Cool things to do with your Deva” series:
Saving User Settings to a Removable Disk by Glen Trew
So you have a quick car scene and want to take your Zaxcom Deva or Fusion recorder from the cart to a bag, and then
back to the cart, but afraid of all the complex user settings to you’ll need to change? Fear no more. A little-known
feature in these recorders lets you pop in a Compact Flash card or DVD-RAM, press a few keys, and in a few seconds
every option in your Deva is automatically configured the way you want it.
Quick instructions for print or viewing (115K PDF)
Without a doubt, the best thing about digital mixers and recorders is their seemingly endless versatility through menu selections, and the Zaxcom recorders are among the most versatile. But all of this ability adds equal amounts of complexity: Routing any combination of inputs to any combination of recording channels; and likewise: inputs to outputs, recording channels to outputs, multiple EQ settings for each input, HP filters for each input, limiter settings and compressor parameters for each input and each recording channel, Timecode settings, sampling frequency, and on and on and on. There are hundreds of choices that can be changed for a variety of situations.
The versatility that these mixers and recorders offer makes them able to be used differently in different situations. For example, if working on a cart with a stand-along mixer, all of the analog inputs would likely be set to line level, track assignments may be a mixture of analog and digital inputs, and all EQ and input compression likely bypassed. A typical routing scheme on a cart would be for the stand-alone mixer’s digital outputs 1-8 going to the recorder’s digital inputs 1-8 that would then be assigned prefader to the desired recording channels. But when switching to a portable bag rig such as is common for shooting scenes inside cars, the large mixing panel has to be left behind, so the recorder must be used as both the mixer and the recorder (the mixing ability of the Zaxcom recorders are certainly up to the task). In this case all of the inputs would typically be switched to analog, then assigned postfader to track 1 (mono mix) and also assigned prefader to the remaining tracks, then everything reversed when going back to the cart. Manually reconfiguring a recorder from cart to bag and then back to cart can be a tedious proposition! While the Zaxcom recorders do have “user presets” available in a few menus, these are too few and too easy to accidentally change to be relied on for an extensive reconfiguration.
There is a little known function of the Deva that answers this dilemma: Configurations settings for different uses
(cart setup vs. bag rig, for example) can be stored on CF (Compact Flash) card or DVD disk, and loaded into the Deva.
This allows you to go from your cart configuration to a bag configuration of your choice in just a few seconds. Then,
when finished with the car scene, you can instantly have your Deva reconfigured for your cart again. I keep two Compact
Flash cards with me, one labeled “Cart” and the other one “Bag”. It’s faster than switching around a 2-track DAT machine.
If your Zaxcom recorder has a CompactFlash slot, storing your configurations is a great way to get good use out of obsolete CF cards. I’ve use cards as small as 16MB with no problem.
Trew Audio has created a placard that has the instructions for saving and loading settings, and also has instructions for easily revising your recorder’s firmware. These placards can be printed and placed onto the top or back of any Deva 4, 5, 5.8, 16, of Fusion. Laminated copies of these placards are available to Deva and Fusion owners for the asking. These instruction placards are also available for printing or viewing . Just remember that it is best to keep firmware versions consistent with saved configurations. So, if you change firmware versions, you should also re-burn the CF cards or DVD disks used to store your settings.