ptalsky

I've done several projects now that were shot on HVX's - with editorial almost always wanting audio on camera and camera insisting that nothing be attached. For the most part I've given up fighting camera and just record audio seperately. I am always ready to drop a cable to them or wire them up, but as was said above, I always caution that I do not monitor the camera recordings in any way other than they come through my mixer. That usually settles the issue if they thought they were going to use camera audio. Phil

Take, That's pretty funny. In all the years I've been designing software (don't ask how many) I always designed it so the user had the flexibility to shoot themselves in the foot if they wanted to, then worked very hard to make sure that they only delivered a flesh wound. :-) I suppose if you wanted to make it really user safe, you could display a huge red flashing banner: RECORDING whenever it is recording...makes it harder to miss than the red spinning circle. You know, in like 72 point font. Just be thankful you're not trying to sell your software to the U.S. government. Someday ask me about Section 508 compliance if you really want to hear horror stories. :-) Phil

Philip, It was great meeting you last week, too. I did think it was funny that you thought I was helping out with catering while in wardrobe. :-) It was truly a pleasure to watch how efficient you work, and I'm very jealous that you have such a great boom op to work with. Someday I'll get jobs that pay appropriately so I can bring in a pro boom op rather than the usual converted PA. I do have a couple of questions for you, but I'll take those off-line. Take care! Phil

Yep, the real key is to treat your Mac as if it were a dedicated machine (i.e. 744, etc.) As soon as you start adding variables (as in other software), you add risk. I haven't loaded any software on the Mac OS side of my Mac other than Boom Recorder and it works great. I've used Boom Recorder as my primary recorder on 4 projects now, and the only time I had a problem was the time I hit the stop button instead of the record button and then didn't notice that the little record wheel didn't turn red. (As in, 4 projects, one lost take, totally user error). Phil

Put that t-shirt right next to mine: If my headphones are on, I can't hear you.

This is the upside/downside of the low-budget world I work in. Usually everyone on the set is looking to do the right thing, and many times will make changes to help get better sound. The downside is that sometimes they can't afford to make the necessary changes. And, I always do everything I can to improve the situation - lavs, sound blankets, asking for an extra rehearsal here and there, etc. Only once did I have a situation where the DP said to the director (direct quote): "Don't bother listening to him. He's just a sound guy." (In this case, we were in a location that was right next to the freeway, and were getting traffic noise in every shot - I recommended they get a couple of establishing shots showing the freeway - yes, I know, way beyond the bounds of the "sound guy" but I was trying to help make sure she had the best movie possible. She listened to the DP, didn't get the establishing shot, and regretted it. She actually called me a couple of weeks ago to see if I knew someone that could go to the location and shoot the establishing shots for her. Vindication, though much after the shoot. :-) Again, the benefits of the low-budget world. Phil

Sounds way too familiar. I just came off a low-budget shoot, where our primary location was a bar on a really busy street (with what must have been 16 different bus lines all traveling down this same road). We ended up sound-blanketing the entire front of the bar (doubled up over the vents and the windows) and it was still bad. We started shooting, and we'd have buses over dialog constantly. After about an hour of requesting additional takes, I called the director over, plugged him in directly (he had been listening via comtek, but had the volume down low (you'll love this) so he could hear the performances) and played back a couple of takes for him. I just simply told him that every take was essentially going to be the same, and that I was going to stop calling for additional takes unless it was really terrible (sirens, people talking, etc.) (To top it all off, we had a camera op that tended to talk to himself, sometimes during takes.) The only think I felt I could do to help him was grab a huge amount of ambient and tone. I actually pulled off getting 3 solid minutes of continuous tone so that he could layer in the buses and the traffic to try to get a match. Needless to say, this was a really frustrating shoot - but in the end the director thanked me profusely so, I guess something went right. :-) Phil -------------------------------------- Crappy sound makes for a crappy movie, no matter how pretty the pictures.

Jeff, think of the confusion you would cause if you called out "Sound's moving to a new partition" or "Sound's moving to a new folder" instead. Might be fun to do sometime, just to see how people react. :-O (Presumably, Video Assist will get it.) Phil

Hi Take, Was using Boom Recorder today and had something come up that I would love to see changed. We had real confusion with the scripty today and the scene numbers weren't being called out correctly. I kept having to adjust, sometimes in mid-take. One time (not exactly sure what the sequence of events was) I ended up entering a duplicate scene and take number. When I stopped recording, BR correctly informed me that the file already existed, and that the recording was being aborted, resulting in a lost take. Would it be possible in that situation to prompt the user to rename the file rather than just abort the recording? BTW, I love the feature where you rename the files if the scene number is changed during the recording. That saved me several times today. Thanks again for a great product! Phil

