bcopenhagen

I can second the recommendation for Batteries4Broadcast. In my two-years experience with their Li-Ion NP-style batts, I've found them to perform on par with the de facto standard, IDX. I know you weren't necessarily considering the NP form factor, but it's a good package. FYI, the B4B batts are not compatible with iDX chargers. -Brian

Or your cutting-edge FP33, like the mannequin is sporting in iKan's photo.

Yes, very good. Used it consistently for almost 3 years. Still going strong. Not as feature-rich as the 4-bank, but does well with charge and recondition. I still go with Powerex as my AA of choice. Tried others, but none have consistent mAh ratings. Titanium were good, but they became difficult to acquire last summer. Haven't checked recently. Brian

Zack gave you good info for seeing your names you gave during recording production sound within particular REGIONS. But it sounds like you want the actual TRACK in Pro Tools to say John, Sally, Boom, Mix. No, you can't automatically do that. Any new track created in Pro Tools defaults to being named Audio 1, Audio 2, etc. You'll have to name your Pro Tools tracks manually. Brian

Worked recently with two colleagues, a DP and director who have that terrible habit. It was an abstract shot of people's hands on a railing and feet going up and down a high school stairwell. Once I got the AD dept to stop wrangling the background out loud ("OK send two... ok, you three... now 1"), I turned my attention to the DP and director, and said, "Are you guys done with this shot?" "No, one more minute...", they both responded, lost in picture world. I looked at both of them and said, "Then shut up!" Had we not been working together for 10 years and running, I might have been more politically correct. I haven't gotten around to the other thread about calling cut, but I also get fidgety when "Cut" is not the word used. Instead, it's "Great" or "Nice". As Murphy's law has it, that kind of finish is usually accompanied by a relevant sound effect. Grumble... Grumble... -Brian

Thanks for that, John. There's some real gems in there... Good for a few belly laughs Brian

Not with a direct import into Final Cut Pro. But maybe a typical FCP editor isn't going to know what a sound report is anyway... back on topic: Yes +1, for the ESR (electronic sound report) via CL-WiFi -Brian

I didn't even think of Zaxcom when I read Glen's post. I thought of my experience from a few years back with a different company. It was end-of-year 2007, and I was ready to buy a disk-based recorder. I was really bent on getting something with 8-tracks, and Sonosax had announced their small 8-track recorder for September. Well, it was still a line drawing and some specs when I was ready to buy, so I invested in a 744T. Fast forward 4 months and at NAB 2008, Sound Devices announces the 788T. Would I have waited if I'd known? No, because I invested at the right time for myself: before the end of tax year 2007, and before I put the 744T on a 3.5 month rental as a backup machine. The day the show wrapped, I sold the 744, bought a 788T, and never looked back. I was a shoe-in for the Sonosax, but it never manifested in good time. And the anticipation from the prematurely announced release date eventually left a bad taste in my mouth. The moral: if you need something now, and you can see that it's a good investment, or will improve your work, buy it now. If you can bide your time waiting for NAB to see if some hot new thing is going to be available, then wait it out. Don't pin your hopes on the rumored "next-best-thing". And ultimately, it's just gear. Buy it, sell it, trade it...it won't be what defines your work or your reputation... Brian

Mark Weingarten and Michael Primmer are on a different project now. They were only looking for a 3rd when I got the call, so I'm guessing it's not a local mixer/boom op. Nelson and Fred just finished on the Alcatraz pilot. I had to turn down both, as I'm out of town. Brian

Yep. Interestingly, when shooting with that system, the burden of timecode master no longer falls on the sound mixer.

I was recording Poly, so can't speak for mono BR files in Avid. Looking at the bext chunk, there's no difference in BR poly vs. BR mono. Neither has track names in the metadata. The difference with mono files is that the trackname that you give in BR becomes the suffix to the filename. So my suspicion is that FCP is not reading tracknames from metadata, but you're getting it from the end of the filename. With a 788T/FCP workflow coming up, I'm trying to figure out a workflow that will get me tracknames in the OMF delivered from FCP. Also thinking about how to be able to load original sound files into PT, and have them come up as match-tracks from the OMF. I'll be in the test lab for a little while on that one. Brian

I noticed this problem on a feature I did using a Boom Recorder/Avid workflow. The tracknames from BR recordings were missing in Avid. My portable recordings originating from a 788T, however, did show the tracknames. I investigated and came to the conclusion that Avid was only reading a portion of the metadata. Looking more closely at the metadata chunks, I noticed that BR doesn't write tracknames to the bext chunk, only to the iXML chunk. The 788T writes to both chunks. Avid seems to only read the metadata in the bext chunk, and ignores the much more expansive iXML metadata. Besides scene, take, and tape, this can also include notes and tracknames. Wave Agent is probably reading the iXML to derive channel name. If you use another BWF utility (BWAV Reader, or BWF Widget, or even Snapper), you can see the chunk in a more raw form. IIRC, I brought this up to Take at the time, but I don't think it was ever addressed. It doesn't solve your problem, but I hope it helps shed some light on it. -Brian

