settling in to the world of multitrack

[Ramsay]

I was thinking back to only about 3 years ago when this website was full of so many questions on format issues track layout and everything related to switching in to the multitrack format. Our side of the industry has adapted so quickly to the rapidly changing styles of shooting and this website has been of great benefit. My Thanks to Jeff and all the knowledgeable posters who made the big jump much easier. We sorta create our own standards here it seems. A very organic way of adapting. Patrick

[Jeff Wexler]

Thank you for the kind words regarding this Group and to all those who have contributed to helping eachother out in this rapidly changing world. Reflecting on this transition to file based multitrack recording, I am struck by the fact that it is one of the major technological changes that was initiated and nurtured by the production sound mixers. Most every other major workflow changes were initiated by, often at their insistence, by POST production. As file based multitrack editing and recording was already fairly mature but still evolving in the post world, the first Deva entered the arena but on the production side. It was readily apparent to the early adopters of the Deva that this would be the way we would want to do our work, in production, whether the people in post were ready for it or not --- and it was quite clear in the beginning that they really were NOT ready for it. It was the first time that production people even needed to consider such things as "workflow" because prior to the Deva we all just turned in 1/4" tape or DAT tape and all the workflow issues were issues that faced post people in their world.

Ultimately, I believe that we have all benefitted from the efforts of the early Deva adopters who saw the writing on the wall and never gave up the efforts to integrate the production and post production processes. Production mixers had to learn a lot more about computers, files, sample rates and conversions, and post people had to learn more about how their systems worked (or didn't work) as we ALL moved into the digital file based world.

I am pleased that this Group has played a meaningful role in our working lives, hopefully educating, solving problems and helping to direct our working lives as professional sound people.

Regards,  Jeff Wexler