RPSharman

Hi, Just bought a Harley, and the noise of the bike isn't the major issue, it's the noise of the wind even at normal speeds. I used to wear a full-faced helmet years ago, so wasn't as much of an issue. I used regular ear plugs today, which was great, but I want something a little more secure and reusable. Any suggestions? I know the union sponsors ear molds once in a while, but I want to be able to hear somewhat too for safety. Thanks, Robert Sharman

John, They do make a windjammer-type cover for the standard 416 windscreen. Not sure if this is any better than a Softie, but it's not too expensive. If I'm using a 416 outside, I like to use my PSC Universal Prower Supply. It has two levels of high pass filter at your fingertips, which seem to work a little better than those on the board. Robert

So I bought the FF800, Boom Recorder, and am getting it all set up. Any pearls of wisdom while I have the rig in pieces and can configure it in any way the makes the most sense both from a technical and user standpoint? Robert

I was hoping that perhaps more mixers, especially the more influential ones, can start to call their Utility Sound Person the "Second Boom Operator", when appropriate. It's something I've begun to notice popping up more and more in the credits, and Willie Burton thanked his Boom Operator and Second Boom Operator in his back room interview at the Oscars. I plan to ask that my third get that credit on future projects. The reason for this is two-fold... Typically, especially on television, with there rarely being one camera at a time and with many shows having large ensemble casts, the utility person is required to be a skilled boom operator. And also, with larger casts and poor lighting techniques and wides and tights, the utility person must be capable of wiring actors quickly and carefully, and skilled at placing plants while the primary boom operator keeps his/her eyes and ears open for changes. They must also be knowledgeable about equipment, RF, and keeping track of a lot more equipment than in the past. The "cableman" job is more or less out the door, and the title should go with it. Additionally, it has become common for new producers and UPM's to observe the contract and see that Boom Operator is Y-8, and are starting to pay accordingly, many on a weekly. Y-4 is technically over scale, and "customary" is leaving the vocabulary of this industry in a hurry. If there are two boom operators, then an argument can be made that the primary boom is a "supervisor" and therefore requires the Y-4 designation. The second boom can receive the Y-8 classification, which pays the same as Y-7a. While this might affect some people getting a re-rate to Y-4 under current conditions, these occasions are getting slimmer by each year. In the long run, this will work to benefit the membership when crew size and staffing is next brought to the bargaining table. Anyone else have similar thoughts or different ideas? Robert

Awesome!

Jeff, Noooooooo! The gallery is great! I LOVE the old picture with you and Goldie (Hawn, that is, not the video guy). I just don't do anything interesting enough to post on the gallery. Maybe more people can take cool pix of their locations and post them. We do go to some pretty funky places. Robert

I was visiting PSC the other day, and talked to their engineer about plugging a small inverter into the Power Station. He says as long as it doesn't draw more than the maximum amperage of the Power Station, then it should be fine. I want to power my laptop, HD, and Fireface 800 with the Power Station/inverter rig. Anyone have any experience with this? A pure sine wave 400w inverter ought to do the trick. It will be the only thing plugged into the Power Station. Everything else on my cart runs 12v on PSC Cart Power and 33aH Pelican battery. Thanks, Robert Sharman

Philip, I sure do enjoy your posts. This one is no exception. Looks fun. Robert

And a compact espresso machine, 'cause there's only so much room on my cart, and I do get a little tired sometimes.

Hmmm...I thought the Britts were booming without headphones? Anyway, I have boomed with Comtek and Lectro stuff, and find that both have their ups and downs. I use Comtek stuff as a mixer. The range of the bass station is good and the battery use of the receivers is far more environmentally friendly. I don't think the increased fidelity of the Lectro IFB is worth the "hits" I took in the ear when booming. I prefer the occasional fritz over a load pop any day. And I also find that when you are out of range of the Lectro, it's gone, whereas the Comtek will hold on to a signal for a long time, making it handy to reach the utility guy at the truck. Robert

Go under "PROFILE" and see layout preferences on left. You can return the order to oldest first. I left it newest first for a while, but found it frustrating when starting to read a new thread. It is handy if you are up to date and only need to read the most recent post, but otherwise it was weird. Jeff... This is such a great site, and thanks for it being able to be customized too. Robert Sharman

SD says you can use a FW flash card reader if you are not using the FW output for somthing else. Then you can remote the flash reader wherever you like for any type of flash media you like. RemoteAudio.com says they will look into the idea of manufacturing a CF to USB female cable so you could plug in any type of flash reader or USB flash drive into the CF slot on any of the CF media recording devices. Robert

YES! Who do we get to design and/or manufacture one of these? I expect they would sell one with every CF recorder if it were avaiable for a less than obnoxious extra cost. The only thing I could find was an adapter that converted CF to PC card. I'll email Sound Devices.

I still own both PCs and Macs. The Mac I am using now is over 6 years old and has had NO upgrades of any kind, with the exception of a USB 2.0 PCI card. It's a G4 800mHz with 512MB RAM. While I do have a faster and newer iMac for use on set, this is the computer I use at home and it's only just starting to hang up a bit here and there. My PC laptop sucks. It was more expensive than the iMac and is only a few years old. It has needed upgrades and complete re-installs several times. A virus killed my hard drive recently, and I bought a new hard drive, but I couldn't reinstall Windows because it saw that it wasn't the original drive that came with my computer. So I bought the Vista upgrade (since I owned XP already for that machine), but couldn't install it because although it was the complete program, the activation key was only valid if if I had a version of XP already installed. But I couldn't install my XP because of the new hard drive. Miscrosoft had no solution for this. My PC desktop is a little newer than my Mac desktop, but has been plagued with problems for years. While I am frustrated with the very occasional Mac freeze, it is only a fraction of the frustration of dealing with the PC and the associated Microsoft and Dell customer "service".

