dspaceman

Thanks mike. Just found the thread using google. -Danny McCullough, CAS

Hey guys I'm about to do a short shoot in Japan and was wondering if anyone out there has shot there and what lectro blocks are clear? I know Japan has a 10 mW power output limit but was hoping to still use my normal mics as its a short shoot and don't want the hassle of renting locally. Right now I am planning on using blocks 19 & 21 for my cast. Any thoughts on this? Also, anyone use comteks out there? Thanks a bunch -Danny McCullough, CAS

Mark Gilbert said that he doesn't support running metacorder beyond os 10.6. Using the newest metacorder download (1.83 I believe). I have noticed that running metacorder vs running boom recorder is a lot more taxing on your CPU if you monitor your usage. Not sure if this has anything to do with it either. And as your takes increase in length, the CPU usage meter grows. Even when you have the flush the cache option enabled.

Hey guys. For the test from post it was carried out on footage from Saturday before I fed my big Ben with word clock from my lock it box. The word clock was clocking my fireface from the big ben as the master And I know for a fact that I am getting the correct word sync to my input device from my big Ben. The only difference between metacorder no working and boom recorder working and syncing up is my software switch. I can't explain this other than metacorder is not supported to run in lion even though it does, and on all my takes it didn't start drifting until about the 30 minute mark. I am just telling everyone to be wary of this. I have used metacorder for many years now and have recorded thousands of hours in all sorts of environments but is is the first time I've had drift problems. Coincidentally it's the first time I've run it on os 10.7. If anyone else can explain this any other way let me know. But I am definItely sold on boom recorder as my main recorder now.

On my fire face 800 settings I have had word clock set to external sync the whole time in its device settings. It sees word clock at 48k and is set to sync and lock so that was never the issue. Everything does work now though and the only change I have made is going from metacorder to boom recorder. Almost all of my takes are between 45 minutes to an hour and post said the drift issues didn't occur til about the 30 minute mark so I would suggest that if you're planning on long takes Boom Recorder is the way to go. Metacorder was functioning on shorter takes, but not on our show when I basically roll continuously all day long.

UPDATE: Ran a full day with boom recorder 8 (18 tracks, 19 hours) and had no apparent drift. I also just used sync from the big Ben but have been sending word sync from my lockit all day today. I'm sold on boom recorder when running Lion. Thanks again for all your help and comments -Danny M

Also. Just a side note to thesoudnguy's post. Thanks for all that info, but I was wondering what you meant by selecting "word clock" as your core audio device. Are you referring to the input device? If so, wouldn't I be selecting my fire face 800 which is synced to my word clock? Is there another option to select the word clock on top of this? Thanks

Hey guys Thanks again for all your feedback. I have set my lockit box to send me bi-level sync into my big Ben. I had always assumed the big Ben was stable enough to handle the demands of my shows and didn't know that there was so much room for error when using it. I knew the dm1000 clock wasn't good enough to handle recording as I've had issues with it on previous shows. I will talk to my tech supervisor regarding your other camera suggestions. I only gt vague info from post about camera drift with each other and all they keep saying is that it's audio that the issue. Cameras are in sync according to them but they don't really give me a definition of what this means. All I get is on previous seasons of the show they didn't have drift issues. I'm also going to continue running boom recorder as I like the interface better and will hopefully hear back from post today regarding the first day I spent using it last weekend. I asked them to try syncing to one camera only instead of pulling my audio into a group of cameras to test at that level. Please let me know if anyone thinks of anything else here. Been really frustrating, especially since I haven't come across this before. I know my takes are generally longer than when recording scripted shows but that's the nature of reality, and I would hope that these multitrack programs would record in sync no matter the length of the files. -Danny M.

Hey guys Thanks for your feedback. Post assures me all there settings are correct, even though they won't go over them with me except to say that they are pulling in my MC data at 29.97 NDF. Last season there was a different sound supervisor on the show and he recorded everything with ProTools. They tell me they had no issues with those files and they haven't changed their settings. This job is a lot of run and gun between setups and I think a Protools rig would be a real pain in the field, and all I'm doing any way is recording time stamped broadcast wave files, so really can't account for why that would be any different. If there are any Avid settings anyone out there could send my way to send to post that would be appreciated as I really don't know Avid. I am not sending video sync to the Big Ben but did consider that today since I am taking TC from the tech clock. If I do that, I would assume the cameras need to be genlocked to video sync as well to avoid a lot of other problems. Right now the cameras are just jam synced a few times a day to the master clock but don't have lock it boxes (but post assures me the cameras are in sync with each other). No news on Boom Recorder yet as they only pulled the footage in today (they actually weren't even planning on testing the BR footage for another few weeks,,,,I argued that since I'm trying to fix the problem they need to give me some sort of feedback now, since we are partially through a new season of the show). Thanks again. Any other suggestions would be welcomed.

Hey there Having a very weird issue that just came up in post on my show right now. Im running Metacorder on my macbook Pro and using OS 10.7.4. I know that Metacorder isn't necessarily supported to run in Lion but I've had no problems my past few shows with it. Im using a fire face 800 and an Apogee Big ben Word clock to clock the fire face and my DM1000. Running metacorder in monophonic mode with between 12 and 20 tracks per day (running 8-12 hours a day) to 2 G-tech Mini firewire drives (powered locally, not bus). Ingesting timecode either from a master clock from video when we shoot on our sound stage or from an Ambient Lock-It when we shoot in the field and I use my cart. So using different gear on my cart and at the stage too (the only constant is my macbook pro and my hard drives). My problem is that no matter where we shoot or what we shoot, post has just informed me that my multi tracks are drifting and don't sync to cameras. Its not that my multi tracks are going longer than the cameras, but they are running faster so by then end of each of my wave files they are a few frames to over a minute (totally random, no pattern) faster than the cameras which are pretty close to sync with each other (Panasonic 900 cameras, 3-6 running 29.97 NDF which is what Im running). I usually break my files every hour to make it easier for post and when I do, the files are back in sync (which makes sense since metacorder time stamps the first frame of each file). I've been using metacorder for years now and I've had a few hiccups in the past but nothing like this, and nothing that happened across every file I have been recording. Post is looking at me for an answer as they have to manually sync everything now (and they have no budget for this). Any ideas out there? I know post is running Avid Media composer 5. I actually tried boom recorder 8 last shoot day since its made to run in Lion to see if that would make any difference. I know there is usually a little drift that occurs between cameras and metacorder but usually a few frames so no real syncing issues, but this has got me pulling my hair out. Thanks in advance for any advice.