Jay Massengill
October 20th, 2009, 01:37 PM
I recently purchased the H4n and conducted the first recording this morning. I simultaneously recorded the signal on both my H4 and H4n, keeping as many variables identical as possible.
I made a sync click at the beginning and end of the recording. The total recording time was 62:30 and this was a 44.1k 16-bit audio-only project.
I placed both files on the Vegas timeline for a 44.1k 16-bit project.
Aligning the sync click at the start of each file and comparing the ending sync click revealed a difference of 1 second and 24 frames between the two files. The H4 file was "longer".
The H4n pre-record was on, but this just meant there was more audio recorded before the first sync click. I was comparing only the time between the first and last sync clicks.
I wasn't syncing these files with anything else such as a video recording, so I'm only commenting on how much drift these machines can exhibit between themselves, something we were all aware of, but I felt this was a pretty substantial difference if I need to use both recorders together.
Hopefully when I get a chance to test the H4n against my video cameras it will be closely timed and most of this error I saw this morning is from the older H4.
At least the recorded file from the H4n has a real date and time associated with it, although it was the ending time, not when the file was started.
And everyone is right, the H4n manual is terrible...
I made a sync click at the beginning and end of the recording. The total recording time was 62:30 and this was a 44.1k 16-bit audio-only project.
I placed both files on the Vegas timeline for a 44.1k 16-bit project.
Aligning the sync click at the start of each file and comparing the ending sync click revealed a difference of 1 second and 24 frames between the two files. The H4 file was "longer".
The H4n pre-record was on, but this just meant there was more audio recorded before the first sync click. I was comparing only the time between the first and last sync clicks.
I wasn't syncing these files with anything else such as a video recording, so I'm only commenting on how much drift these machines can exhibit between themselves, something we were all aware of, but I felt this was a pretty substantial difference if I need to use both recorders together.
Hopefully when I get a chance to test the H4n against my video cameras it will be closely timed and most of this error I saw this morning is from the older H4.
At least the recorded file from the H4n has a real date and time associated with it, although it was the ending time, not when the file was started.
And everyone is right, the H4n manual is terrible...