cmgoodin

The hash is probably caused by not having the decoding software (Audacity?) set to the proper Bit Depth, Sample Rate or Track Count. Don't know if Audacity will automatically look for the data chunk in the wav file but if not, the offset of the other chunks in the file header can screw up the interleave alignment and create the hash. Raw PCM data is stored in a single chunk that is organized 2 or 3 bytes per sample (2 for 16bit 3 for 24bit), then next 3 bytes is channel 2 sample 1 then channel 3, sample 1, channel 4, sample 1, etc. then next sample for each channel in succession. So any mis-alignment of the start byte of the data chunk or incompatible decoding settings cause the samples to be interpreted incorrectly as the interleave doesn't line up.

When choosing some dual rack-mount video monitors for my Video playback rig I looked at the Black Magic Duo-Vue but found the limited inputs and lack of user controls without a computer connected a problem... I ended up with the LILLIPUT RM-7028S Dual 7" rack mount and have been very happy. They support Composite, 3Gb SDI and component analog, as well as HDMI, are native 1280x800 IPS panels which have good viewing angles and have front control buttons for choosing between input sources and adjustment. They are a little more expensive than the Black-Magic but the ability to support multiple inputs including analog and front panel controls sealed the deal. I think the resolution and brightness are better on the Lilliput monitors and Viewing angle of the IPS pannels are much better. https://www.amazon.com/LILLIPUT-RM-7028S-Monitors-Monitor-Broadcast/dp/B00GT66CQA

I just checked the latest firmware 1.1.1 and it still has the User Bits Error (bug) where if you embed the Date in the User Bits of the external time code the MixPre interprets it incorrectly and stores the wrong values in the metadata. There have been 2 versions released since I reported this bug so I guess it is not high on their priorities since you can't observe this error unless you load the files into something else. No way to view user bits on the machine itself in record or playback. Also I suggested they put the date in the User Bits of the time code metadata when in "Time of Day" mode. It is still just filling those fields with 00000000 which is meaningless. It would be better to have the Date as MMDDYYXX in the user bits to differentiate between files recorded at the same time on different days.

I think the Mix Pre 3 would be a good match on all accounts except the power requirements. The supplied 4 Cell battery sled will only power the unit for a little more than an hour to 2 hours depending on the type of batteries. The L-mount battery sled is problematic with mounting a camera or using in a bag. If your camera outputs Time Code on HDMI it can run the recorder and sync the Time Codes. If you can use the AC adapter or a block battery to run all day it would be a good fit.

Well not entirely. If off camera people are on wires and being recorded and they pipe up over the top of the on camera actor at least you can use that take's sound because the off camera persons dialogue can be mixed in from the ISO track at the appropriate level. You are stuck with the timing of the interruption in the edit but both lines quality are usable. But if the off camera person was also off mic and not recorded separately it would destroy the take because the on mic and on camera person's dialogue would be contaminated with off mic overlap and no perfectly-synced on-mic recording to cover it with. So the solution is ADR of both characters separately.

Another reason for the disappearance of the boom mic is less disciplined directors and actors who didn't want to worry about overlapping dialogue with off camera characters. When Multi-track recording reared it's head on the Altman films one of the main reasons for wiring everybody and putting each actor on a individual track was so the actors and directors could relieve themselves of the responsibility of keeping each line in the clear so the scenes final timing could be determined in the edit. This allowed much more improvised dialogue and Altman's favorite trick overlapping dialogue where 2 actors would be having simultaneous overlapping lines. Trying to cut those types of scenes with single-camera coverage was always a nightmare. That is another reason for extensive ADR in situations where there were quiet sound stages and well blimped cameras where you would think it was easy to capture good production dialogue. There was a resurgence of the "Method Acting" Stanislavsky method from the 30's revived in the late 60s and 70's by Actors Studio teachers Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg. This caused a lot of actors to shout or mumble their lines depending on the mood that struck them during the take.

