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Is there anything like Metacorder or BoomRecorder but for Windows or Linux?


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Not quite the same but there are some light weight dedicated recording programs like Presonus Capture (when using studiolive mixers), Waves Tracks Live, Nuendo Live... I'm sure I'm missing a few.  Most of these are for long form performance capture and not necessarily lots of relatively short takes with heavy metadata requirements, although can be adapted, isn't going to be quite the same experience or deliverable product as a purpose built tool like Metacorder or Boomrecorder.

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Reaper is the easiest and cheapest to get going (like free), and very fast and reliable even on wonky PC laptops (like my location machine).   Reaper is a full-up DAW, not a capture-only app like Boom Recorder, and it doesn't come with certain movie-centric features ready to go, like TC input, reporting, etc., but the drill with Reaper is that I have never found anything that someone somewhere hasn't figured out a way to do in Reaper--the user community is enormous and very creative.  I have also found that if you dig in a bit you can discover many ways of doing things yourself, and Reaper, as a clean, new, 21st century app, is very unburdened by legacy code.  I know other folks who run ProTools "vanilla" as a capture app (mostly for music).   There is also Audio Desk from MOTU (which I think they give you free when you buy a MOTU interface) it's basically Digital Performer without all the MIDI stuff and a few other tricks.  I've used all of these apps a fair amount, and for the PC would recommend Reaper.  For Linux there is Ardour, but I have no experience with it at all.  But...overall, if your work is recording location production sound for movie type projects and you want to use a computer-based rig to do it, there is nothing that compares to Boom Recorder for flexibility, reliability and support.   When I was recording production sound in this manner I found that the best course of action for me was to get a Mac laptop and go with Boom Recorder, even though my other computers at that time were mostly PCs.  I'll be interested to hear if you find something more equivalent to MC/BR for PC--I never could despite years of looking. 

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Reaper is the easiest and cheapest to get going (like free), and very fast and reliable even on wonky PC laptops (like my location machine).   Reaper is a full-up DAW, not a capture-only app like Boom Recorder, and it doesn't come with certain movie-centric features ready to go, like TC input, reporting, etc., but the drill with Reaper is that I have never found anything that someone somewhere hasn't figured out a way to do in Reaper--the user community is enormous and very creative.  I have also found that if you dig in a bit you can discover many ways of doing things yourself, and Reaper, as a clean, new, 21st century app, is very unburdened by legacy code. 

Everything you say about Reaper is true EXCEPT it is not free. You can download a full working copy that will never time out, but the developers rely on you to do the right thing and buy the appropriate licence after the trial period.

 

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Reaper is a LOT more free than many apps, who only allowed crippled versions of their apps to be demo'ed, and after a certain time period won't run at all on a non-licensed system.  I have several Reaper licenses, but it's great to know that if I ended up in a pinch, needing to use a machine that isn't one of mine, that I can download the app and have the full deal ready go right away (I can even load my prefs to it).    This alone is a big plus for location production work!  And--Reaper doesn't care if it is on a PC or a Mac, and projects can be freely moved between the two!  NO DONGLES!  NO PASSCODES!

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Isn't that part of the story behind the success or at least acceptance of Digidesign's Q-Sheet (or another of their early software products)? Story I hear from people who should know (and unlike me should know which Digi product it was) is that when they first showed/previewed it at a conference with a low price; nobody took it seriously, since it was priced so low. So before the they released it, they raised the price and that higher price helped people view it at a professional tool.

IF, maybe look for a used Macbook or something...shouldn't be that expensive and you could view the MacOS as yet another BSD/Mach unix operating system. ;-)

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

I had in mind to perhaps use the Behringer XR18, which in terms of form factor is pretty similar to the Behringer XR12 which I covered in this vblog I did of the Pro Audio Showcase here in New Zealand last week:

 

 

You can feed 18 tracks over USB, it has WiFi for using with a tablet (which you can mix on, or simply just use for remote monitoring when away from the cart).


Unfortunately the XR12 & XR16 only will do stereo to your computer, so worthless for our needs.

 

There is also the Behringer X18, which is almost identical to the XR18 but is a different form factor (the X18 is designed to fit your iPad on it to mix with, while the XR18 is designed to be rack mounted. Hench the names of X18 vs XR18).

 

For physical controls (rather than an iPad) am thinking the Behringer X-TOUCH Control Surface. (or their Behringer X-TOUCH Compact)

 

This shows them working together:
 


Biggest point still left to ponder is how to battery power all of this?!

Anyway, just pie in the sky dreaming for now, as I don't have a need for this set up yet.

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Thanks! Interesting avenue to look down, although when I googled it a bit, I saw this thread on jwsoundgroup discussing it many years ago:
 


Although yes, they have dropped their price significantly:

https://www.soundonsound.com/news/lower-cost-sadie-6-versions-released

But at that price, it still makes more sense to get a dedicated Apple computer and use BoomRecorder.

