u/FloorTomApologist

I’m starting to get into low/no budget film production sound and I bought the Rode Wireless Pro as an inexpensive wireless lav solution. The system is unbelievably cool. It comes with 2 transmitters each with built in mics as well as a lav mic input. It comes with 2 Rode Lavelier II mics which are great for voice but you could just as easily use Clippers. Each transmitter is also a 32 bit float recorder with 6-7 hours of battery life and up to 40 hours of recording. You can extend battery life with external usb power bank. I’d think folks that are into drop mic rigs would love these. These also have timecode (sync’d to time of day) embedded. 2 tiny 32 bit float recorders for $260 US.

Has anyone used these for field recording?

I'm just starting to get involved with recording sound for local low/no budget indy films. I'm really interested in timecode and how it's used. I've seen timecode enabled slates from several vendors (Denecke, Ambient, Deity, Tenacle, etc.) - they seem like they'd be really useful but they are really expensive for what they are. I have a few Deity TC-1 timecode generators and rarely use them all. I was thinking I could make my own slate by plugging an extra TC-1 into a timecode display and velcro it to a regular slate. Nice idea but I couldn't really find such a display. Denecke makes some big timecode displays for studios - also expensive and most are too big. Tenacle makes the Timebar which is close to what I'd imagined but at $400 it's still more than I'd hoped, plus it is it's own timecode generator and I really just want a display (I already have an extra generator).

Has anyone else felt the need for a low cost, high visibility, portable timecode display? Is there a product in the market I'm overlooking?

I'm kicking around the idea of making my own that could be stuck to a slate, or a sound cart or a monitor, whatever. It could also provide diagnostic capability (lock state, signal health, frame rate) to allow you to see exactly what's coming out of your generator and into your camera or recorder or whatever.

Is this something you'd find useful? What would you use it for?