Unexpected Surprise: PMW-200 Audio!

[Jonathan Bird]

Hey Gang,
I have been playing with my new PMW-200 and we shot our first professional gig with it yesterday. I started transferring footage this morning and what a pleasant surprise: the camera captures 4 channels of audio in 35 Mbps FAT mode!

According to Sony, it is only supposed to do this in 50 Mbps UDF mode (HD422).

This is cool because we often use a couple lavs on talent, or a lav and a shotgun on the camera, but I like to have stereo "room tone" off the camera mic for editing later. I thought I would have to always shoot in 50 Mbps mode to get this feature but apparently not.

I am shooting to SDHC cards with the Sony SxS adapter, then transferring to FCP 7 using the new Log and Transfer Tool (V 1.2). I still can't actually make that tool work with UDF footage, by the way. But it's kicking butt on the 35 Mbps FAT stuff!

Jonathan

[David Dwyer]

Yeah 4 channels is impressive, I've only had mine for a couple of days and I have upgraded from the Z1 with 2 channels.

I am missing something about the 4th channel of audio?

[Jonathan Bird]

I'm not sure what you mean about the 4th channel.

[David Dwyer]

Sorry I'm not making my self clear.

Can someone explain the 4 channel audio to me?

[Dave Morrison]

....must be that New Math....

[David Dwyer]

Originally Posted by Dave Morrison

....must be that New Math....

haha sorry maybe I'm slightly confused about the audio channels if you could explain it to me.

Also I have an old ECM-678 mic from my Z1 is this not compatible? I see the ECM-MS2 has 2 XLR connections compared to my single 1?

[Doug Jensen]

David, the ECM-MS2 has two connectors because it is a stereo microphone, and thus requires two cables. However, any mono microphone will also work with the PMW-200 -- but you just won't have stereo sound.

However with that said, it is possible to send the signal from a mono microphone connected to XLR connector #1 to record on any of the four channels. (But it still won't be stereo).

"Mastering the PMW-200-160-150-100 Camcorders"

[David Dwyer]

Thanks Doug, Its a big step up from my old camera so I'll check out your DVDs.

Just 1 more question, can I use the onboard Mic and use the 1 or both XLR connectors to record audio? Do they record on to separate channels?

I didn't know my ecm 678 was a mono mic as I seen 2 channels on my z1 but I guess it was the same audio mirrored onto both channels.

[Doug Jensen]

David, as Jonathan stated in his first post, probably the most typical configuration is to use channels 1 & 2 to record external inputs on the XLR connectors (could be a stereo mic, could be two mics, or could be a mixer) and then use channels 3 & 4 to record the camera's internal mic.

Probably the second most common way of using the four channels would be to record the one source on channels 1 & 3 and another source on channels 2 & 4. Since 3 & 4 are always on AGC, they provide a safely net in case of 1 & 2 get over-driven.

[Shaun Roemich]

Originally Posted by Doug Jensen

Probably the second most common way of using the four channels would be to record the one source on channels 1 & 3 and another source on channels 2 & 4. Since 3 & 4 are always on AGC, they provide a safely net in case of 1 & 2 get over-driven.

Reminds me of the old Betacam SX days where the built in wireless receiver and the front jack (normally the oncamera mic) would be recorded to Channels 3 & 4 with AGC activated... saved our butts in the newsroom on a couple of occasions when folks forgot to wear their headphones to verify audio...

Of course, only the D75 VTRs would access those channels so we needed to bring in the expensive VTRs when someone fouled up...

Kinda happy to see 4 channels of audio again...

[Doug Jensen]

Yeah, I've been using four channels of audio on my F800 for the last three years and it is definitely a nice feature to have.

[Jonathan Bird]

Another tip is that if you run channels 1&2 with separate sources, (i.e. lav and shotgun) and AGC on, remember to go into the menu and separate the AGC to mono. The camera can pair the AGC as stereo (i.e. reduce the gain on both channels 1&2 if either channel 1 or 2 gets hot) or it can treat the channels independently. Unless you are using a stereo mic on 1&2, you pretty much always want the AGC to consider each channel separately.

It's pretty annoying in post when you realize the audio levels on channel 2 are all over the place because the AGC is responding to something on channel1!

[Walter Brokx]

I don't want to be a party-pooper, but didn't you just get 4 channels, because the EXCam-footage was rewrapped into a mxf-format with 4 mono-tracks while transcoding?

I use Premiere Pro (so I don't need to transcode): that gives me 1 stereo-track. But when I use Sony Clipbrowser to rewrap I get 4 mono-tracks as well.

Until you managed to record 4 seperate tracks in 35Mb/s mode, I think is just the transcoding fooling you.

[Doug Jensen]

Walter, we are not being fooled. We have four distinct channels with four different sources in 35Mbps FAT mode.

BTW, who's transcoding anyway? In 6 years of using all flavors of XDCAM with FCP7, I've never transcoded once.

[Paul Gallagher]

Yes, the 4 channels in the FAT mode are a brilliant plus point.
Fridays wedding was a Civil Ceremony in the smallest room ever, I could only use one camera, so with both lav mics fitted the on board mic gave me very nice ambient audio without having to use my trust Zoom H1.
Only fault I am having with the internal mic is the sound from the wedding band that night. I thought I had it sorted. I have always use my internal mic on auto on my old Z1's and this has served me very well, but with my PMW150/160 this has not been the case. The audio is clipping a lot on the higher notes. I always monitor it through my headphones but some bands are that loud its hard to get a clear reading, I turned my INT MIC Level down to -12db and it sounded fine on my headphones, but not when I listened back. Dont get me wrong its good for 90% of the time, but on higher notes its slightly distorted, not perfect.
Can anyone shed some light on how I could maybe improve this, there is a Limiter Mode and AGC Spec setting that I know nothing about. The AGC Spec is at -6dB and the Limiter Mode set to OFF.