Slave controller for inspire 2 and Zenmuse X5S

[joeeagle]

Still new to all of this.

I have P4 and Inspire 1 Can I use those controllers as a slave to the Inspire 2 and. 5S?

If no and I get a second controller for the I2, so I need a focus wheel? What are the focus wheels for, I looked at some quick footage that came off the SD card (didn't think it would go here if the cineSSD was plugged in) and it was way out of focus. Ideas?

I am completely a newbie on his thing. Looks capable but I am waaaay behind he info curve!!

Thanks

 

[The Editor]

Still new to all of this.

I have P4 and Inspire 1 Can I use those controllers as a slave to the Inspire 2 and. 5S?

If no and I get a second controller for the I2, so I need a focus wheel? What are the focus wheels for, I looked at some quick footage that came off the SD card (didn't think it would go here if the cineSSD was plugged in) and it was way out of focus. Ideas?

I am completely a newbie on his thing. Looks capable but I am waaaay behind he info curve!!

Thanks

Unfortunately....... No

Focus wheel gives you a dedicated control to enable focus to be pulled accurately and quickly.
Not necessary on an aerial rig since you are not really going to be using very shallow DOF and you will invariable focus before you take the shot anyway.

 

[NickU]

1) Like Ed says, nope, you can't use the P4 or I1 controllers, goota buy another I2 or Cedence controller for I2 2nd Op control.

2) On the I2 video and camera footage is always recorded to the microSD card even when the CineSSD is installed. The CineSSD only records ProRes or CinemaDNG Raw video footage and DNG Raw burst images (14 fps or greater) - it won't record h264 or h265 footage.( To record on the CineSSD, you must also have free space to record the same footage on the microSSD - regardless of if you want that footage or not... it must be recorded and the microSD must have space for it.)

3) You don't need a focus wheel - simply tap the screen to focus on the point you tap first - make sure the AF/MF indicator is showing AF in green first. If your microSD footage is out of focus, then it sounds like you didn't focus the camera before recording. The P4 has foxed focus, and it sounds like your I1 was probably an X3 with fixed focus too.... when I switched over from the P4 to the I2 with the x5s focusing was something I forgot to do a couple of times... now it's second nature to do it. I've a focus wheel, but it's mainl for use with the Osmo. I've not used it with the I2, as in all honesty I haven't needed it. Generally the DOF availble to the lens from the aperture etc on the I2 is more than enough to keep most things in focus once it's been set. The only real time I can see the focus wheel would be useful on the I2 is to go from close focus with the 25 or 45mm lenses to distant focus, or if you're working at close quarters indoors.

 

[Shawn Esplin]

I agree that the focus wheel isn't a necessity for most people flying an I2, but if you are going with a second remote for a camera operator you may still want the wheel.

I'd skip it to start with and see whether or not you're running into situations where you'd like to have it or not. Those situations would mostly be where you were using a shallow depth of field and you wanted to change focus mid-shot.

 

[joeeagle]

guys, this is super helpful-so much faster to ask experts than to wallow around trying to figure stuff out.
still a bit confused on the CineSSD-so i'll ask yet another question.
1. i have 64GB microSD card-I have the 480GB CineSSD
2. i want to take high res video-i start recording video (either ProRes or CinemaDNG).
3. the I2 simultaneously records to both the microSD (in whatever format on the microSD?) and the CineSSD (ProRes or CinemaDNG) at the same time.
4. When the microSSD is full up, then the I2 cannot record any more video to the CineSSD until a new microSD is installed-so, land, change microSD cards, fly some more.
5. the benefit to the giant 480GB CineSSD is that it can record a lot of ProRes or CinemaDNG before it has to downloaded, even if you end up filling up several microSD cards before the CineSSD is ful
6. When the CineSSD is full, pull from aircraft, connect to computer with CineStation, get a couple of beers and start the download proceess cause its slow for 480GB of data.

I have 2 x 1TB External HD, and 1 x2TB External HD. i only have about 250GB of space left on my MacBook Pro-what is the right workflow and is it worth it to get a Thunderbolt 2.0 External drive as these External HD's are USB 2.0 only?

sounds like initially, i could get by for a bit with only one Controller until i figure out if i really am going to use that second controller (i dont have a buddy to do the camera work yet and might not-so I realize it may be sub optimal but until i have a 2nd person, having a second controller is kind of useless to me, right now.

do i have this kind of right?

and thank you wrt focus wheel-and all of this-so helpful. users group is a bit more gentle than the Mavic users group!!

 

[Shawn Esplin]

Almost all correct, but you'll most likely fill up the SSD before 1 64 gig SD card because the data rates for RAW and even ProRes are so much higher.

The rate at which you can transfer footage from the SSD will also be limited in most cases by the speed of the drive you're copying to, so expect to buy a lot of storage, at least some of it fast. If you want some slow though you can dump footage to a fast drive and then move it onto a slower drive later to avoid the bottleneck of copying straight to a slow drive (assuming you're waiting for the card to copy so you can use it again). I don't have a Thunderbolt HD right now, and I'm not sure it's necessary unless DJI releases a faster reader, but at least a USB3 SSD or fast RAID array would probably be good to dump footage to.

