Synced Chronos 2.1 only records 79 frames

[Rob_Heathcote]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone on here might be able to offer some help on a weird issue/bug. I have tried Kron (with repeated emails now) but have not heard anything back from their support team.

I am getting a weird issue where the source camera on two BNC synced Chronos 2.1 sometimes only records 79 frames when I take a recording in 'Toggle' mode (i.e. after triggering the shutter for a second time). The second camera has so far always seemed to record for the full 11 seconds. I leave the cameras on continuous buffer for around 5 minutes before I need to save the pre-recorded 11 seconds of footage.

I cannot find a sensible reason for why the cameras are behaving like this; immediately after it happens (i.e. after a barrage of expletives because I have just lost some critical and irreplaceable footage that is a culmination of months of work), I have tried triggering the shutter again and can get a full 11 seconds of footage immediately afterwards, so it seems completely random for when it occurs, but is usually around 70% of recordings.

I’ve attached two photos of the trigger and record settings with this in case it helps.

This is part of a really expensive and time-sensitive experiment, so this is getting a bit desperate now and Kron do not appear particularly bothered to help.

If anyone can offer any advice I would be eternally grateful!

Thank you,
Rob

[Nikon1]

Krontech is sometimes not the fastest to respond to such requests/ bugs which cause serious trouble, but i guess they will probably respond eventually, when ever that might be.
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 I dont have 2 Chronos Cameras to be even able to replicate this, so i cant help much here, and also never even ever tried to figure out how i would link two of them Together.
 But just wanted to say: Cant open the Images attached to this post. (never seen a .heic file, what even is that or how to open that?)
 .
 Also just a very blunt idea which just came up in my Head, without any actual real world Experience on working with Two of these Cameras, but is there a way to somehow sync these in any other way, like external frequency input (if they even need to record synced frames, otherwise just let them run individually), and trigger both separately at the Same time, if Usage is of critical importance?

[Rob_Heathcote]

Thanks Nikon. I've just edited the post to include these as JPEGs. I've got a Mac and tried to upload images straight from my Photos app, hence the weird file format!

There's a couple of ways to sync these apparently, but the analog BNC connectors are supposedly ideal to keep frame numbers fully synced. I'll certainly look into other methods if all else fails! The frames don't necessarily need to be exactly synced since I could just use a camera flash or something similar to calibrate the time lag post-recording, but it would be ideal to not worry about this kind of thing!

[Nikon1]

Thanks!
 I meanwhile spent a few minutes reading up on different Trigger and Syncing Options on the Chronos.
 https://www.krontech.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/RE-PDEV-10009-Chronos-User-Manual-Full-Software-Version-0.7.0.pdf
 Have a look at page 23.
 Exposure Trigger Should do what you want.
 Is sure a bit more work and Bulky to set up than just linking two cameras via a single BNC, but i consider that well worth it, if Footage is Critical, cant be Replaced, and you spend a lot of time and Possibly Money on it; especially if the BNC Method has proven to be bugged.
 .
 Also never used that mode, but from what i understand, you would just set up one of the Two other Inputs on each of the Cameras up as "Exposure Trigger" Input, Set Shutter angle/ Shutter time on Camera as usual, and basically set your Framerate via a external Frequency input (like 1kHz = 1000fps) from a Square Wave generator. Trigger as usual via BNC, but would need Separate Signal Paths for both Cameras, so like a Trigger Button with two separate Contacts inside it, and A BNC cable to both of those. Also A Cable for Frequency Input to any used Camera from the Frequency Generator.
 .
 Should from what i think to understand be a much more Solid and fail-save setup, and you should end up with absolutely Synced Frames.

[Nikon1]

Also, looking at your settings, i am just wondering, have you tried the same Setup with  0dB analog Gain/ 0dB Digital Gain?
 would be interesting to see if that would result in the same amount of failed Recordings as with the 6 / 12 dB setting.
 Had some various Weird things happen in the Past and on past Firmware versions on High gain Settings sometimes (though i would not consider that especially high yet...), but never tested that in combination with anything related to external Triggers and such.
 Might be worth testing, if it runs more Stable on base-Gain setting. (=0dB).

[Rob_Heathcote]

Thanks very much for these replies Nikon.

I'm rather reluctant to try new sync methods right now given that there is already a bug in the software that appears to have got progressively worse with time, but I will definitely try the other methods if I don't hear from Krontech soon (going on 10 days now after three emails about this).

Unfortunately there isn't enough light in the study I'm running to bring the gain settings down to 0db, but I will certainly play around with different combinations of the analog and digital gain settings given that you've also experienced issues with this in the past. Were there any other settings except for 0db that worked? It's really time consuming to test this given that the issue isn't consistent, so I can run multiple trials before it starts happening again.... so any pointers of what you've already tried would be massively appreciated! Thanks so much for the info and thoughts!

[Nikon1]

My Errors i got where mostly related to Image Quality, Crashes (camera randomly Freezing up completely, UI wont respond at all, need to force-reboot) and Dropped / corrupted Frames (in this order, first to happen most, last least likely to happen) when using Gain Settings of 12dB and up, sometimes combined with weird framerates like 400fps or lower, but sometimes also at max Framerate for given Resolution. I found the Resolutions listed in the Drop-Down Menu to be most stable in general, probably because these have also been tested most before Release.
 Also generally Lower gain settings gave me the impression these things where less likely to happen, than at higher settings, but i could be very wrong here; absolutely nothing backed up by any Numbers or Methodical Testing.
 I somehow feel like these issues showed up a lot less since about Firmware Version 6.0 or so, but could also just be me not playing around as much with weird and Extreme Settings, as i used to back then...?

[Nikon1]

I'm rather reluctant to try new sync methods right now given that there is already a bug in the software that appears to have got progressively worse with time, but I will definitely try the other methods if I don't hear from Krontech soon (going on 10 days now after three emails about this).

 .
 I just had a look at their Twitter, and while the uploaded / reposted (idk. how Twitter works, not a Twitter Person myself) a lot of Clips/ footage there VERY Frequently at Start of year, there are no posts at all after 17. January. So maybe they are on vacation or something?
 What Email did you use to contact them at btw? the Info@ one or the support@ ?
 From all my correspondence i had with Krontech so far, i understand it as, that the info@ is more of an General Purpose Mail Adress, to just contact them, but you might will have to wait a bit, also seems not to be checked (or at least processed) as frequently or with as much urgency; sometimes, if they are Taking a Break or need to get stuff done elswhere maybe not even at all for a while.
 The support@ seems to be exclusively for urgent or very important stuff, and from what i seen is a lot Quicker, if you need to get an Answer ASAP. Probably still a good idea to not "abuse" that one, and still send anything that isnt crazy urgent to the Normal info@ ; but i think your Case would classify as urgent, from what you wrote.