I typically send sound to camera when requested. But I use the following standard lingo..."This camera is designed to record a picture, my equipment is designed to record sound. I will be recording and monitoring on my recorder. I will not monitor the camera, so cannot guarantee its quality."

Good point regarding hitting sticks. I try very hard to convince these new AC's that getting the sticks, all be it redundant, is a good idea. When electronics fail... a camera report, a sound report, and sticks will always be there to save the day. Even on shows with clockits feeding identical TC to camera from my recorder and matching the TC slate, I still encourage my boom guy to aim for the sticks and remind the AC to make them audible. While I don't make a big deal out of this on set, it's also fun to keep the tradition alive. Hitting sticks is part of how I envisioned the movie business as a kid. I was recently asked why dailies no longer have the 2-pop at the end of the takes. I explained the 2-pop was to identify the end of a take when speeding through a tape. They like it for the gag reel. I gave them a file with the 2-pop to give to the editor. Maybe it'll make the DVD! Robert

Okay...MOTU 828mkII or RME Fireface 800 It's down to these two devices for me. They have all the features I want, and the number of inputs I need. Now I need you guys to tell me your experieces with each. The price difference is not an issue for me. I just want which one is best. Thoughts? Robert Sharman

I have no intention of using the interface for mic pres. It will, however, be providing the all important AD conversion. Regarding the Fireface 800, I have thought about inputs 1-8 direct from the Lectro wireless, throughput via the rear 1-8 I/O analog 1/4" TRS (any information on latency??) into the line inputs 1-8 on my mixer. Sending my mixer main outs to the 744T, then the SPDIF out of the 744T into the Fireface coaxial SPDIF input. For hardline mics, I can go direct out of the mixer to the front inputs 9 & 10 on the Fireface 800. Or for additional analog inputs (music or video playback), I can use those inputs too. This configuration will give me the Boom Recorder option of tracks 1 & 2 stereo mix from digital output of 744T, 3 - 12 for isolated analog inputs (God forbid I would EVER need that many). Thoughts? Robert

The MOTU 8pre does not give me any more inputs. One of my deciding factors for giving up the DV824 was to have a stereo mix and 8 isolated tracks. I'm thinking the Fireface 800 - AC only, but gives me what I need.

So I've decided to switch to Boom Recorder and trade in my DV824. There are a number of factors which made me want to do this, but now I'm looking for the best interface. I like the Apogee Ensemble, for the pure reason of Apogee's great AD/DA quality and their built in "soft limiters" which are supposed to be quite good. Mackie is coming out with the Onyx 1200F, but it has been delayed so long it makes me wonder. That unit has LOTS of analog inputs, which would be good for those obnoxious times that you have every mic out of the box and need to lay down playback and such. It also has gain control for all the inputs, which seems handy. Any thoughts? Robert Sharman

I have decided to give up my DV824 for the Boom Recorder. I am looking at the Apogee Ensemble. Does anyone use this? Robert Sharman

Having been a utility person for several years, I found that I was in charge of placing the cart most of the time. It was always a guess as to where I thought the mixer would want to be, and where I would want to be. On a bigger show, where the mixer had been on a tech scout, he might tell me where he wants to be in advance, but that's not too common. In my mixing experience (way more limited than most others here), I find that practical locations have become less "practical" and stages are crammed with more sets than they used to be. The decision has to be made to be close enough for wireless range, if neccessary, but the only spot is usually where the "village" is going to set up. DON'T want to be near there. It has become far more difficult to find a good place to set up. I think that's why we are seeing more smaller carts these days.

There is still a reason for providing a file with tone in the digital world. I didn't think it was neccessary, but on one job recently the editor was not importing audio properly into FCP. I don't know what the issue was, but I hadn't given him a tone file with which to check his system. I went to his house, record tone at -20dB on the 744T and he imported the file. It came in much lower than -20dB on the FCP meters. He listened to the recordings played directly from the 744T at normal headphone levels, watched the meter levels during playback, and understood the tracks were recorded properly. I left, and he must have fixed the issue, because I did not hear back.

This topic seems so crazy to me. As a utility person and boom person, not only did it help me to listen to the work that I was doing, but also to listen to the work the mixer was doing. How can you possibly learn to be a good mixer without listening to someone else doing it? When you become experienced enough as a boom person that you feel you no longer need to listen to yourself, don't you feel that you owe it to your department to be an extra pair of ears for things you aren't booming? What happens if a wire is noisy or a plant doesn't work for one take because an actor gives their line at a different mark on one take? Does the mixer then have to charge onto set to alert the boom person and production that something went wrong before they check the gate and move onto the next setup? Or is nobody doing anything other than one camera-one boom out there in fantasy land?

A very good friend, and mixer, gave me an extremely valuable piece of advice before I set out to buy my own gear. If you don't buy what you want first, you will end up buying everything twice. Renting items you need for almost every job does not make much sense to me. Each time you rent it, it adds to the cost of an item you will eventually buy anyway. Even at a bad interest rate of 12%, it is usually cheaper to buy the items you want. The interest is usually cheaper than renting, and you can be sure the gear is not abused, and you don't have to waste time-gas-etc. picking up and returning the gear. I occasionally rent a 442, because I don't want to use any other portable mixer, but I don't need it often enough to cover the interest expense. And when I rent it, I get accessories I dont' want to buy either.