they beat Atomos to the punch, but if/when the Samurai hits, it'll beat that price by $1,000.

It almost seems like a bad imposter spy gag from a tv show: "Greetings, film creators! I'm seeking a SteadyCamera operateur who is well versed in flotating a RED Won 3K motion picture camera. You must also pull your own rack focus while levitating EXPERIENCED INDIVIDUALS ONLY!"

So can one still feed an SD Signal in through the power lemo connector as I can on my TB6?

 

Can I zoom shrink the image and place the bubble outside of the video space? Particularly relevant on 16:9 monitor with a 16:9 signal fed to it with no "look around".

 

Is there an eta on the new housings for the 7inch ers?

Answer to the SD question is yes, it comes in on Composite 2 through the LEMO power connector. Works fine on my PRO sled.

What RED specific video cable? I'm trying to find it on the Tiffen website. As far as I know, All of the Tiffen sleds (which are HD compatible) have an HD-SDI capable BNC on the lower electronics section. All you need to get HD video from sled to monitor are 75ohm shielded min. 1.5Ghz coaxial cables with male to male BNC's.

I gotta talk to A&S about the price of building a coffin box for my bottom shelf of my cart. Working out of boxes is fine, but I can see that it slows me down instead of having locking drawers.

I think I have also mentioned an equipment repair issue I had once where the bean counters told me they didn't have to cover my gear because of the disclaimer on the coi (the one in the box at the top right of the standard Accord cert we all get). Read it...and weep.

 

If it's a job I get the willy's about I will usually call to make sure I am actually on the policy and not just typed into a blank space on the cert.

I'm sure someone more savvy than I can chime in soon, but the disclaimer at the top of the ACCORD certs is to protect the insured from someone claiming a repair or loss against their policy without additional contractual agreemenepts binding you to their policy.

I request proof they even have a valid policy, and by getting one issued in my name shows their policy is in good standing. From that point on, it's probably up to the equipment provider to get a Rental agreement signed by production that obligates them to use said policy for any repairs or loss.

I think a lot of us operate on a verbal agreement or even unspoken but implied agreement that our gear is covered by their policy, but if they really want to get crazy about it, they probably could claim "oh, you were never on our policy for your gear, that was if you were worried about bodily injury liability."

"I have insurance to protect my gear when I have it at home to protect against theft, loss, etc. Whenever my gear is rented to work on a production with me, I require a certificate of insurance the same as how G&E houses generally require insurance for their gear, or a camera rental house requires insurance."

You can also add on something about (or be prepared to answer the question of) you will agree to rent the equipment to production without a certificate of insurance, but you'll need to charge them a premium and also have them sign a rental agreement stating they're responsible for the deductible of any equipment lost or damaged.

I think FilmTools now sells Erwin's design, but with the Backstage carts instead of the Yaeger.

Pedro: do you find that the handles on the Yaeger get in the way? I like my Magliner's spinning handles so I can get them out of the way for balancing docked to the cart.

I need a Hill balancing bracket badly.

What is your work primarily? What is your bread and butter? You could always get the names of some good cable builders and call them up the day before you have a gig with a camera you can't yet power. However, if you're looking to plan for the future, I'd say it starts with the gigs you're already getting.

If you sell the rig without the ergo handle, please let me know? Very interested.