Sony Venice 2: Recording Proxies, Outputting Timecode & Rec Trigger

[LensMeAHand]

Yesterday I prepped two Venice 2's for an upcoming shoot. We needed to record proxy footage, but to my knowledge, the Venice 2 does not have that capability internally. We decided to use Atomos monitors, as they double as a video recorder that could give us our proxy.

The problem was that we needed not only video, but video with timecode, and we only wanted to record when the camera was recording. Our model of Atomos only had an HDMI input. And as I found by digging through the Venice 2 user manual, there is no way to send timecode through the HDMI out.

But as it turns out, not all the SDI ports do either. So it became a game of trial and error, testing each SDI port to see which would give us what we wanted. Turns out, you can only get timecode and rec trigger from SDI out 1&2.

Anyways, this may all seem obvious, but when you're trying to figure it out under time pressure, it's not super clear. At the time I couldn't find anything on Google, so I wanted to make this post for others who are facing the same issue. 

TL;DR the Venice 2 cannot simultaneously record proxies, and if you need to output a video signal from the Venice 2 with both timecode and rec trigger, you must use SDI outputs 1&2.

[Christopher]

Thank you for sharing this.  It's disappointing that the Venice 2 is too weak to generate proxies unlike every other Sony camera.  It doesn't help that Sony barely supports X-OCN.  Since you wrote this, how did it work out for you?