Paul, I don't really like the ergonomics of any of the portable power solutions offered by SD. The L-Mount Sled has the 2 batteries at right angles to the Mixpre 3 instead of inline with the recorder. I would rather have had 1 N950 L type battery that barely sticks out above or below the level of the MixPre like those used on the 7 series recorders. Instead the L-Mount sled that holds 2 batteries at right angles prevents the MixPre from lying flat in a bag or on a table causing the display and knobs to be angled down away from view. Since this unit is marketed as a solution for the DSLR shooter to mount under the camera, The L-Mount sled will not work because the most High amperage L mount batteries would interfere with the camera lens or Tripod mount. Same for the 8 cell AA sled. Notice neither of these alternate power solutions are shown mounted on the MixPre in any of the photos. Second of all I am not thrilled with using the USB-C as the only source of External Power. The heavy gauge USB-C cable provided with the machine which requires 2 USB-A connectors Y-ed out at the other end seems like it puts a lot of unnecessary torque on the tiny USB-C connector which could eventually cause the surface mount solder joints inside the mixer to break. I have had this problem on a lot of equipment with HDMI connectors and Heavy High quality HDMI cables plugged in. This is a problem in equipment designed for portable knock around use where you are plugging and unplugging cables all the time or shoving the thing into a bag. I would have liked a smaller gauge cable and/or right angle 3 mm or 5.1 mm co-axial Power connector that could take a Wall Wart or NP1 Battery cup as power supply. This way you could provide constant power without having to worry about breaking your USB connector or running down your laptop batteries. I would also like to see the USB-A connector on the side to support USB Microphones. Currently there is no way to plug in a USB Mic like the Audio Technica or Blue USB mics. This is important for podcasters which may want to upgrade to this unit for their recording setup. And by the way, high quality analog preamps and limiters with discrete components shouldn't pull a lot of power. The Nagra was famous for its QPSE preamps that were very quiet and the whole machine only pulled 100 MA in Test Mode (All preamps and monitor amps and record amps powered up)

That is a shame because it makes the power hungry device even more problematic to use in a portable setup. My question is why does it pull so much power? My cell phone can record 2 channels of digital sound, has a 1920x1080 Daylight readable OLED touch screen, audio amplifiers and multiple radio transmitters and receivers and runs for 2 days on a 3500 mAh battery. It will even playback media with the screen constantly on for 18 hours on a charge. Plus it will fast charge it's internal battery when plugged in to external power. Where's the big power drain in the Mix Pre? Other than turning off the unused 48V phantom and turning down the brightness of the LCD and LEDs is there any way to reduce the power consumption of the recorder to a usable level so on-board batteries can be used in a practical manner?

I have a Mix Pre 3. I am pretty happy with its performance and features, but am most disappointed with the battery life. Using the included 4 AA battery sled with Alkaline cells the recorder kills a set of 4 Duracells in less than an hour. I have other small stereo recorders and they seem to run for multiple hours on a single AA cell or 2 AAA cells. Even with the LEDs set to their minimum and bluetooth off and only 1 phantom channel turned on it still kills the batteries pretty quickly. You certainly need more external power and the solutions offered by SD seem pretty clunky in that they don't allow the recorder to lay flat with the battery sleds loaded. Also no mention anywhere in any of the documentation on whether it will charge lithium Ion or NiMh batteries when powered off of the USB-C power supply. Anyone know an answer to this? I also found a bug in the Timecode function. When inputting external time code with the Date in the User Bits, The User Bits are interpreted incorrectly by the Mix Pre 3 (and or 6). The digit pairs MM DD YY XX are converted to different numbers (base 16 to base 10 conversion) They are already in base 10 and shouldn't be converted. I have let Sound Devices know about this and they say it will be fixed in the next firmware update. Also when using the timecode function with Time Of Day mode (pulled from the less accurate internal Real time clock) it puts the correct time in the Timecode chunk of the Broadcast Wav file but puts all 0000s in the User Bits. I think the user bits should have the Date inserted which is also available from the Real Time Clock. This would keep the time code fields from containing duplicate time code from day to day. Much more useful for transcription if the date is also stored in the User Bits metadata of the time code.

I think they would use a picture like that because they also sell an entry level Monitor/Recorder (Video Assist .HD in photo) which sells for less than $500 US and is aimed directly at the user depicted. A one-man-band DSLR videographer. Not sure what the headphones are for since the Video Assist 4.5" has no audio inputs other than embedded audio on the HDMI or SDI inputs and the DSLR probably has a crappy electret mono mic built in. Maybe there is a sound mixer off camera (HDMI cable runs out of frame) Although it would be a lot of trouble to inject mixed Track into the HDMI input.of the BMD VA recorder.

I have a question about the File format. Not mentioned in the manual of either machine. When recording ISOs are the ISOs part of a multi-channel Poly BWF file? Or are the ISOs recorded as separate BWF Mono Files 1 File for each channel? When you arm a track is it just an added channel to the LR Mix FIle? Can the MixPre 3/6 record a Stereo LR mix and a separate 3 to 6 Channel Poly BWF for the ISOs? If not, that would be a feature request for me for future updates. I plan on picking up an MixPre 3 as soon as they are available. Looks like a great thing for the podcasting/ Live Video streaming market.

