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Production sound mixers - give me some insight


Joe Riggs

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"If production asks (and pays!) for wiring everybody all the time, we'll do that"

Same here,  but "everybody"  is a grey area. If a character has just one-word, sometimes I'll forgo the additional wireless and make sure I get it in the tighter shots.. or a wild line.

Funny... if they say wire everyone, we do.... and love it... they are charged as used... per unit.. LOL...

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As it hasppens..... just about every job I have done in the last 10 or so years has been 25fps (I am in the UK), 24 bit, and MONO wav files.

There used to be a problem where if you used, say, trax 1, 7 amd 9, and made a 3 track wide poly file, it would arrive in the DAW as trax 1, 2, 3. Is that problem now solved?

Kindest,

Simon B

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As it hasppens..... just about every job I have done in the last 10 or so years has been 25fps (I am in the UK), 24 bit, and MONO wav files.

There used to be a problem where if you used, say, trax 1, 7 amd 9, and made a 3 track wide poly file, it would arrive in the DAW as trax 1, 2, 3. Is that problem now solved?

Kindest,

Simon B

It's the way it works. If you open it in pro tools, the correct track numbers will be reflected, but fcp and premiere still ignore it (along with a lot of other useful metadata) and reassign new track numbers.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Some machines like the Tascam DR-680 or Edirol R-4 only record poly files that include all tracks, even if you're only technically using a couple of tracks, so there will be a lot of blank audio tracks in your poly file. Some people may be using a smaller card to record on, and choose mono files in order to save space.

In my experience, in the indie film world, and often times in Reality TV a well, there is no discussion with post, so they are usually scrambling around after the fact trying to make sense of things because no one thought to ask in the first place.

If you are involved in the post process, you should try to reach out ahead of time and provide a technical sheet for production to abide by.

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Poly files are without a doubt the way to go. I try to always use the same track assignments and labeling. If the track is not being used in the scene but is on either side of it then I keep all tracks armed and record silence. why? Because too many times I get either lazy editors / ingest dudes who forget to import all the mono files. Leaving the blank tracks as "slugs" gives em a clue as to what was and was not used and keeps the buggers from hopping track to track in their edits. If I am forced to go mono I will either import into waveagent and export poly files or bring the lot into Pro Tools and spot em to timecode then export that as an OMF/AAF. I do still get requests for 16 bit but try to talk em into 24 bit... A lot of video editors don't understand the difference and will simply leave their workstations at 16 bit meaning that those 24 bit files get brutally truncated .... I do a lot of both field and post and have been shafted by these issues so often that the wind whistles through my bits and pieces... That being said there is nothing quite as useful as a production workflow meeting before shoot and protocols agreed upon. Who on earth uses Pro Tools as their primary record tool? It's a backup at best.

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I am on a movie now which has 3 main characters, always wired and always ad-libbing. I run B1 Nick Kurt Dale B2 all day, even though from time to time the actors choose to remove or unplug wires. I'll note the tracks as empty on the report. Also I might not always use B2, but I leave the track armed in the event he needs to run in on a "reset" to pick up something new.

Storage is no longer an issue, so I'd rather just keep things consistent and be ready for anything.

Robert

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I always thought I'd get funny looks from the editor's assistant if I handed in empty tracks. But I never enquired about it, either. Only in rare instances where the track is blank because an actor unwired themselves or whatever, I tend to apologize for it in the report. As I'm reading this now, that may not be neccesary. Wonder if others record blank tracks, too

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I am going to start leaving some tracks blank, some of the time. I have been burned a couple of times by forgetting to record arm a track on Nomad in the heat of the moment (fast moving shoots with multiple talent in and out of shots/scenes during reality shoots). I always record a mix, so no worries for final the product the couple of times it has happened, but I don't like not having all the options to give to the editors. Much easier to set up tracks, leave them record armed and roll. You can easily note in your reports that tracks sans actual recording are intentional due to the nature of the shoot. Like Robert says, storage is no longer an issue these days, so as far as I can tell it should be no issue at any point in the editing process as far as I can tell. And of course, when you know talent X, Y & Z isn't going to be on camera for hours you can easily shut those tracks down to avoid wasting space for no reason. 

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Maybe I'm the oddball, but on the post side of things for me I didn't care. Either worked. I remember back in the day some editing systems couldn't handle certain track counts of poly files, so many people did mono files to get around that. I would record mono files as a "just in case" because if you don't know what post is using (which happens all the time on low budget indie stuff since they don't have post yet) I would record whatever I knew anybody could work with. If I was on the post side, I would get what I would get and I would know how to deal with it. Mono vs. Poly is really a non-issue. The files are time stamped so they will spot into the session with no problem. 

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In the early days of file based recording (Deva I), I discovered that the Avid had no trouble with poly files unless it was an ODD track count. Looking at 2, 4, 6 track files was fine --- give it a 3 track file and it refused to recognize ANY of it. The movie I was on was using older Avids (newer software corrected this problem) so I always recorded a blank track to make it an even track count.

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I figure the number of channels I might need for a scene and roll that many all the time.  The file based machines we use can't punch into record with the other tracks already recording, so why not just keep everything straight and let them all roll.  Better to record empty tracks than miss something.

 

philp

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In the early days of file based recording (Deva I), I discovered that the Avid had no trouble with poly files unless it was an ODD track count. Looking at 2, 4, 6 track files was fine --- give it a 3 track file and it refused to recognize ANY of it. The movie I was on was using older Avids (newer software corrected this problem) so I always recorded a blank track to make it an even track count.

 

I'm superstitious! I usually stick with an even number of tracks anyway for that same reason. But I think Avid from v5 on had no problems with odd-numbered poly files. 

 

If I'm starting a long-term project, I try to check with the sound supervisor and ask if they have a preference for track layout. I try to keep it consistent day to day, and if one person goes away from a scene, I'll generally leave that blank and keep everybody else on the same track numbers. 

 

I think there was a brief period where the Fostex DV40's also had problems playing even-numbered poly files, but it's been awhile (like 2001 or something). 

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There isn't really an easy way to completely kill signal to the the pre-fade ISO, and that's one reason I might disarm a track. An actor might step off and make a phone call if they are not going to be in the coverage of a scene, or just have a conversation I don't want to record.

I turn the gain all the way down if someone peels off.

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