Jeff Wexler

I don't think I want to host such a site --- there are too many already available (like the MacJam site that Jeff E. used to put up his song). I think it works out just fine when people post a LINK to where something resides. It would be cool to be able to listen to stuff right here in this Forum but it just isn't technically feasible with this structure. Regards, Jeff Wexlr

from Mac Rumors site: "Appleinsider is backtracking on their claims from last year that the Mac mini was set to be discontinued. According to the rumor site, they've received word to the contrary: For the first time in nearly a year, however, people familiar with the matter tell AppleInsider there's new life in the Mac mini department, where a small team of engineers have recently been tasked with gutting the diminutive desktop and applying fresh internals. The Mac mini is expected to accompany the rest of the Mac line to the new Penryn Core 2 Duo processors. Specs are expected to start at 2.1GHz with the same GMA X3100 graphics processor used in the current MacBooks. The Mac mini was last updated in August 2007. MacScoop was first to predict Penryn Mac mini updates in the coming weeks. Apple is also expected to also refresh their iMac line with the latest Intel processors." Regards, Jeff Wexler

Way to go Jeff E! I loved that song, on all levels, music was great, lyrics were great, loved the use of "real world" sounds ("put us on a bell!", etc.). It is a testament to your talent and creativity (and of course, kudos to Apple for the way they have empowered us all --- 10 years ago you would have been in a studio paying somebody a lot of money to get that sort of production value. Now we are making music, and recording sound professionally, on the same device we use to get our email!). - Jeff Wexler

I was seriously disappointed by the movie also. When Hal showed me the first trailer he had cut, it blew me away --- all the energy and excitement of the concerts was there, it was only about 2 minutes long and it was all the song "Start Me Up". Whenever I hear "Start Me Up" it takes me right back to THE CONCERTS and my experience there. The finished movie, I am sad to say, did not do this --- it really is not a very good movie (though I don't know why). Marty Scorsese and others have made much better concert/music movies ... I hate to say it but I think Hal just blew it on this one. Regards, Jeff Wexler

Thank you to both Phil and Richard --- how nice it is that you both post just good images (and I am so pleased that my Discussion Group configuration allows this and people know how to use it). I just looked at the Zaolla website --- it looks like a really good company making really well made cables and snakes. Next time I will look into getting one of their D-sub snakes. There seems to be quite a similarity between Phil's cart and Richard's; I guess it is in part due to the use of SKB case, but having seen Richard's cart I think it is considerably larger than Phil's. Regards, Jeff Wexler

Looking good Phil! It's a lot of equipment onboard, well organized and hopefully easy to use. I noticed you're using a Firelite external drive, sitting next to the Deva, which I use as well when I want tracks to go off to an external hard drive via Firewire. I have a question on your patchbay which appears to use standard Hosa rack mount product --- it just isn't clear to be how you are using those two patchbays and what you are doing about getting from patchbays to equipment that moves on sliding shelf, like the Cooper. I use 8 pair cable that is all encased in a single jacket. For the first time on the last movie I had a "patchbay failure" which took a long time to diagnose. Finally, I discovered that the lead which brought out my Mic 2 (2nd boom) input from the Cooper up to the patchbay in back (custom panel with connectors for Mic 1, Mic 2, AUX, etc.) had gpone bad! I guess repeted flexing of the whole 8 pair snake eventually damaged just that one lead. So I have re-done the whole affair, used 3 4 pair cables (higher quality also) and I'm going to hope for the best. Regards, Jeff Wexler

I don't believe so. It is also not so great if you are dealing with lots of individual cues, like for the other side of a phone call for example, where something like a Shortcut system (expensive hardware) or SoundByte (inexpensive software) would be a better choice. I use SoundStudio primarily the same way I would play something back from a CD, 1 musical number for example, but unlike a CD I can edit the program, put markers (start points, end points), loop playback cues, etc. - JW

Wow... and wow. Thank you Crew for posting such good personal memories (I knew they were up there in your head somewhere) and thank you for sharing this event with all the rest of us with such descriptive prose. I am afraid that if I had posted more info it might have descended into some technical discussion of the timecode system that Billy Youdelman developed, or the video switcher that Louis Mahler rigged up with Harry Howard for Hal to watch all the cameras ... but your post reminds us it's all about the people ... that was the truly special part. - JW