Oh yeah, and if you do manage to run out of space on the SD card first and you don't have time to land and replace it, you can reformat just the SD card and start recording again. As long as you don't format the SSD the data on it will be fine, you will just lose the H.264 or H.265 files you were recording to the SD.

 

[joeeagle]

AHH...
got it. i was wondering about the workflow as in-do i
1. take CineSSD and download thru the slow USB2 through the Mac onto a TB 2 drive (the scratch drive)?
2. get an adapter like this so i can pull the data off the USB 3.0 to the TB 2 port on the Mac and push it out to a TB 2 drive-so use the Mac as a transfer device?
when you have imagery on the TB2 drive -do you do the editing of the footage using FCP X by pointing it to the drive or is it pulling all the data over from the TB2 external scratch drive to the Mac where FCP X lives?

finally can i just record video to the micro SD? as in H.264 and H.265 if i dont put in the CineSSD?

arg, i feel like a dummy...

thanks guys..

 

[joeeagle]

StarTech.com Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet plus USB 3.0 - Thunderbolt Adapter - Newegg.com

and now the link to the adaptor

 

[Shawn Esplin]

1. That works fine, and I *think* the reader is USB 3, so unless you have an SSD or another drive that might exceed the bandwidth of USB 3 you probably don't need adapters or anything.

2. If your computer only has USB 2 and Thunderbolt ports (most Macs have had USB 3 for a while now), then yes it looks like that adapter should work for you.

3. You can choose where to store the project, files, cache, etc. in FCP X. I'd generally just make a Library on the drive where you're keeping the footage. Which drive that is is up to you, but it's good if it's a fairly fast drive.

4. Yes, you can record to just the SD card if you want to, just go into video settings and turn the SSD switch to off or don't put the SSD in.

 

[NickU]

I have 2 x 1TB External HD, and 1 x2TB External HD. i only have about 250GB of space left on my MacBook Pro-what is the right workflow and is it worth it to get a Thunderbolt 2.0 External drive as these External HD's are USB 2.0 only?

If they're USB2.0 drives, then definitely get some faster USB3.0 or TB2/TB3 drives for dumping the data onto. I'm not sure how many TB ports you'll have on the macbook, if you've only got one, then try to get a TB2/3 drive with two ports on it - that way you can plug the drive into the tb2 port on the macbook, then plug the tb2-usb3-ethernet adaptor into the tb-drive and download that way.

 

[joeeagle]

Awesome info. This is a 2013 issue MacBook Pro I7 512ssd and I think the 3000 graphics. Has 2 TB 2 ports and one USB2 port. Yes those scratch drives are only USB 2. Shawn that was the topology I was thinking. Cinessd into usb3-TB2 adaptor, then Store out on a to be purchased TB2/3 drive. Was looking at the rugged Lacie. Any suggestions on a portable TB2 drive with large capacity? Don't want to spring for the crazy expensive Lacie Ssd TB3 drive. Expensive and not a lot of capacity

 

[Shawn Esplin]

The three things to worry about with drives here are speed, capacity and reliability.

1. Speed is important for transferring quickly if you want to use the CineSSD again soon, if you need to copy the footage quickly for other reasons, and for editing high bitrate footage.

If you never need to dump footage fast and you don't mind using lower bitrate proxies for editing, you can work around having a fast drive.

If you do get one, I'd probably edit there and then move things to larger, slower, cheaper drives for storage later on.

2. You'll generally find that larger drives are slower or significantly more expensive. Large, slow drives are fine for archiving, but not ideal for editing and terrible for quickly copying the contents of the CineSSD as I mentioned.

You will probably end up buying more HDs than you expect too because you can fill up half a TB shooting 5.2K RAW in as little as 15 minutes. ProRes is a lot smaller, but you could still potentially fill a multi-TB drive in a day if you aren't careful to conserve space.

If you are careful and you remove shots that don't come out right, etc. you can get several projects on a drive, but when you add up the initial footage, the proxy files and renders made by your editing software, etc. it comes out to be a lot of space and ultimately more drives than you'd expect if you keep your original footage after editing.

If you can only get one drive now, I'd decide whether you need more space or more speed right now and buy accordingly.

3. Hard drives fail eventually. The first month or two of use is actually a time when they're more prone to failure, but even if a drive's been working for years, eventually it will stop. That means that you should, when you can, set up a system to duplicate everything you shoot that you don't want to risk losing.

Preferably keep the backups in a different physical location, online, whatever you prefer as long as you can't lose everything in one place.

So far I don't have any Thunderbolt drives, so I can't give advice there other than to look up speed measurements and comparisons (and reliability) in reviews if the drives you're considering.

I'm actually dumping to and editing on consumer level USB 3 Seagate drives...it's not ideal, but with some patience and workarounds it can be okay. If I have to shoot something where I will need to quickly dump the CineSSD and get going again though I'll have to get faster drives and/or more CineSSDs.