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Ohhhh! This is an interesting path to look into instead, a Mac Mini which runs on DC power, Gotham Sound has themselves covered this:

 

https://www.gothamsound.com/library/mod-mac-mini-dc-power

 

 

http://www.mvtanglewood.com/2013/12/converting-mac-mini-to-12vdc.html

 

https://ips.org.uk/2010/02/laptops-on-location/


This looks like a pretty good interface for it:
https://www.proaudiosolutions.com/MOTU-Ultralite-mk3-Compact-Hybrid-p/ultralitemk3-hybrid.htm

 

 

 

http://jwsoundgroup.net/index.php?/topic/28223-mac-mini-2012-dc-input-specs/

 

Heh, there is even a David in Auckland NZ who has been doing exactly this for a number of years! (I'm also a David in Auckland.....)

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FYI Reaper will run under Wine in Linux. Haven't tried it myself but it explicitly says so on the site. So I'm assuming that it just works the way reaper does otherwise.(Trump'd say, "it's the greatest DAW ever")

Just top of mind, Reaper would probably be able to do what you want, but it would require a lot of customizing and tweaking on your part. On the other hand, it's more than worth the money. I bet someone's already programmed a plug in to convert incoming TC Audio to actual timecode. 

(cus you can do that in reaper: program your own plug-ins)

 

And metadata, well I guess you could rename your tracks as usual, with the characters name. And then you can batch the filenames, like making every file name be (*scenename-*trackname-*take).. Interesting. Will try!

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I use Reaper all the time, but doing what you say re: TC would require someone pretty sophisticated in ReaScript to do--I haven't heard of anyone making this work yet (it would be great if they have).  Meanwhile Boom Recorder does pretty much everything someone doing prod. sound would need.  Having a Mac dedicated to BR isn't that expensive, and using a loc-recording computer for other tasks is asking for trouble in any case (you'll want a dedicated machine).  Re: Sadie.....after 17 years of use all I can say is that it has never been the same post its porting to native and 64 bit.......and it is a walled garden.   OMF in v6 64 bit is broken, BTW.

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In the latest version of Reaper, there's a menu called "External timecode synchronisation", which takes an audio track and converts it to TC. At least that's what I think it does. Can't test it though. Just another FYI...


I did try to setup a somewhat close-to on set location sound mixing project, and it IS doable, but it does require a lot of Metadata editing after the fact, since Reaper in itself can't write BWF metadata (unless there's a plugin I'm not aware of). And that's easily done with WaveAgent. So basically you could have your Reaper and your WaveAgent running at the same time, record in Reaper, have Auto-Render turned on (for redundancy; the recorded files are stored in one place, and the render files somewhere else. You can also record to multiple locations at once within Reaper), and switch to WaveAgent for metadata entry. It's not as quick or stable as BoomRecorder though, obviously. 

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It should be easy...

If it's about getting TC input as well, I would think any recording software will do.

Just record all your tracks, and record incoming TC on one of the tracks as well.

Post processing is needed, but that I can provide.

This thing accepts Wave as input, and can output BWF with correct timestamps (subframe accurate!)

https://www.videotoolshed.com/product/ltc-convert-auxtc/

Now, this was intended to aid simple post, but I could alter it for you guys so you can also input track names / other metadata.

 

If you need LTC out, that will be a different story. PC's have bad clocks, so LTC out WILL drift like hell. You'll be better off with an external TC generator / lockit / tentacle / yadda as a master clock.

 

Bouke

 

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Stumbled across "Nuendo Live", which seems like it is worth a look. And it is available for both PC and Mac. 

 

https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/nuendo/nuendo_live.html

I'll also throw this link down, as I'm very impressed with how he has managed to squeeze his computer recording set up into a bag:

http://rtsound.net/computer-bag-setup/

http://rtsound.net/computers-for-production-recording/

http://rtsound.net/audio-interfaces-location-mixers/

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 16/06/2017 at 12:38 PM, Tom Visser said:

Not quite the same but there are some light weight dedicated recording programs like Presonus Capture (when using studiolive mixers), Waves Tracks Live, Nuendo Live... I'm sure I'm missing a few.  Most of these are for long form performance capture and not necessarily lots of relatively short takes with heavy metadata requirements, although can be adapted, isn't going to be quite the same experience or deliverable product as a purpose built tool like Metacorder.

 

Talking of a purpose built tool like Metacorder..........

 

Gallery has recently completely overhauled its website and webstore, and to celebrate, there is an *incredible* special offer on Metacorder for a limited period.   Down from the US$1795 price it has been since launch, you can now buy the same MetaCorder product for just £249 pounds sterling. Thats a more than 80% discount !


Compatible with macOS versions from 10.6 to 10.13 High Sierra, Dante, Ravenna and all Core Audio interfaces.  
MetaCorder is the original and best production sound recorder for laptops and Mac Minis.

 

If you don't yet own MetaCorder - now is the time to claim your copy at this super low special offer price.

 

MetaCorder at the Gallery Website

 

New Gallery Website

 

Gallery Secure WebStore (hosted by NDI.Cloud)

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 03/10/2017 at 2:15 PM, IronFilm said:

Stumbled across "Nuendo Live", which seems like it is worth a look. And it is available for both PC and Mac. 

 

https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/nuendo/nuendo_live.html

I'll also throw this link down, as I'm very impressed with how he has managed to squeeze his computer recording set up into a bag:

http://rtsound.net/computer-bag-setup/

http://rtsound.net/computers-for-production-recording/

http://rtsound.net/audio-interfaces-location-mixers/

 
Only just seen this- as a note I've not really used any of the computer setups in anger.  I am working on something, though... 

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