I think I would probably blame Bill Gates FIRST, just on principle, and then not use Powerpoint at all for this task. It is a novel idea I must admit but it reminds me of another sort of peculiar use of software: A video assist guy I know was having trouble with Quicken and asked me if I could help him. It turns out that he was not keeping track of his finances with the program but was rather using it as inventory database to track his large collection of movie one sheets! He was trying to store thumbnail images tied to what Quicken thought was a Checkbook entry and it just didn't work. He was unaware at that time of really good database apps like Filemaker Pro. In any case, for simple non-TC playback off my Mac I have been using SoundStudio for the longest time. I know everybody else keeps recommending Audacity (I think primarily because it is FREE) but I have never liked that program. SoundStudio is a commercial program (costs $80. maybe?) and it works very well. http://www.freeverse.com/apps/app/?id=5012 Regards, Jeff Wexler

I remember it well and it was a terrific experience for us all. It was an incredibly ambitious undertaking without really enough planning (and this was before there had been very many concert movies to draw on). Our responsibilities on the film (and it was FILM, of course) were quite a bit different than they would be on a normal recording job since the major audio recording was being done in the remote Record Plant Truck. The Record Plant and the Stones' engineering staff were going to do their thing no matter what and our big challenge was to interface with them, with Bill Graham (the concert promoter and producer) and everyone else involved with the tour. It was much more an effort of coordination, sync issues, communication systems (for 9 camera positions and 18 cameras!). We also had to deal with the fact that Mick and Keith were battling (don't they always?), with Mick wanting the movie to be made and Keith wanting no part of it. There are a lot of good stories --- I will just have to dig them up and post some stuff later. I will say that our crew, Crew, Don, Billy Youdelman and me --- we all worked very hard but once the concert began it pretty much ran itself and quite smoothly at that. Crew ended up pushing one of the dollies (you can see him at the base of the stage if you know where to look) and Don and I actually got to do some behind the scenes backstage stuff with Garrett and the steadicam --- one great shot of Hal Ashby with an IV in his arm (no, he wasn't on drugs he was trying to recover from the previous night of partying with the band). Hal looks at that camera and says: "it's only rock and roll... and I like it" as the camera flies by. Regards, Jeff Wexler

I didn't know a Firefox Beta 4 was out --- I guess that even the amount of time I have been spending in front of my computer isn't enough to keep up with everything. As far as SPEED goes, for those not reading the ZDNET article Scott posted, here is an excerpt from the article which talks about the current benchmarks: "Apple isn’t kidding when it says that Safari 3.1 is fast. In my SunSpider JavaScript benchmark it is only narrowly beaten by Firefox 3.0 Beta 4. Based on these results, Safari 3.1 is neck and neck with Firefox 3.0 Beta 4, about twice as fast as Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 and Firefox 3.0 Beta 3, four times faster than Firefox 2.0.0.12 and, well, about seven times faster than Internet Explorer 7. Just for completeness I decided to run the same benchmarks on a smaller cross-section of Mac OS X browsers on the Mac mini that I have here. In this test Safari 3.1 beat both Safari 3.0.4 and Firefox 2.0.0.12 and 3.0 Beta 4."

You make some good points and observations here but I wish to comment, and question, a few things: "There's no doubt that Macs are good computers, but I believe their increase in market share is due to a combination of marketing and the human instinct to eventually want something different; i.e. to see the establishment topple." I think there are some more fundamental reasons why, in relation to personal computers, people seek something different. "Ask most people why they have a Mac or why they want a Mac and the answer is usually, "Because it's cooler"." I actually personally have never heard this comment --- I must be hanging out with too many people who already thing they are cool... or people who don't think about those things. "But from my experience with Macs and PCs, one has not been more reliable or easier to use than the other." Well, this has not been my experience but then possibly I haven't had enough experience with PC's. I do hear from just about everyone I know of who has started using a Mac after years of using PC's, that their Mac is easier to use and more reliable. "For over a year now, the MacBook Pro has been my primary computer for two reasons: 1) Two of our industry's recording programs are Mac-only (Metacorder and Boom Recorder), and 2) It has the ability to run Mac OS and Windows OS at the same time. On the set this means I can use Boom Recorder and monitor my Lectro Venue while running BWF Widget on the same screen. At the office it means I can test audio files for Trew Audio's customers on Mac OS and Windows OS while also running our Windows office management software while also designing the Meon on Windows based AutoCAD, all with a single computer." Your statement above is a testament to just how great the Mac platform is (and all of that from the computer which most PC users used to refer to as a toy). "Lastly, sitting at the airport bar with bowling shoes and a MacBook Pro seems to always attract the company of pharmaceutical salespersons." But I imagine if you were still smoking the Camels you might not attract the people you want. "So, for my needs, for those reasons, the double price is justified. However, I must say that the Mac crashes just as often as the Dell it replaced (not very often), it's at least as quirky ("USB port not available..."), and it is noticeably slower. A small price to pay for being cool." Again, I must just be lucky (for the last 20 years or so) that I have just not had any crashes with any of the Macs I've had. I have had some weird stuff happen (often, I might add, relating to the installation of software from Microsoft) but very few crashes. Most of my Windows PC using friends tell me stories of things they have had to do to keep their machines running (endless restarts, reformatting hard drives, re-installing system software, etc. --- and don't get me started on all the anti-virus, spyware B.S.) and I have not had to do any of those things, ever, with the Mac. What's this comment about "double the price" ? Talk about comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended) it seems like you might be comparing oranges to school buses or something. Almost every single in depth article I have read (in print, including the major PC mags) have determined that feature for feature there is virtually NO difference in cost between comparable Macs and PC's. Regards, Jeff Wexler