Yeah, I think Apple went the wrong way with this "Upgrade". Of course it is the Apple way to take away ports and make things not compatible with their other hardware as well as the rest of the world. I think the All USB-C ports is a big mistake. People really hate the fact that they now have to buy a whole new Bag of Dongles to use normal items like Thumb Drives and SD cards. Not to mention all the Display dongles needed to cover the possibilities. And every long time MacBook user is lamenting the loss of the Mag-Safe connector for power. I also think taking away physical function keys was a mistake as well. Now you have to look at your keyboard and move your hands to see where the keys are and try to figure out what they do since they are constantly changing. There are lots of Rants on You Tube over the latest machines. Warning! The rant on the bottom is over an hour long. and both have NSFW language in them because the reviewers ae PISSED OFF. ----Courtney

I somehow don't miss the Wow, the Flutter, The joy of stretched tape and flaking oxide. The "whump whump whump" of a flattened pinch wheel. Not to mention the tape hiss and muffled sound of a misaligned head azimuth. Analog, May it rest in peace. "Warmth" be damned. Sorry analog, we get our "Warmth" now from lossy compression.

Why don't you just pull your audio feed from the TV hooked up to the HDMI out? If it is going to a Video/audio recorder then use the recorders headphone or line out. It should be the same quality as the HDMI recording since it is getting a PCM signal over the HDMI cable. I think Skype only allows a single output routing and if you imbed the audio in the HDMI would mean it would not feed the USB audio output. Post could also pull the audio off the HD recording made in the HDMI recorder. So your audio would probably be superflous except for the local person's ISO recording.

One good choice is the Lenovo ideapad 100S. It is one of those Atom Z3735F Baytrail Quad Core laptops which are very fast have good battery life, a great, full size Keyboard for an 11.6" Laptop, and it is RED so it is easy to see when someone is walking off with it. It has full version of Windows 10 and runs all windows software. It is actually a little lighter than the Macbook Air 11" and has 2 full size USB 2 ports and an HDMI port and Audio I/O port without needing dongles or adaptors. It has a small SSD for speed but has a Micro SD card slot so you can expand the storage an additional 64GB for about $19. On occasion these can be found on sale at Best Buy for $150 (right now they are $179) and include a free 1 year subscription to Microsoft Office 365 personal ($99 value) Lenovo Ideapad at Best Buy You can buy 5 of these for the price of one Macbook Air 11" And if that is too much money Fry's has a Vulcan 11.6" on sale with promo Code for $129. Same chipset, memory, SSD, and ports as the Lenovo (except mini HDMI instead of full size). More spaced out keys so easier typing but NO included Office 365 trial. Large Touchpad but lacks discrete trackpad keys that the lenovo has. And the Touchpad driver is not installed so you get the generic Mouse driver which dosen't do things like detect and disreguard palm touches when typing.. Usually on sale at Frys for $100 off. Vulcan 11.6: Laptop at Fry's

I disagree it took over 3 years of work to get BWF Widget Pro running with all its current features and it would be cheaper to personally buy each Mac user their own Windows computer to run the software than it would be to write a native OSX version from scratch. But you are welcome to write your own version if you like.

I was informed of this practice in a Hollywood SMPTE meeting a few years ago. Presentation was made by the industry's top Anti-Piracy teams from all the major studios. They had comprehensive charts on each pirated copy of the popular tentpole moves with the date and place each camcorder pirate copy was made. In some cases they even knew the name of the person who created the pirate copy. Usually a known bad guy (by pirate name) in a foreign country and beyond the Legal reach of US copyright holders. The pirates are international and pull elements from many different locations including pulling a copy of the Video from a Chinese or Russian print and marrying that with the English soundtrack from another country recorded in a theater with concealed portable audio recorders. The steganographic techniques can be both not visible or audible and visible and audible. The inaudible techniques are designed to carry a lot of data and is for high quality copies like digital duplication (like DVD ripping). But for Camcorder copies a more robust form that is audible and visible must be used because it is captured by a sensor and microphone in a camcorder and never sees any of the original data of the DCI or DVD. It is not inaudible just not normally delectable by the pirate (or viewer) unless they know what sound is being used for the marking. It has to be audible to survive recording by a separate device especially that has automatic gain control and automatic iris like that of a typical phone or consumer camcorder. They also showed examples of coded specular highlights on some object in the frame in some scene. What looks like the reflection of sunlight on some glass in a scene will have a different pattern or position on the glass for each location shown. These SFX sounds and specular highlights are encoded as numbers in the DCI metadata and transformed to audible and visual artifacts in the projector head and audio system in each theater. They are also combined with some decryption Key unique for each projector so they can trace it back to the actual theater in a multiplex that may be showing 4 instances of the same DCI data in 4 different theaters. They don't have to create a separate mix or "print" for each showing. It is all automated and the only human interaction has to happen before duplication where they determine what sound effect and scene to place the encoded anti-piracy codes in. The variations and positions are created on the fly in software during decoding in the projector and Sound System. Kind of like how you can program most Laser Printers to apply a faint watermark to every page printed and every copy machine encodes a small (almost invisible) dot pattern on each copy for forensic ID. Some theaters used a system of infrared LEDs embedded in the screen to flash out code numbers throughout the film. These are normally not visible to the human eye but most CMOS sensors see them as white lights. (see tip below) However the smart pirates can thwart these just by putting an infrared blocking filter on the camcorder. So the visible spectrum and audible spectrum must be used to survive the Wiley IP Pirate... TIP: Since most CMOS camera chips see in the infrared part of the spectrum a great way to test your flaky TV or Audio infrared remote is to point your smart-phone camera at the LED emitter on the remote and press some buttons. Your Eyes see nothing but the phone camera will see a bright white light flashing if the remote is functioning normally .

