Arri 435 IVS

[Evan Andrew John Prosofsky]

Hi everyone,

 

So -- I recently purchased an Arri 435 and a transvideo rainbow monitor to go along with it. Now, granted, I have very little experience with video taps/video monitors on film cameras. Its rare that I use them. And I know that video taps have a bit of a reputation for being not so good less than SD quality video. That being said, I recently did a shoot with an arri 235 and a very similar transvideo monitor and the image quality appeared to be much better than what I'm getting on my 435 with the regular IVS. The cam has been serviced by visual products so I know chances are there's nothing faulty going on, but the image is so bad (mushy, dark, excessively noisey) that I can't use it unless I'm in bright sunlight (yes I know about the aperture adjustment ring and I have tried using it).

 

Does anyone have much experience with video taps? Is there a trick to getting an useable image? Do I just need a better monitor? Is this just par for the course? I spent almost 500 dollars getting the monitor/cables/etc, I would have hoped I could use this dang thing to my advantage. I know there is the new HD IVS (far out of my price range) so please don't suggest that ;) , though I do know there is an IVS 2 but I have been unable to find what the differences between it and the original IVS are. Arri seems to be kindof shakey on details regarding taps.

 

Please let me know your experiences, thanks very much!

 

Evan

[Adrian Sierkowski]

I dunno that tap specifically; but I do know the tap on my SR3 is pretty rubbish. It's useable for what it is; looking at framing when you can't put your eye to the piece and to give an idea to others what's being shot. But certainly not for any image evaluations. The HD one is VERY nice and VERY expensive. Mine too is rather mush, dark, and noisy.

[Evan Andrew John Prosofsky]

I dunno that tap specifically; but I do know the tap on my SR3 is pretty rubbish. It's useable for what it is; looking at framing when you can't put your eye to the piece and to give an idea to others what's being shot. But certainly not for any image evaluations. The HD one is VERY nice and VERY expensive. Mine too is rather mush, dark, and noisy.

Interesting, thanks Adrian. Does anyone else have any experiences (specifically with the 435?) that they could share? Any good video taps? Bad ones? Anything I should know?

 

Tell me about it -- the HD tap is so damn beautiful. But at (what I remember to be) around 25k (double what I paid for the 435 alone) its a little ridiculous. Anyone know how much it is to rent one? Though then I guess the effort to re-install on every shoot might get annoying.

 

Thanks!

[Evan Andrew John Prosofsky]

I'm just really confused. For instance I recently watched the behind the scenes for "Revolutionary Road" and there must have been a 12 inch or so monitor Sam Mendes was using for viewing at a video village. Even based on the quality I could see on his monitor on YOUTUBE the image looked relatively good. They were shooting with a 535B which I believe has the same tap as the 435?

 

Is my transvideo monitor just bad? Is there something I'm missing that these bigger shoots have? Stumped.

 

Does anyone have anything more to chime in?

[Kar Wai Ng]

Those old onboard transvideo monitors are really poor quality in terms of contrast and resolution. Feed that composite signal to a more modern monitor like a 5.6" smallhd or tv logic, and it will look much better.

 

That said, if you want to really get the most out of the IVS, you can switch it from outputting composite to Y/C (or s-video). If I recall it uses both the BNC outputs (usually one is clean composite and the other is data overlaid composite) by ganging them together, one BNC for Y, one BNC for C. You run those two BNC cables to video village and you can get a cable that combines the two back into an S-video plug. Better quality because there are more lines of resolution. Then the best way to still have an image for your onboard monitor is to use the mini-monitor output, which will give you a composite signal.

[Kar Wai Ng]

Also, although you mentioned you know about the video tap iris, also make sure the video tap gain isn't set on manual. You can leave it on auto gain, and override it manually if you've got a funky backlit situation or something.

[Evan Andrew John Prosofsky]

Those old onboard transvideo monitors are really poor quality in terms of contrast and resolution. Feed that composite signal to a more modern monitor like a 5.6" smallhd or tv logic, and it will look much better.

 

That said, if you want to really get the most out of the IVS, you can switch it from outputting composite to Y/C (or s-video). If I recall it uses both the BNC outputs (usually one is clean composite and the other is data overlaid composite) by ganging them together, one BNC for Y, one BNC for C. You run those two BNC cables to video village and you can get a cable that combines the two back into an S-video plug. Better quality because there are more lines of resolution. Then the best way to still have an image for your onboard monitor is to use the mini-monitor output, which will give you a composite signal.

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much for the help! Right now I am only using a BNC cable and running it clean. I will try the mini-monitor output and see if that makes a difference or not. I will also experiment with diff. monitors.

 

Just from a comparison standpoint, do you happen to know what big features shooting film use for video tap/monitoring for SD? (not interested in the HD IVS which is clearly far superior but way too expensive)

 

Thanks again,