Stereo to Mix - HDX900 Tutorial

Camera ops often carry their own cans.  Sometimes it's a true mono earpiece, but more often than not it seems to be a pair of stereo earbuds with one end cut off.  They usually plug into the front headphone jack on a camera (on reality, it's most commonly an HDX900), which doesn't have easy access to select the kind of mix you want to send it.  So here's a quick reference guide to change the front headphone jack on a Panasonic HDX900 from a stereo mix to a mono mix.

Problem:  Camera op can only hear one channel.

Solution:  Go to the menu and give him both!

The monitor select switch on the side only controls the rear headphone jack, so we have to go into the camera's menu to make it happen.  It's easiest to just do this on a prep day.  I know very few camera ops that wear both sides of a set of stereo headphones, so this is typically a common problem that usually takes some exploring.

Step 1:  Turn on the camera and locate the Menu and Jog buttons.

Front of the camera, near the white balance button

There are two different buttons.  One turns and depresses and the other just depresses.

Step 2:  Press and hold both the Menu and Jog buttons for 3 seconds.  This will bring you to the main menu screen.  If you just press Menu once, a screen will pop up, but it's a different section of the menu.  You should be looking for the top-most directory, **** MAIN MENU ****.

MAIN MENU screen will pop up after pressing both buttons for 3 seconds

Step 3:  Navigate and select the MONITOR SELECT item  using the menu wheel to the MIC/AUDIO 2 page.  The path is MAIN MENU>VTR MENU>MIC/AUDIO 2>MONITOR SELECT.

Step 4:  The default setting is STEREO.  Select the item and change it to MIX.  Press the Menu button to exit and you're good to go.

Default is STEREO

Change to MIX and get the hell outta there!

Now your friendly neighborhood camera operator will be able to have both channels in each ear.  Whether they've cut or ripped off a spare pair you gave them or they just use one side of their iPod headphones, now they can hear the whole story instead of half.

Find Tyler Faison on Google+