Tilta Nucleus-M Wireless Follow Focus: In depth getting started tutorial

Get yours here:
tilta.com/shop/nucleus-m-wire...
If you'd like to jump straight to a chapter marker click the links below:
01 00:00 - Intro
02 00:30 - FIZ/Hand Unit
03 04:43 - Handle Grips
04 06:38 - Motors
05 07:45 - Setup Focus Motor
06 09:39 - Setup Iris Motor
07 10:34 - Setup Zoom Motor
08 11:25 - Manual Calibration
09 12:18 - Tricks and Tips
I've been using the Tilta Nucleus-M on various shoots since receiving it in December, and I've put together a full featured tutorial of the display icons, buttons, and settings that will hopefully give you an in-depth intro into how to get the most out of Tilta's new wireless focus system.

[@BestFootForward]

thank you!! i’ve got my first 1st AC job today and this was very helpful!

[@bluestilling101]

Thank you for this tutorial Joshua. Very informative, easy to understand, and follow. I just bought the full kit, and just looking at it feels intimidating. I want to make sure I get the setup correctly, and this is a very well explained tutorial. Of course I smashed that like and subscribe button.

[@KarimJovian]

Thanks. I wish you showed us an example of how to go completely wired and daisy chains in play. But this was so helpful thanks!

[@DavidElijahPiersaul]

Thanks a lot man I got handed the first ac position out of nowhere and I have never done it just made a cheat sheet via your video!

[@mjscpr]

That was super helpful and answered a bunch of questions other videos didn't.

[@meranism673]

4:07 - Instead of releasing your finger and then pressing and holding again to find the range, just press and hold the mark button at the beginning then move to your B point, while holding the mark button, after you find the B point then release the button. In this case you won't have the freezing problem. And tnx for the video overall.

[@FallenOmnipotent]

agree!

[@joshuamacdonald8785]

Amazing good tip!

[@Avidcomp]

This is a really good tutorial, Thank you.

[@EYE50MM]

COOL! Thanks, lot of work you did for us. Much appreciated!

[@IvanEngler]

thank you for this video, very helpful and clear.

[@rossprohaska6263]

Yes, you can power the motor directly from a camera as long as it has power out. This info is in the (Motor:Power Supply and Run/Stop) of your “Quick Instructions” manual and it shows how it is setup. Very likely he is using the 740mm P-Tap to 7-pin power cable that should be included with your group and powering it off of a battery directly while he is making his video demonstrations. This also is the best setup.

[@christimersereau758]

Nice video. Thanks for all your efforts and great help.

[@carphi]

such a good tutorial, thanks man!

[@damianbyington]

Well done man! Great quality video.

[@rbthecraneguy]

Thank you for the tutorial.

[@305kubrick]

Thanks for sharing, very helpful!!

[@jacquesmersereau4173]

Nice video Joshua. Thanks!

[@saltycherrypie6918]

Great quality video thanks!

[@lamehazelnut7860]

thanks for sharing! very helpful. thank you so much~

[@sonnyalves7384]

Thanks , more useful than Tilta himself

[@yannickmuller2707]

Hey, is there any other advantage to use the lemo export from the hand contoller? For example communicating with a monitor about the focal distance? Because the Teradek RT System is able to show a focus parameter scale on the right side of the monitor it is connected to. Therefore the 1. AC will know where his focus is right now, without looking to the hand unit, which I think is very useful, because it reduces a lot of stress.

[@Theactionclips]

Thanks mate great video.

[@AleZakko]

Hi my friend and really thanks for this beautiful tutorial! I see that if you push mark to set the new end point A B, sometimes the module crash and you have to replace battery. I found that you simply have to push mark button, and when this button is still pushed you have to set the end point of the knob. When you're done, simply release the mark button, and there it is! No crash, no bug!! Everything works very well!!! :)

[@joshuamacdonald8785]

Thanks man, yeah I noticed this as well, I was definitely trying to put this thing to the test and point out any flaws, I still haven't upgraded to the newest firmware, hoping they've fixed it by now.

[@shezz150]

On point video.

[@aditya_akash]

Great video!

[@berkelium097]

Nice job, bro!

[@timjones8208]

Way better than the Tilta produced video .

[@SGawesome]

How do you set up the record button to start and stop recording on the camera?

[@derekjcooper]

Great job!

[@danielepiatti9812]

Hi, thks for this well done video. When I do a manual calibration with photographic lens and after that I've filmed I switch off the motor I've discovered that when I power up again the motor I've to do again the calibration. Do you know if is this normal? The last firmware is on my nucleus M - 18.03.19.3

[@warathanuts.1005]

Do I need the master hand unit to set it up? What if I have only handle unit, can I set it up?

[@CarlosAraujo-qw3xn]

Thank you very much!!!

[@NewWebDesign]

hey pal dose it make a any lens have parfocal zoom and focus at the same time ? so when i zoom will it keep its focus or are they always 2 different controls features?

[@tuttmamman3490]

Hos do you do manual cal with the handels?