There's a lot of cases where previously paid features are added to an upgrade, in both hardware and software. That's just the tech industry. I, for one, got my $1000 bucks worth from TC and OMF import. What DOES chap my hide is that I just bought a Micro because they discontinued supporting the original Mbox. The Micro cost me about the same as a PT 9 crossgrade from PT LE (and they're not offering a free crossgrade even though I recently purchased). I'm going to see if I can take it back to the shop. Especially because, at some point, I'll have to face upgrading my desktop workstation, since PT has also given up on PowerPC Macs. This whirling dervish of upgrades is why you see a lot of studios and individuals working happily and efficiently on older, time-proven systems. I know I'll try to squeeze another year or so out of my solid setup. Brian

My opinion on this has always been on the fence. On the one side, I have the experience that my mentor, Nelson Stoll, passed along to me. Indeed, on our very first lunch together, years ago, he was discussing the innovation of using gold connectors over silver, the importance of good solder work, clean connectors, and the best cable you can buy. He mixes on a heavily modified Neve board, and says that, after he customized his headphone cable to use Mogami instead of the stock cable, the clarity of the monitored audio improved. On the other side of the fence, I know that the rigors of production sound are not always going to be kind to cables, and the few dollars more for the best of everything (cable, connectors, etc) can add up over time. Also, in many cases, I tend to wonder if we'll really be able to pick out that clarity from the increasingly noisy environments in which we record. It's a sort of argument between perfection and pragmatism. Referring to Vin's story about Rupert Neve, Geoff Emerick may have been able to hear a 3db bump at 54kHz in three channels of his 48-input Neve console in George Martin's studio (full article) but put him on a corner of your favorite big city with headphones and a portable recording console the size of a coffee table book, and see if he's gonna be worried about the difference between your star quad and your non-star quad. I think it's a good place to situate oneself: within sight of the perfectionism of audio recording, a la audiophile; and the understanding that the pragmatism may need to weigh in more heavily in the battle to just get clean sound. Yes, I buy Mogami and Canare, and Neutrik; and I use XLR cables I inherited that are 20+ years old. Another .02 Brian The off-topic: Sounds like a job for more than contact cleaner and canned air... Do you blow white noise through at clipping level for 2 seconds? Do audible artifacts come out? Like dialog from the scene with the highest number of takes?

I'll usually argue for the WT104 type of naming for wild tracks. When I take films through post as well, I will get more specific to help myself find things later: WL for wild lines, RT for roomtone. The exact nature of the recording gets noted in the vocal slate, identifying which scene, character, and line, what the specific sound is, the reason for the wild track, etc. As for document format, I usually deliver a PDF with the recordings. I also output a CSV for future reference. Both of these formats are possible from Wave Agent. In Boom Recorder, I'll "print" the sound report as a PDF. The CSV is saved separately. Adding to @johnpaul215's good explanation, CSV means "Comma-Separated Values". You can even open a CSV document with just a text editor, though the formatting isn't as sexy as when you open it with a spreadsheet or database program. (If you do open it with a text application, be careful not to save it as a .txt or .rtf. Leave the .csv suffix). For post-work, I constructed a database with Filemaker Pro, into which I can import the CSV reports. I can search by almost any parameter, making things lightning fast to find. My .02 Brian

If you don't mind one English correction, Oleg, I'm pretty sure you mean producers sell "content". Brian

Just checked on this thread after awhile away... @ Chas Thanks for the prompt... It works like a charm. No problems. On/Offs all work appropriately, and when all switches are off, the regulator stops receiving input voltage. @ Dan If you're a "class" learner, that's probably a good way to get an intro to electronics. I never did that. I started by taking apart my X-wing fighter when I was a kid to see how the little light turned on when you pushed the button. Fast forward 20+ years... I still do the same thing, except with gear worth a helluva lot more. I've gotten advice from people who are electronic wizards. And learned everything else online. Just this year, I finally memorized the equation for watts = amps x volts. You don't have to know this stuff to record good production sound, but it can save a few bucks in cables and gear maintenance. PS - I do this tedious work so much for myself, I'll politely excuse myself from making your 12v-9v cable @ millard52 I'm not sure I understand your question... "can we use some switches to make it more feasible?" Cheers, Brian

