cmgoodin

Haven't had a chance to test file compatibility or TC accuracy on the H8 but I did have one reported anomaly in the metadata in the H8 that may cause problems in some players.  It lists the TC framerate in BEXT metadata without the leading zero unlike the format of all other reocorders.

Most have an entry like "Speed=025.000ND" in the SD and Zaxcom and AATON machines.

The F8 shows the framerate entry as "Speed=25.000ND"   When BWF-Widget Pro parses the speed field it removes the first 7 characters to show the framerate assuming there will be a leading zero.  So the F8 will erroniously show the speed as 5.000ND frames per second.

the speed is correct in the iXML metadata but for programs that parse the BEXT metadata first it may be confused by the missing leading zero place holder in the Speed metadata field.  Hopefully Zoom can fix this in their next update of the firmware.

Jeff,

So sorry to hear of your fathers passing.  He as left us with a great legacy of beautiful films and inspiring documentaries.  He will be missed greatly. My deepest condolences.

Nice interview Matthias and Mark.    A lot of good information for prospective production sound personnel.  Mark has a lot of insight and knows what is important to recording a great track at the outset.  More importantly,  he details the intricacies of the personal interaction necessary to work on set in a collaborative way without creating enemies or putting sound in an adversarial position.

You need some type of Time Code GPI switch like the Horita GP150

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/108437-REG/Horita_GPI50_GPI_50_Dual_Output_GPI.html

Many Motion Control camera firms have items like this or more expensive ones from Evertz.  That let you program in a time code using thumbwheels then trigger a relay when your incoming LTC time code hits that number.

Unfortunately the Horita requires an analog Video (Standard def) black burst or video as a timebase and a standard def analog video monitor for output to see the display.   You might check to see if there are any midi TC based GPI triggers.  That might work better with your playback software. 

All this green mic stuff is pretty superfluous.  Unless the mic is in front of the talent it can easily be removed with a Garbage matte in any green screen setup.

It doesn't matter if the mic is silver, pink or whatever color. As long as  it is not in front of or casting a shadow on any non-green props or actors it is good to go.

Is that you Crew and John Glasscock?

It was announced to day that Director Wes Craven has succumbed to Brain Cancer.

He was responsible for a lot of jobs in the independent horror fantasy genre.  Employing a lot of eager film makers in the 70s,  80s and on through the 2000s .   Known for the Nightmare on Elm Street,  The Hills Have Eyes, and The Scream franchise.

I met him a couple of times an talked on the phone a bit.   A very nice man to have created so much mayhem in the Horror Film Genre.

He will be missed...

Chris,

Did you keep a list of those possible programs that you removed so others having the same problem might possibly discover a common program/driver that may be the cause of the problem? 

This is probably an attempt by Windows Groove or Media player to autosync the CF card or other device plugged into a USB port with the media library.

Try the following to turn off the ability of Windows 7, 8 or 10 to treat USB attached devices as Media players with media to add to your media library

Media player cannot differentiate between a media player and any other portable device so the only viable method I have found to deal with this issue is to diasble the autosync enirely.

This will also stop Win7 from auto-syncing images and everything else but you will still be able to manually transfer files to and from your media players and cameras and no important Win7 functionilty is impaired.

Click Start and then Run... (Or the shortcut is Windows key + R)
Type "Services.msc" and press Enter
Scroll down to "Portable Device Enumerator Service"
Double click and change "Startup Type" to "Disabled".

To return your system to normal simply change "Startup Type" back to "Automatic"

Try that and let me know if that works to prevent windows from modifying the source files.

Normally It shouldn't affect the original files but perhaps in their quest to make the Windows Media Player and Groove have more info on your media files, it may be trying to add metadata that if finds on line (like Album art and lyrics  etc...)  Although it shouldn't be able to find anything online for your original recordings it may be adding a default info chunk or something to the wav file  that may make the file un-playable in the original recorder that is looking for file chunks in a specific order.

Nice HazMat suit Larry.  You must have taken charge of unpacking the Unobtainium that you are using in the latest products from Lecrto.

Sure you can buy stuff not on the Apple Store but is is difficult on IOS.   And the reason developers go with the Apple Store is the same reason that manufactuers bend over backward and make horrible deals to get their products in Walmart.   They could sell them at a roadside stand but it makes sense to have them show up on the shelf where more people can find them.   In the software world everyone is taken first to the app store when looking for an app.  And for that privilege developers give up 30% of their profits right off the top.  