[@videotestmille]

Thanks a lot !

[@FallenOmnipotent]

thank you!

[@corneliusdobeneck4081]

Thanks tons. Helped me a lot since the punks from Amazon send me a handunit in CHINESE! :D

[@notgabriel]

At 7:41 how did you switch between RM and ND on the motor?

[@videogod6596]

Perfect

[@mathisbonneau2454]

Hey, thank's for this amazing video, it helped a lot. I've just got one question : can you power on your motor without a battery, but directly from the camera when it's a DSLR? At 13:32, I can't see how your motor is getting power. Which cable are you using? Kindly :) (I've got an A7S, and I'm wondering if I can power on the motor from it.)

[@eduardojuarezsanchez8081]

Mathis I don't believe you can power up the motors from an alpha camera. I have an a7s 3 and I've used goldmount batteries and d-tap splitters to power the camera, monitor, follow focus, etc.

[@doriantaddei1130]

Yes, I echo the other statements ... good job, and THANKS! Ordered mine through B&H (for obvious reasons) so am waiting ::: waiting ::: waiting for notice that they've got until ready to ship. Since I am not on a deadline, this is best for me. B&H is the ONLY way to go with NEW and especially FOREIGN hardware, because of their fantastic reliability in replacements and customer service. Second to none, B&H has saved my bacon before. What a GREAT FIZ for the money. I hope Tilta keeps up the fantastic pricing and carves out a solid market percentage and then. KEEPS their prices this fair. They will become every INDIE producer's best friend!

[@thetooth]

how much were you paid?

[@David_Drills]

Hello and thanks for this tutorial. I just have a question, what the torque setting is actually doing? When it's set to high is using more power (but not more speed right?) What is the actual difference between low setting and high setting? Thanks

[@joshuamacdonald8785]

Hey, I'm not completely sure, but from what I understand, all FF motors have both a motor and a high resolution rotary encoder both connected together. The motor itself has no absolute position, it just gets told to spin one way or another but the rotary encoder knows exactly where the gear has rotated too. Like a feedback system to check if it's turned and how far. So when the torque is increased I believe it's simply saying keep the motor spinning even longer even if the encoder doesn't follow the motor perfectly. If it hits the end of a lens for example, the encoder stops rotating even though the motor is still trying, and the microcontroller realizes it's hit its limit.

[@LeckieInstallsLondon]

This really answered all the questions I had about the system. Thanks for the great video! So just to confirm, only one motor can be connected at a time via the wireless? I was really hoping to run a dtap on my ronin camera mount for focus and a secondary motor with a custom mount to the handle bars mounting my monitor so i can control monitor tilt with the zoom or aperture. I didnt want to have any cables in between camera and handle bar haha

[@niquoOG]

Do you know if the motors can handle the 16v from a Dynacore battery? or is there a way to power them from a v mount battery?

[@RaphaelVanSitteren]

The motors handle up to 24v according to what's written one them, so no problem for 16V... It has a DTAP to Lemo cable included so you can power from V-Mount if you have D-Tap out on your batteries

[@momentum_filmworks]

Excellent video. I have two questions, hopefully you can help. 1) When switching between the Hand Unit and Handgrips, my zoom motor spins extremely fast to the point where I fear it will damage my lens (using an old Angenieux lens). This is activated by simply touching the zoom rocker and it will for example zoom my lens from 12mm to 100mm at a dangerously high speed. Do you have this issue? 2) I always need to calibrate my lenses after shutting down the camera for battery swaps. I see below you mentioned your motors save the calibration at power off. Can you confirm if your motors save the calibration? I'm using lenses with hard stops, it usually just costs me an extra minute to wait for the calibration and it's annoying. All that aside, thank you for the excellent demo video.

[@khenusingh]

Hi, I just got my Nucleus M system and am having the same issue when switching from FIZ to handle and using zoom. I reached out to Tilta support, but they were nice, but not so helpful. They directed me to these videos in fact! Did you ever sort this out and if so, what helped? I’m using a Sigma Art 2.8v24-70 with my Blackmagic 6k pro.

[@CNC-Time-Lapse]

​@@khenusingh Do you still have issues with this? I just got my Nucleus M kit yesterday and noticed the same crazy speed jump when switching between units. I found sort of a work around was to hard wire one of the hand grips (right grip) with the LIMO cable directly to a motor so it's not on wireless (left grip is not configured) and then configure the hand grip to do zoom / focus (or aperture if only 2 motors are needed) and use a manual focus puller for aperture when on a zoom cinema lens. This way, the FIZ always stays on as master and doesn't do that crazy seeking and I can still use the one hand grip since it is hard wired without wireless. This solved my problem at least. I'm running a Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro 4.6K.

[@khenusingh]

@@CNC-Time-Lapse What I’ve been doing is setting the value of the Zoom to 500 (roughly in the middle of the range) on the FIZ then making sure the hand grip (I use the joystick for Zoom) is at roughly the same value before switching from FIZ to handgrip. Then I switch with no issue. It all works smoothly, though every time I turn the device on I have to recalibrate the Zoom (not the Focus). Not sure why this is!