Dan Dugan makes the automatic mic mixer. It's an excellent piece of gear, but it's not well-suited for an over-the-shoulder gig. The talk shows for which these are used are studio/stage work that have rather permanent installations. I used it once for a 12-mic round table discussion, and it performed like a champ. http://www.dandugan.com/products.html Dan is a gentleman and ranks among the finest for repair service in the Bay Area. He's been servicing Nagras for probably 35+ years. -Brian

It's a nice solution, Philip. And it's right there in the manual. RTFM, right? Makes good sense for your long-record multi-track stuff. For location shooting, it could be a gotcha to have to re-jam BR for each session, ie, with lots of cart moves, powering down, etc. By internal drift, I meant that your 744 files and BR files were not drifting apart from each other over the length of the recording. That is, the 2/100ths difference is the same at the beginning and end. There's really no reason they would drift, being locked together by WC. I was just thinking out loud, I guess. -Brian PS - I'm less and less of an expert with Boom Recorder, these days.

@ Philip Interesting method. Jamming BR, then letting it clock from WC. Was this a test and only a test, or will you use this technique in the field? Are you angling towards winning back an analog input on the Traveler that would otherwise be tied up with TC? Or, IIRC, you may have already been using the G4's audio input for TC in? I wonder what will happen to the Traveler TC over the course of a day if you jam it once at the beginning... will it drift? If so, then BR files and 744 files will be stamped with differing TC. Or does locking the Traveler to the 744 Word clock also affect the timecode in the Traveler/BR and keep it more accurate (ie, at least as accurate as a slate). Sounds like you only tested one long file for "internal" drift, and that was on the money. -Brian

Hi Take- Nice to see you around here again. Graham Gardner has used the Behringer BCF-2000 with his Boom Recorder (RME interface) rig for awhile now. It may be a little more ruggedly built than the ZeRO, and it's got 100mm faders, which is nice in production mixing. I do like the Novation gear for plug-in control on Pro Tools. And I'm guessing that the Automap feature might be nice from a programming perspective. -Brian

Powerex have proven themselves to be one brand of choice. Recently, I thought I'd give the 2900 mAh Delkin AAs a try from Thomas Distributing. Sent 'em back after a week. They were all over the map for capacity, none of which were anywhere near 2900. The best was 2275 mAh, IIRC. Powerex, when tested, always show close rated capacity (usually 2700 mAh), if not slightly MORE. Since Thomas Distr. is an excellent company, they exchanged the Delkins for Powerex. Also have had good luck with the PowPower "Titanium" AAs, the blue batteries that batteryjunction.com sells. Good capacity, good sizing, good cycle count. I originally heard about those from someone here. They have been backordered for several months, unfortunately.... Chargers: BC-900, 4-bank charger with several options for charge current, discharge cycle, reconditioning, testing; and a MAHA MH-800S, 8-bank charger, pretty fast and very reliable. My experience for runtimes Ambient slates - 3-4 days Denecke TS-2b - 4-5 days Cooper field mixer - all day Sennheiser G2 - at least a day, sometimes 2 Cheers, Brian

I could be wrong, but wouldn't that involve adding a timer circuit/chip process to our simple box? More electronics, more development, more money..... in this case, I think most people are saying less is more. Great idea, BTW. This would be a fantastic middle ground for the hurried 5D shooting style. A DP I work with regularly just pushes the 5D button at will. I plead with him for the editors' sake. He says (into the camera mic while shooting...heh), "look up PluralEyes". Yes, I say, but that's for FCP, what if the edit is done on Avid? I think a bloop slate would be quick and dirty enough for him, while giving at least some help to post. -Brian

Congrats, Robert- I bet you'll be happy with the new board. After mixing only once on a Mackie 1402, I knew that I wouldn't ever go that route. I've never looked back once I got my Sonosax (used), but I do still yearn sometimes for a full throw 100mm fader. As you've always said, being down the road from PSC has its benefits. I guess it has its influence too, eh? -Brian PS-good luck on the road.

I love going to a Schoeps CMC541 after working for awhile with a shotgun (DPA 4017, in my case). When we get in tight enough, it just hits me, "This is just going to sound delicious with a Schoeps 41." Also useful if you've got fast-paced dialog that will benefit from the slightly wider pattern of the hyper-cardioid, and the uniform frequency response of a Schoeps. Mic cuing can be less obvious if it's a little behind. Am I leaning towards the Schoeps over the 8050? Yes; and even though I can't say that I've specifically a/b'd with the 8050, you have to consider history, ie, the fact that Schoeps has been in wide use for many decades, and, to my knowledge, really haven't changed their basic capsule design. Did I mention Schoeps? -Brian PS - +1 for leaving out the filter modules. Even if you're using a field mixer, that should take care of what you need.