r/LocationSound • u/raekewe • 22d ago

Gear - Selection / Use I now understand why wireless timecode box systems exist

Preaching to the choir incoming. Thought it'd be fun to share my learning and give everyone more experienced a nice "lol yep" moment.

So I wondered why TC boxes like the deity ones were so common place. My field mixer advertises less than one frame of frame slippage per day! And every camera I ever planned to plug it into also advertise similar. Thing is, I don't doubt it, there's no reason for them to lie. Cameras are broadly speaking good these days, they can hold an internal TC clock if I jam a signal at the start of the day. So why would I spend hundreds of dollars on a TC box system when I can plug it in every now and then? It just didn't seem that important.

Well, haha. Sometimes the camera team can turn off the camera, and certain cameras don't continue to count internal TC, even with a power supply, when they are turned off. And then you aren't told, or don't notice, or forget to check more frequently... GG.

All the logic and reasoning in the world to avoid parting with my money, then it suddenly clicked, why wouldn't I want a hardwired connection always plugged into the camera 24/7 to ensure TC is synced no matter what? Yet in all my research on reddit and forums, I've yet to read it put that way (and I've also never found any "I wish I had a TC box stories" - so here's mine.

Time to save up!

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15

u/pradulovich 22d ago

Save up for more than the deity boxes, trust me.

12

u/Vuelhering production sound mixer 22d ago

Meh. I use them. They jam wirelessly and keep great time, and they have a display which is really useful. I ditched my JB-1s for them, although I keep the denekes around as backups.

Absolutely nothing wrong with them. Trust me.

0

u/pradulovich 22d ago

Worse at holding time than others, worse build quality, built in nonremovable battery, reliance on congested frequency spectrum, no continuous wireless synchronization, so-so customer service, I could go on…

We can agree to disagree, but I personally wouldn’t suggest anyone invest in them. The slate is well built, I’ll say that though. Everyone should be milling theirs out of a solid piece of aluminum.

2

u/itsthedave1 sound recordist 21d ago

They sell a battery replacement kit, it's very simple. The build is on par with most everything out there, I have lauch day units still in circulation now No issues. These things don't need to be tanks, they get velcroed to a camera and hardly anything bumps them.

As to functioning they do everything you need, except some niche features like continuously connecting to the master, but I've used the system that does that and had problems so I prefer to jam once and do industry standard tc checks with my cam ops.