[@JohannesBuc]

Is it possible to split master and slave mode for diffrent motors. That the handunit controls focus, but the handgrip controls iris. And that I can change the tasks of each device without the biggest effort in a short time?

[@joshuamacdonald8785]

Yes it is, you just need to make sure the hand unit and one motor are on different channels as the handgrip and its motor, you can set it up just like in this vid.

[@JohannesBuc]

@@joshuamacdonald8785 Well, but than i can just use the handgrip for the first motor and the handunit for the second one. But can I quickly change the tasks. Scenario 1: Handunit: Motor 1 Handgrip: Motor 2 And quickly change to Scenario 2: Handunit: Motor 2 Handgrip: Motor 1

[@seanconley8191]

You rule.

[@garimasood7128]

Hey so quick question, I own a canon dslr I’ve been trying to set up the small motor but the other extension doesn’t seem to fit on my camera. Does it require a different battery or external power outlet to be attached? In order to make it turn on and be used with my canon ?

[@joshuamacdonald8785]

Garima Sood hey man, the motors definitely need power, there is a way to power the motor directly through one of the handles but it’s not officially recommended by Tilta. Otherwise yeah some sort of dtap battery

[@garimasood7128]

Joshua MacDonald okay gotcha, was trying to figure out how to power it. Also I followed the steps to setting up the motor with the FIZ according to your tutorial but my motor seems to not work when I spin the wheel on the FIZ unit. Everything’s correct on the displays...

[@kedzierski76]

How do you change the brightness on the hand unit ?

[@David_Drills]

nice question! Anyone?

[@rasmusfrostell6982]

Is there any way to rig a monitor to it like the wcu:4?

[@joshuamacdonald8785]

Rasmus Frostell not without an arri rosette adapter plate for the back Smallrig also makes a 3/8ths

[@rasmusfrostell6982]

Alright thanks, might buy it and a rosette adapter then.

[@sunilvish12]

how i control focus motor speed

[@joshuamacdonald8785]

Sunil Vishwakarma since the focus range is mapped to the rotation of the focus wheel when you calibrate, the speed of the focus motor is determined by the speed you rotate the wheel. If you need slower more precise control you can set a-b points.

[@halasius]

Good video, man. Thank you! Two questions: Is there an automatic function to go from one mark to another or do I need to navigate between marks by hand? I love the product but I can't believe that this function does not exist. Even cheap pull-focus devices have this elemental function. Also, can I invert the direction of the bar that shows me the percentage of focus? It looks weird to me that I turn the knob to the right and the bar goes to the left :) Can I set that? Thanks a bunch. P.S: What tripod is the one you have on this video?

[@joshuamacdonald8785]

Hmm I don’t believe that feature exists and we might be stuck with just the one display for the focus bar. Doesnt seem like tilts is planning any more firmware updates either for this guy :( But my tripod is a Seceed Reach 3 a knock off sachtler. Not a bad head if you take care of it!

[@ArtLA]

I wish someone talked about how you can save a manual calibration I have no idea how does anyone on here know ? Every time I shut down I have to manually calibrate this is extremely inefficient and clients always have to sit there and wait. There has to be a fix if the old Dji hand unit can do it why not this one.

[@joshuamacdonald8785]

Art L.A. strange, does it save it for you when you do an auto calibration? It does save it fine on my unit but I don’t think ive tried a power cycle after a manual cal but I can’t imagine why it would act different than auto. Ill test it tomorrow.

[@ArtLA]

Joshua MacDonald it doesn’t seem to save most of the time but I can trick it into saving which I shouldn’t have to do. Idk I feel like it needs a long overdue update.

[@joshuamacdonald8785]

Art L.A. hmm ya that is strange. The latest firmware also softens the hard stops on autocal which is nice, ive even just used auto on stills lenses and just grab the motor at its ends to stop it and it works pretty well, you go over a bit so you can’t pull to a mark as precisely but if you’re pulling off a monitor its quick and you can get it pretty close.

[@tcrproductions7508]

Hey Joshua, I've tried to find an answer to a couple of questions I have about setup with no luck...maybe you can help. First, when I daisy-chain two motors (either with D-tap, or off the handles), I get an audible high frequency noise. It doesn't happen when I give each motor its own power supply. Is this normal? Second issue is that even when I set torque on the FIZ and the handles to 30%, the motors still display 50%. Is this normal, or am I missing something.

[@niquoOG]

hi man, I dont own this product but from what I've seen you have to set the torque on the motors too

[@user-kh6od8xc4x]

Music is too loud

[@phantomtn6158]

Please, lose the music. This is not art, it's information. No entertainment necessary.

[@OmniVisionElite]

lol chill dude

[@AleZakko]

I really like this music....

[@AKGreen]

Plz lose the attitude. This is a free tutorial. No complaining necessary.

[@shezz150]

QQ

[@jlnerd3]

Somebody call the wambulance