Apple has already made the money since they sold you an overpriced laptop that they make a 40 to 50% profit margin on.  Plus they don't put Trial Versions on their machines since they force everyone to buy/sell software through their iTunes Store with no Trial versions allowed and they make a cool 30% on everything sold there plus everything sold as a result of in-app purchases......

Phillip sorry to hear about your PC destruction.  My favorite Laptop for onset playback these days is the Asus K200MA.   It has an 11.6"  Touch screen comes with 4 GB of RAM and 500GB HD. Has a great Keyboard with all the keys including Function keys etc. and a large trackpad that works as well as the touchscreen.   Has every port you could want VGA, HDMI, USB 3,  2 USB 2 ports plus ethernet port and built in WiFi and an SDXC card slot that (unlike the apple laptops) holds the SD card completely inside the case so you can leave it in without worry of it getting broken off.  It is very lightweight and can run for about 5-6 hours on a charge.  Has a Intel Celeron 2.1 Ghz dual core processor (Baytrail) so the graphics performance is even better than the Stick PC in my demo.   They are on sale this week at Best Buy for $279.  I can get three of these for the price of one 11" Macbook Air.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-11-6-touch-screen-laptop-intel-celeron-4gb-memory-500gb-hard-drive-black/3953789.p?id=1219610983740&skuId=3953789

Here is a demo of the PC2GO computer on a stick that I mentioned in a previous post in this thread.

It may be of interest to those of you like Jeff who are in the Apple walled garden and want to dip a toe into the Windows world without spending a lot of bucks.

This came with Windows 8.1 but is elegible for a Windows 10 free Upgrade.

In the video I am actually running Windows 10 on it...  As you will see in the video it is especially good at dealing with media decoding and playback of various types.

NewEncodePC2GO.mp4

This looks OK for most tasks.  What are you going to be using it for?   Interesting design like a giant tablet but with a keyboard.

You won't find much of a faster clock speed in a Mobile platform.. This keeps the battery life long.   The new Intel Broadwell chips throttle down when nothing is goin on.  If you are going to be doing Video editing I would go for a desktop that can accommodate multiple screens and add in cards and faster or bigger Hard drives. Also most of the desktop Intel chips run at 3Ghz or above.  If not doing editing any i3 or even and Atom based processor will do.   I just got one of those Intel Stick computers that is about the size of a box of chicklets and plugs directly into an HDMI port on any TV or Monitor.   It has a 1.33Ghz Quad core Atom processor with integrated Graphics, 2 GB of Ram and a 32Gig SSD.  I put a 64Gig SD card in it for more drive space and I am amazed at how capable a machine this is that can slip in your shirt pocket with room to spare.  I was amazed that using my Multi-view playback software it is able to playback 9 HD H.264 video files simultaneously at full 30fps frame rate.  My $700 Mac Mini starts to stutter and stall with just 4 files playing.  This Hipstreet PC2GO was on sale last week at Fry's for $119 and comes with Windows 8.1 and a Year of Office 365.  It might be a good solution for someone running Mac Mini on their cart but need to run an occasional Windows Program for the Venu control or Windows only Utilities.  The whole computer costs less than a Windows 8.1 License that you would need to run as a virtual machine on the Mac Mini. 

Yes, since Xpoint has a different method of storing bits it can be written and read many millions of times without degrading.   So internal "Wear Leveling" routines built in to most Nand Flash Based media are not necessary.   Those routines are primarily responsible for limitations in speed or compatibility with real-time recording devices.  Also the increased Density and lower power requirements of Xpoint make it a perfect candidate for removable storage.

I have been doing professional Teleprompting for over 30 years and I use the Telescript AV Sofware.   They have a website at

www.telescript.com

PC based systems are the most common and most reliable.  Mac software is sketchy at best and you pay a lot more for the hardware.

You need to dedicate a computer to just teleprompting so a good cheap Dell Laptop works fine.  The cheaper software (some offer it free) is pretty much junk.  You need to spend the money on good proven reliable software.  To reliably do smooth scrolling you have to turn off a lot of stuff that can interrupt it like Bluetooth and WiFi or background processes like email checking and other non related processes.

