takev

Yes, I've discontinued the sale of Boom Recorder 7.22. I am working on 8.0 which is a rewrite of Boom Recorder. I am busy making a feature set, and you may submit your own features at (no promises): http://trac2.geekisp.com/boomrecorder/ Cheers, Take

When you're in a text editor with Boom Recorder running, you should look in the application menu (the menu named as the application and shown in bold) and select the 'services' menu, in there is the 'SMPTE Timecode' item; this will paste the current timecode into your text editor at the cursor position.

Hello Gurkan, It is one of the windows in Boom Recorder. Which can be found here: http://www.vosgames.nl/ Cheers, Take

Hello Sonic, I found this, it can convert OSC commands to JavaScript, and JavaScript can be used to control Boom Recorder: http://www.osculator.net/wiki/Main/HomePage I am working on Mirage Recorder and I will keep in mind talk back. Cheers, Take

The BBC are now experimenting with 100 frames/s (progressive scan). I saw their setup at IBC. The difference between 100 frames/s and 50 frames/s (normal TV is 50 fields/s) is quite remarkable, it will make a moving picture much sharper, much more than I imagined. As movie theater projectors run the film at 48 frames/s anyway (doubling each frame), I don't think the change to higher frame rates is far fetched. Movie theaters will have to compete with what people have at home, so they will need to go for higher frame rates and higher resolution. Japan already wants to roll out Super HI-Vision in 2015, which is 8K@10bit@60p with 22.2 channels of sound. Does anyone of you already have a boom pole with 22.2 channels of audio?

Hello everyone, I have just left my first week of shooting which went pretty good I thought. I had quite a few scenes with ladies in high heels, but with my limited experience I didn't bring anything with me. So the first time I was confronted with the art department found a few pieces of cork and I put these under the heels with double sided tape, it worked kind of. The next time I couldn't find any cork, but I did see a wide rubber band to bound a bunch of mail with, cut it into pieces and put in under the heel with double sided tape. It worked very well and the comment from the lady: "what the hell did you put under my shoe it is springy, like wearing a sneaker". A question for you: do you normally try to dampen the sound of the whole shoe or is the heel enough? I find the the rest of shoe makes quite a bit of noise too; because the bottom of the shoe is a hard surface as well. Cheers, Take

Hello Robert, You can set it to the same values as Noah. Set your FF800 to 48048, send a 30ND fps timecode from your 744T. Set Boom Recorder to 29.97ND/48000/48048. The timecode in the sound report will be wrong, the timecode in the display will be wrong. But the timecode in the audio file will be correct. Like noah's values Boom Recorder sees a wrong timecode becuase the sample rate from the F800 (48048) is different from what Boom Recorder thinks it is (48000). Setting the timecode on Boom Recorder to 29.97ND compensates for this. Then the 48048 sample rate in Boom Recorder sets the sample rate of the file to 48048 (Boom Recorder does not resample) and compensates the timestamp accordingly. I hope this will make your 744T and Boom Recorder files almost identical. Cheers, Take

Hello Noah and Robert, To answer your question, I do have a complete Boom Recorder setup at home: computer + MOTU 828Mk2 + OctPre (has a limiter on each channel). For sync we have an old-style clapboard. I have only boomed myself once for a production, and the director was happy with it. I first read quite a bit about booming before I started that job, I even caused the production to halt a few times because my boom was in the picture (following the advice that if your microphone doesn't get into the picture at least 4 times in a day you're not close enough). Thank you for your luck Robert, now I just need to find me some skills. Cheers, Take