I wouldn't necessarily give the credit to a meticulous sound design team. In most high dollar popular Films they use Car Horns, Dog barks and other short BG SFX to code the "print" (DCI Distro) with a unique ID that can be tracked for Anti Piracy enforcement. The position of the Car Horn or the number of Honks can serve to indicate which theater was showing the film when somebody used a Camcorder to make a pirate copy. It is a version of Watermarking that can survive bad camcorder copies and other attempts to conceal the source. That Taxi Horn may appear in different positions or with a different Honk pattern in each location it is shown.

Hi Jay, LAME is part of the BWF-Widget Pro Installation. I just tried installing it on a new Windows laptop with Windows 10 and MP3 conversion seems to work fine as long as running as administrator. Make sure your files you are converting are in a folder that you have permission to write to as well as the destination folder. Perhaps if you have some overzealous anti-Virus software running it may be preventing BWP from saving it's batch file for MP3 conversion to the BWP program's folder. Running as administrator usually is all that is required to allow this. Perhaps your anti-Virus software is preventing write access to any system folders. After you run the batch convert process check the BW-Pro Program folder and see if there is a "MP3LIST.BAT" file there. Open it in Notepad and take a look. It should have the names and destinations of the files to convert in it at the end of each line in the Batch file. If you open a Command window and try to execute the MP3LIST.BAT batch file you can read any errors it may encounter since the command window won't close until you type "EXIT" from the command line. This is the best way to troubleshoot a Batch Conversion problem. It usually turns out to be a path problem or a folder permissions problem. Sometimes it can be a filename with an unusual non alphanumeric character in it.

Jay, It should work fine with windows 10. Just remember to "run as administrator" Right click the BW-Pro Icon and go to properties. Under the Compatibility tab check the "Run as administrator" box. It may also help to check the box compatibility Mode and choose Windows XP service pack 3. This may not be necessary but couldn't hurt. Also make sure the LAME.EXE file is in the BWF-Widget Pro program folder. -----Courtney

why don't you just use the Ambient or Denecke Timecode Toolkit app for the iPhone or iPad http://ambient.de/en/product/clockit-time-code-app/ You could hook up a comtek or other receiver for the TC for Wireless display or just feed the LTC to the Mic Input on an iPad mini or iPod.

There was some suspect javascript found on the server site. It was removed Let me know if you still get a warning when you visit. As far as I can tell it didn't deliver any payload when it was there.. Probably a drive by infection that didn't work

Hi all, I don't seem to get any warning from my website. Google Site Check shows no info on any type of malware on my site so I don't know maybe the posted link has been misdirected to a malware site. Occasionally the web server that my site is co-located on gets blacklisted because of other sites located at the same web host IP become infected. But I don't see any problems currently at www.bwfwidget.com. I don't know what goodsound.softwareinformer.com is. It is not my direct website. Goodsound has never been my domain name. It belongs to somebody else. As to a native Mac version of BWF Widget there is no such thing. You can run it on a Mac using Boot Camp or Paralells or VR Fusion and any version of Windows, but Sound Device's Wave Agent is your best Mac alternative although it doesn't quite do everything BWF WIdget Pro Does.

Besides BWF-Widget Pro which is used by many transcription houses for playback of both BWF and MP3 timecode stamped files, I wrote a Windows program for Transcription called TC-Transcriber several years ago. A trial version is available for download below. It will play H.264 video files and MOV files with BITC (Burn in Time Code) and BWF files with timecode and MP3 files with ID3 Timecode stamps and automatically puts the current timecode on the clipboard every time you pause or play the file with a Serial attached footpedal. It can be used to playback files in the background while typiing in MS-Word or any other word processor. TC-Transcriber Downlaod Contact me if you want to purchase a license after the 14 day fully functional trial runs out. $79

That would only work as long as the files all start on an even second. SD always starts files on an even second. Earlier Zaxcom files I believe started at whenever fractional second the record button was hit. Maybe the new machines start on the even second but it would depend on what version of Deva or other machine the files were recorded on, so make sure the start time code at 23.976 all start on even seconds in the files you want to convert before attempting to convert them to 29.97 in Wave Agent. Perhaps this is already handled by the current version of Zax Convert so it may not be a problem.