Report from various sources about failure rates and dissatisfaction with Flash (SSD) drives: Flash Drives Failing at Significant Rate, Study Finds
March 19, 2008 9:00 AM
Chris Barylick As cool as first generation technologies may be, there are also some drawbacks. According to Macworld UK, laptops with flash-based solid state drives are being returned at an alarming rate. The primary reasons cited are technical failures and performance shortcomings, as reported in a study released this week by brokerage firm Avian Securities, which covers the high-tech and aerospace industries. The report cites that an unnamed large manufacturer is seeing return rates as high as 20 - 30 percent on solid state-drive-equipped notebooks. Returns due to technical failures appear to be between 10 and 20 percent, 10 times higher than the failure rate for conventional hard drives. The other 10 percent of returns were due to lack of expected performance gains, per the report. Flash-based solid-state drives are built to be significantly faster than disk-based drives due to factors such as a lack of moving parts. A Dell spokeswoman who stepped forward to comment noted that "SSD technology is new and will have growing pains." Regards, Jeff Wexler

The history of my father with George Lucas goes back to the when my father used to race sports cars. Pop owned two of the "Old Yeller" race cars that Max Balchowski built in the mid-60's. Pop used to run into George at the regional races, Riverside, Pomona, Willow Springs, etc., and George was an avid sports car enthusiast. George was a little bit adrift and didn't know what to do with his life and Pop asked him one day if he was interested in making movies --- George said no, but he did say that he loved going to movies; that was enough for Pop to have a chat with Mel Sloane, an old friend and head of the film department at USC, and helped George get into film school. Later on, Pop helped out shooting some of THX-1138 (as did Caleb Deschanel and others) and then also came on to help out on George's first "big" movie: "American Graffiti". They continue to be good friends and George almost always mentions Haskell as one of his first mentors. Regards, Jeff Wexler

For those interested, Apple has seen a meteoric rise in market share over the last year or so. Here are some of the figures: According to preliminary data from NPD, Apple reportedly achieved 14 percent of the U.S. retail PC market share in February 2008, up from 9% just a year ago. This represents 60 percent unit growth and 67 percent revenue growth year-over-year. Mac Notebook sales were up 64% year-over-year and Mac Desktops up 55% year-over-year, with strong sales of the MacBook Air this February. In 2001, Apple launched their retail store initiative with the slogan "5% down, 95% to go", referring to market share. - JW

We used the TRX900's on talent a lot on this last movie and none of the antennas were ever loose. When I first put antennas on the transmitters they seem to be quite a snug fit and I did tighten them all the way down but without any force. They have just stayed tight --- am I lucky? - Jeff Wexler

Those of us who came up in the industry in the late '60's and early '70's, this was the time of the "independents" as the major studios were losing their dominance in the industry. When an independent film project got underway, there usually was no major studio (and no studio sound department) so the equipment had to be obtained somewhere. Prior to this time the equipment needed to record sound (or make the images for that matter) was way to expensive for individuals to own. A handful of independent camera people, my father amongst them, were the first to actually own film cameras, so on these productions they would be the camera department --- Director of Photography AND Equipment Rental company. Sound mixers began to do the same, usually starting out by renting from companies like Lee Strosnider, Ryder Sound and others. Lee was one of the first to extend a credit account to me so that I could rent equipment. Most sound mixers started to build up their equipment packages and would then rent out to the production companies. The major studios still had sound departments and many of them continued to maintain their production sound equipment (and insists that studio equipment be used ... or else). I just didn't do those jobs, not because I was so concerned about the loss of revenue by not renting my equipment but because I really felt that it would be very difficult to do the job properly with the equipment package the majors were offering. Regards, Jeff Wexler

