I have two PD-170's and am planning to get the A1 shortly. My question is, can I record the 16-bit audio on my 170 and then sync it to the H1/A1 footage later in post without drift?

Hi John. You will get some drift, because there are 2 different system clocks involved and each has a tolerance, but the drift should be fairly small. Whether it is a problem depends on the length of each shot and the criticality of the sync.

Richard

I have two PD-170's and am planning to get the A1 shortly. My question is, can I record the 16-bit audio on my 170 and then sync it to the H1/A1 footage later in post without drift?

I've shot events with my XL2, another shooters XL2, a GL2 and a mini-dv tape that the groom gave me from some guy that he had out in the bleachers and I was able to sync all of them with no drift.

The only time I've ever had a problem was trying to use the 'user bit' sync mode on a pair of XL2's, it worked but the timecode was off and went off after each powerdown.

You should have little to no issue.

I figured there would be some minor drift. I plan to use the A1 as an interview cam mostly. Is it possible to sync a high quality, off camera source like the Edirol R4 with no drift issues? It has more than one sampling rate if im not mistaken.

Hi John. Drift problems will show on very long takes. If you don't shoot more than a few minutes at a time you should not see much, if any, drift. Main problem is to sync sound and picture for every shot, since the Edirol will not start and stop together with the A1. The sample rate for the audio A/D conversion should not affect the amount of drift.

Richard