Hi, Thank you for the responses so far, I look forward to more of them. I may try and get a second sound person, but although it is a feature film, it is done on no budget. We are just a couple of friends. It is extremely difficult to get funding for a feature film here in the Netherlands, pretty much to only chance you have is for a short 15 minute film. Luckily I do have a full Boom Recorder setup that i can use for recording, so I guess I will go in that direction. Also a good idea for a second boom instead of wireless, we only need to do that for short scenes, I guess I could even ask someone else on the crew to hold the second boom for a while. One of the locations will be a church, which I guess will be quite reverberant. I could definitely rent one of the suggested microphones, but where we get the camera is a inexpensive rental house that also has the following two microphones, is any of those two good in my situation, or should I just find a sennheiser mkh416: - Sennheiser K6/ME66 - Sanken CS-1 As for a microphone for recording the atmosphere of a dining hall with lots of people eating, could I use something like a second hand sennheiser MD21-U reporters microphone that I have at home? Or can I use that for recording sound effects? Any specific suggestions for microphones for those two things would be welcome. Cheers, Take

Hello everyone, In a couple of weeks I am planning with a couple of friends to record a feature length film. They asked me to capture the audio. We have already selected the Sony PMW-EX1 as the camera to record on, which seems according to specs the camera to make pictures with, I also noticed from the specs and this forum that the audio part is not the worst you've heard. The camera has two inputs, line/microphone(+fantom). Controlling Boom Recorder while holding a boom doesn't seem very appealing to me, so I though that directly recording to this camera would be sufficient, do people here think this is stupid? Would I need to carry a mixer, or would connecting the microphones straight to the camera be good enough? I only had one experience holding a boom and a mixer connected to the camera, the soundmixer had some other job to do, so I had borrowed the equipment. This was only for one day. I thought the mixer bag was quite heavy, I rather have something a bit lighter around my neck. Then of course I need to know what kind of microphones I need, I have never selected microphones before. Could anyone suggest what I need for the following conditions: - I need a boom microphone for indoor (only 2 scenes are outdoor) on-location (hospital like building) dialogue. - I need a microphone to record sound effects like knocking on doors and lighting a match and such, recording the interior of a driving car (maybe done "wild" using the camera) - I need a microphone to record the room in sync, like for recording random conversations in a large room/cafeteria. - I may need a clip-on radio microphone, for a third member of a dialogue. Is it normal to record foley like sound effects on the set? Do I need to have anything more to bring?

In the Netherlands we have to be very specific in the contract about copyrights transfer. It has to say: - That a person A gives the copyright to person B - That person B accepts the copyrights from person A - What the compensation is for the copyrights that person B gives to person A. From this I gather that copyrights are transferred only when all three conditions have met; when both persons have signed the contract (implicit copyright transfer papers), and when person B has paid person A.

We practically drown our French fries in mayonnaise, to each their own.

This is not an impossible, although maybe an unreasonable request. Like a recording a timecode signal at -20dbfs you could also encode an image. at -20dbfs you have 12 bits left over, 8 bit per sample to be used as an R, G or B color value. Using two extra bits to encode start-of-frame and start-of-line. You even have two bits left to be used for recording some metadata per image, such as timecode, framerate, etc. A HD image would cost 1920 width * 1080 height * 3 colors = 6220800 samples per frame. This image has (6220800 samples * 2 bits) / 8 bits per byte = 1555200 bytes of extra information, such as many PCM channels. 6220800 samples / (48000 Hz * 2 channels) = 64 seconds for a color bar frame.

Hello Marc, I don't use the clock of the computer to keep sync, I just look at the number of samples. As long as the clock of the audio converter doesn't drift, then Boom Recorder doesn't drift. Take

Hi, You do not need to record the timecode signal to a track, once Boom Recorder sees a timecode as a channel it will add a timestamp to the metadata of the audio files. Be aware there are edit programs out there that do not like a odd track count in audio files. In this case you should add a silent track to the audio file. How well Boom Recorder keeps sync depends on the quality of the sample rate of the converters.