The iPad based teleprompters or App based software are all pretty worthless since you can't easily navigate the script or make changes.  Teleprompting as a service is all about Reliability and versatility and the ability to make changes quickly which happens constantly on commercial and corporate video production.   You don't want something that crashes or gets lost with a spinning beachball in the middle of a live event or when you only have the celebrity or CEO for 20 minutes to shoot their 5 minute speech.

You get what you pay for... is a good rule and applies to Teleprompting as well. 

Intel and Micron Introduced a new form of Non-Volatile Memory architecture that is 1000 times faster than NAND Flash Ram as well as being many times more durable and long lasting.

This could revolutionize computing and long term memory storage like SSDs and Memory Cards.  And Media storage for Video and Audio Recorders could be increased in speed and access time dramatically... It is set to go into production by 2016  with samples delivered later this year.

Read more here:

 http://www.cnet.com/news/intel-and-micron-debut-3d-xpoint-storage-technology-thats-1000-times-faster-than-existing-drives/

I think that photo is shameful Rick,   You all should have given your food to the poor dog.

He looks like he hasn't eaten in a month..

-----Courtney

​Well monitoring on the set usually won't be a problem for this product since it is designed for people who usually end up with un-usable sound because they don't hire a sound mixer to monitor and control the sound..   So there will still be no one listening.   Just plug it in and "Relax"  in the terms of their ad motto.  Anyway slightly less than 1 frame latency in monitoring on set is usually not a problem since there is about the same delay in processing the video seen on all the monitors on the set.  It would be more of a problem with Live PA sound where delayed feedback could be an issue.  But this product is designed for the "One man band"  type of production.  It's biggest problem for that market is the price.   It needs to be priced about $500.  No one who is paying $1200 for their primary camcorder/recorder is willing to pay $1125 for each microphone input.

The telling thing is that in the behind the scenes video of the making of their commercial "The Oracle" all the sound in the commercial is being recorded by a sound mixer off a wired boom and probably an MKH60 or MKH70.    The production company didn't have enough faith in the AVX product to use it to record the sound for it's own commercial.

I believe all the interiors were shot in London at Pinewood Studios.  Perhaps some of the JWS visitors from across the pond could lend some incite to the production sound.  I enjoyed the film but there were several questions it left me with.   It has an exceptionally small cast for a futuristic sci Fi Film.  It made me wonder how one man living alone in seclusion could accomplish all the AI work and building all the prototypes of artificial humans that are good enough to fool anyone into believing they are real.   I think he would have  had to have a lot of help.  The sound was excellent in an eerie kind of way even though I found the story a bit illogical.

I've seen many poorly designed T power supplies that try to use a voltage regulator or Zener Diode to limit voltage.

These all can generate noise in the T power Sennheisers if not properly filtered.  I have also had Video Transmitters cause interference or High Voltage Neon signs  but the mic body has to be pretty close to the source of the interference (a foot or 2) for it to be audible.

Several things aren't mentioned in the presentation.    What does the DC to AC inverter cost?   In the list of appliances and the amount of energy they consume daily no mention is made of cooking,  heating, or air conditioning.   Those are by far the most power hungry appliances that we have become addicted to.  Also not mentioned is how much it will cost environmentally to mine all the lithium used in these battery packs.  Also when they become expended and are no longer taking a charge how are they disposed of or re-cycled?  Are there toxic metals or materials used in these batteries like there are in Lead Acid batteries?

So 100% solar power collection and storage may be a great option in the sunny States of Nevada, California or North Texas,  but how well will Solar power generation work in Seattle or Portland Ore or New England  where the sunny days are very limited.  I suppose Wind power would be an option in those stormy states.

What was used to create the file?   The 788T doesn't have a lot of flexibility in playing back files from other devices that may not have the wav file formatted in the same fashion as the 788T.  It will playback files recorded on a 788 or other SD devices machines, but if your file has the various chunks (data, fmt, bext, cue, ixml ) in different order than the 788's normal layout It doesn't have the flexibility that a Computer has in parsing the file for playback. It was designed primarily as an audio field recorder and not an audio workstation.   Perhaps Matt or somebody from SD can chime in on compatibility but that is my take on what is going on.