Timecode off -1 frame on Amira and off +1 frame on FS7

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I just received an interesting call from post. On a multi camera shoot with one Amira and 2 FS7s, the time code was off by exactly 1 frame. The Amira was back 1 frame and both of the FS7s were forward by one frame. Timecode was sourced from an SD633 at 23.98 using Tentacle Syncs to jam. The timecode did not drift. It stayed exactly one frame, even after re-jamming. I worked with this same crew last year with the same cameras and the same editor. They said they did not see this problem last year. Finally, the cameras are owned by different operators. What am I missing here?

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Hi Bill,

what you are experiencing can have two different reasons:

The first is when doing multi camera shoots without genlock  timecode can be off by one frame, because the timecode and the video signal of the camera are not synchronized. you will usually not be able mention this if you do only sync audio to video. Even when the audio is a bit off (<1 frame) it will still be assigned to the correct video frame. But when syncing video to video things are a bit different. When not using Genlock the camera has to decide to wich frame the actual timecode will be assigned to.

The other thing we have found out and tested by our self is that especially the Amira (and the Alexa Mini wich shares the same design) having issues (SUP 4.xx) with timecode. Here tc will always be something about 1 frame behind. As I said we have tested this (also with a competitors product 🙂

I would recommend to use the following settings inside the Amira:

  • Goto System/Sensor Menu and set Genlock-Sync to TC-In
  • Goto TC/Options Menu and set TC-Offset to +1

Hope that helps!
Best,

Ulrich
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