For the timecode to be read the only thing that is needed is that its input is assigned to an empty channel. So you don't need to actually record that timecode channel into a file. You can un-assign the timecode channel from the file using the patch-bay. Some edit application do not like a odd number of tracks, something to watch for. Cheers, Take

I was not expecting to notice the strike, but my sales for Boom Recorder tumbled quite a bit. It started to get to normal levels this April. Not that I can complain to much, I still have a day job. Cheers, Take

You can use the Audio MIDI Setup utility to assign which set of outputs will be the default outputs of the OS. So if you can for example assign the 8 analogue audio outputs of the MOTU to be default. The QuickTime player can play use all those 8 channels to play. Within QuickTime player you can use cmd-J to open a menu and select which track to be played to which output. Annoyingly you have to do this for each audio file you want to play. Cheers, Take

Hello MT, Try the same thing, but with Boom Recorder frame rate also set to 29.97. (the timecode field will then show 48000 I think, that is no problem.) Cheers, Take

Hello Phillip, Although the sample rate between two devices can be locked using a word clock, I have no idea in an aggregation setup how the devices would sync their buffers. With this I mean that the MOTU devices send 512 samples in one go, but two MOTU devices would not do that simultaneously. One of them could be 50 samples off, or more. So although there would be no pops or clicks because the clocks are synchronised, it could be that there is a random (every time you boot up the system) latency between the two devices with a maximum of 256 samples. However, the MOTU devices may be smart enough to listen on the firewire bus to each other and synchronise their buffers as well, but I don't believe so. With a A/D converter connected to the ADAT input of the MOTU there will be a fixed latency that you would be able to compensate. Anyway, I personally have a MOTU 828 MkII with a FocusRite OctPre connected via ADAT. Cheers, Take

I guess I will only need a single battery for the camera head, all the other power can be supplied on the umbilical. So the camera head will stay quite light. BTW, I figured out a way for shilling the camera below room temperature, without making any noise, which from the discussions I see hear will be a plus. Basically the Peltier element is a heat pump that moves heat between the two plates and because it is active it can lower the temperature below room temperature, provided that you cool the other side of the peltier element. Normally one would use heat sink fan combination to cool the peltier element. But luckily today heat pipe / heat sink combination are used very often now, heat pipes (used the be in audio amplifiers) are also heat pumps and therefor can move a lot of heat in a short amount of time. Except heat pipes are passive and will not be able to cool below room temperature. The Peltier together with heat pipe / heat sink combination I hope will cool the camera without sound. Cheers, Take

Hi Phillip, Thank you, yes, the camera can handle up to 18 Volt I think, I would imagine the Peltier element will also handle this. I will have a look at those batteries. Cheers, Take

Hi, I have a question, I am building my camera system and would like to know what kind of battery systems you are using, I need 12 V DC. And something that is small but has a lot of Ah, maybe enough for a whole day. I need to run: the camera head, which uses 6.25 Watt. A Peltier element including controller probably something like 8 Watt. An accurate clock for the camera head. Maybe a small LCD panel. I probably need two batteries to make sure the camera is isolated from any electrical interference, the camera is also connected using fiber optics to the computer.

Hello Jeff, For your friends: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222 http://www.rme-audio.com/english/techinfo/fw800sp2.htm Both actually talk about firewire 800 interfaces jumping back to S100. I am not sure what happens when a computer has a firewire 800 chipset with a firewire 400 port. Cheers, Take

Hi, I guess I am a bit late with answering these questions. I had a customer who found that an external firewire drive made the user interface of Boom Recorder more responsive and the ring buffer showed a more stable flow of data compared to a USB or internal IDE disks on a G5 Power Mac. This was when recording 48 channels. Both USB en IDE let the operating system work hard, interrupting the system whenever it has finished writing/reading some data. Firewire is much more intelligent and is able to work quite a bit on its own without interrupting the system for every little thing. I found out a couple of months ago that MS Windows XP and Vista only does S100 (quarter the speed of firewire 400) transfer over firewire by default. According to Microsoft they have done this because of compatibility problems when they had used the normal S400 transfers in MS Windows 2000. The vendor of my camera head comes with windows XP/Vista software that includes a replacement driver for firewire host controllers to enable the use of S100, S200, S400 and S800 transfers. So on windows XP and Vista a firewire driver is four times slower than a USB2 drive. Also I would like to tell you that formatting your disk using an Apple file system as opposed to FAT will also increase the performance by a lot. Of course you will lose compatibility with Windows systems if you do. Cheers, Take