Way back in the really old days, even the early days of the Nagra, STUDIO sound departments had very large carts (the ones at Columbia you actually SAT on the cart) and independent freelance sound people would almost always have a cart of some sort for regular sit down work (which was most of the work). On every job there would be shots, scenes, locations that going "over the shoulder" made the best sense, and the Nagra was the first reliable portable machine to even make that possible. The first sound cart I ever built was made from a Sears TV table. It had miserable little casters which I replaced with slightly larger miserable casters, built some reinforcements on the lower shelf and installed some cable hooks. That cart was probably 1971. Later, Ivan Kruglak (founder of Coherent Communications) manufactured a sound cart from a Sears handtruck (this would be a precursor to the Magliner-based carts). As equipment needs grew, video monitors, 2 recorders, Comtek transmitters, wireless receivers on the cart, the carts grew also. The scenes that Rob and I were doing in those pictures was in a slow moving river bed and OTS was the way to go. I have another shot, very funny, of the script supervisor sitting in her CHAIR right in the water --- that is sort of like what we would have been doing if we had moved the cart into the water. No, we never ran a backup to the Nagra except in the rare instance where Ron Cogswell, suspecting that Warner Bros. would sabotage his dailies because he refused to use studio equipment, ran 2 machines and kept the "backup" just in case. Warner Bros. did in fact sabotage his dailies, tried to get him fired, and it was only after he produced the other roll of 1/4" tape that his job, and reputation, were saved. Regards, Jeff Wexler

Good to hear from you on the Group. I was just getting ready to correct my post --- you are absolutely right that it was 1976! Nostalgia is a good thing (even though as I write the word it looks like a medical condition) as long as you don't wallow in it (which I often tend to do). Take it easy, but take it... Best regards, Jeff Wexler

In the bottom left hand corner of the window where you compose a message, there is a drop down you can click on "Additional Options" --- there you can choose a file to attach. Please be mindful of the SIZE of the image you are posting. - JW

Since we're celebrating Rob Young, and he is a great guy, I am reposting 2 pictures I have of the two of us together, in Canada of course. I think it was very early '80's and it was on a Movie-of-the-Week (MOW) way before all this TV stuff was running away to Canada. We shot in Vancouver because it was a really good location. 2-man crew and I had to get someone locally there. Rob was already an accomplished sound mixer but agreed to do the job with me as the boom operator. We had fun on that one, had some great Indian food, we were in and out of Canada in about 3 weeks. Regards, Jeff Wexler

No need to get bewildered on this one. The most basic terms, relating to sound and the presence of reverberation or delay, has always been "wet" or "dry" or somewhere along the continuum. "Wet" being obviously dripping in reverb, "Dry" being devoid of reverb. - JW

Thank you so much for this great post. I would like to acknowledge the amount of work that goes into postings like this, the clarity and orderliness, the links and the personal comments that benefit us all. Richard is to be congratulated for taking the time to participate in our group in this manner --- this is very much appreciated and it's one of the main reasons this Discussion Group has grown into a really meaningful, useful meeting place. Thanks again. Best Regards, Jeff Wexler

I don't remember which supply I posted a picture of here but what I am using now is actually a 2 piece unit. Each is built in an aluminum chassis box which is approx. 2 RU high (although it is not a rack mount box --- I had to fabricate rack ears to secure it to my cart). One box has the regulated DC power supply, breakers, meter and a 20 amp hour Panasonic sealed lead acid battery. This is fairly light weight and when I am on a job where I know AC will be always be available, this is the only supply that rides on the bottom of my cart. When on a job where there is likely to be a scarcity of AC during the day, I place the second box (identical in size) on top of the first supply. This second supply is batteries only (with breaker and meter) and adds additional 30 amp hours of capacity. The load on the cart power supply is basically the Cooper 208, Deva IV, Sound Devices 744T, Comtek base station, video monitor and Zaxcom quad box (4 receivers). Additionally, the cart has integrated LED lighting which has very little current draw. I'm not so good with the math so I just did a real world test --- with this configuration (the two boxes on the cart) I ran everything for 8 hours. Robert Maxfield, my Utility guy, when hearing this asked me why I am always asking for AC right away after we have made a simple stage move and I have been unplugged for about 10 minutes. I don't know the answer to his question --- I guess I'm just nuts or something. Regards, Jeff Wexler

Both seem quite expensive to me. I know that my cart powering needs are probably a little less intense than others but the suppliers that I have been building and using for the last 10 years run about $300. in parts. Even if you had to pay someone to assemble, it is a very low cost but effective solution (certainly if you are just powering DC equipment --- the supplies that I build would not be suitable for those using AC equipment, inverters, etc.). - Jeff Wexler