Darryl, I work primarily in the low-budget world, so my answer may be a bit slanted in that direction. A lot of how I base my cancellation fees depends on my relationship with the client. If they are a good, steady client, sometimes I waive it outright, sometimes I only charge them partial, or, if as in your case, I missed out on other work, I charge the full fee. In my agreements, I always list full fee as the standard cancellation so that way when I do waive part of it I look like a nice guy. :-) As far as notice goes, anything under three days notice and they pay full. More than one date change, they pay full. Earlier notice is pro-rated (usually) depending on the client. Any client that has cancelled more than once pays in full every time. Also, again, depending on the client, if I charge them full fee, I will occasionally give them partial credit towards a future booking. Also makes me look like a nice guy, and often gets me more work. And the usual disclaimers apply - it really all depends on who the client is and whether they can afford it. I tend to be a bit too nice (even thought I don't sound like it based on above) and waive and reduce cancellation fees. Phil

Okay, so I said I would report back on how the cheapo Tx/Rx combo worked out for me when I used them. I had them in use yesterday, and they worked fairly well. John, I haven't made the 9V setup yet (and since I am essentially clueless when it comes to soldering and such, how much would you charge me to make one up for me? ;-) I had a bit of flicker with them, but I was fairly far away from them (~50' or so) and didn't actually try to tune them using one of the other channels. I will try that next time. As far as setup - I connected to the output on the primary monitor, gaffer taped it to the top of the monitor, and plugged it in to the same power strip that the monitor was plugged into. It just basically moved with the monitor and no one said anything (except for the crowd around the sound cart watching the action over my shoulder. ;-) For the price, and in the low-budget world, they worked great. 3/5 stars (more may come after I try tuning to see if the flicker is always there). Phil

But does it do "over-under"? I was teaching a class in over-under on set today (after my new novice boom op just balled up the cables and tried to put them in my cable bag...) ;-) Phil

John, How did you connect the 9V to the Tx? Did you make a special connector, or is there one I can buy? I just bought this setup and would love to have it battery operated on the camera side. Thanks! Phil

Hey Crew, What I've found is that the HVX projects I've been on they use the camera audio for a scratch/matching/dailies track, and use my recordings as their primary audio. As such, most of the editors I've worked with have asked me to give them audio on the drive with the video files together, and since it is really no skin off my nose, that's the way I do it. I still turn in a full DVD too, but I'm finding more and more that P2 types of projects they want major redundancy (especially since there aren't any tapes you can roll back to if a drive crashes). And, again, since I work on mostly low-budget projects, they are often confused at first by iso recordings so anything I can do to make it simpler for them, the better. As far as 16 vs. 24, I still run at 24/48 since I'm not overly concerned with matching the camera audio. The HVX internal recording capabilities seem to cause lots of confusion, so I basically tell them to just use it for scratch, and use my separate recordings instead (this came after I had a director call me and yell at me once after the first day, when he was watching the dailies and hearing the "always-on" camera mic and thought that was my recordings). It always amazes me how much education I seem to have to provide on the projects I work on (and always very delicately lest they think the dumb sound guy is actually trying to tell them something about the camera). Anyway, a little venting and hopefully a useful answer. Phil

I agree with the above - send the audio to the camera. If it is an HVX setup, be prepared for lots of card swaps. I have always treated these as roll changes - and have had the AC stop by my cart and pick up a CF chip (with pc card adapter) so they can dump both the P2 card and the audio for it together (and then bring the chip back to me immediately after). I still burn everything to a DVD at the end of the day, but this seems to make them happier in post. Phil

Take, Is there a way I can have both the beta and the released version installed and available on my Mac at the same time? My only concern with running the beta is if I find a problem on a shoot, I need to be able to get back to something I know is stable quickly. Otherwise I love testing software (and usually I find a big crash bug just after it is certified for release - the programmers here at my day job generally are mad at me most of the time. ;-) Phil

Well Take, you added another dedicated, thankful user a couple of weeks ago (ME!!). Since I live in the low-budget world, my clients are as impressed by your software as they are the running LED's on my 302 when I turn it on (seriously, I had one DP make me do it 3-4 times because he thought it was so cool....I know, I need to get better clients. ;-) I'll have to wait until you release 7.21 to try it out - I live in the software world and know it's a very bad thing to install beta software on a production machine. :-) Thank you Take! Phil

Okay, for whatever reason the above problem stopped happening. I'm fully sold now. All of my standard software has been tested and works great. Rendering time for a one hour video has been cut by almost an hour - and I haven't even upgraded the memory yet. Anyway, you get the best of both worlds this way - MacOS for BoomRecorder/Metacorder and Windows for all of the standard productivity stuff (plus Vegas, Sound Forge, Camtasia, etc. etc.) Phil

I haven't done a side-by-side on those two specific models, but I replace my limited Comtek setup with ListenTech about a year ago and have been very happy. Some of the benefits I've seen include: 1. Tunability. You don't have to plug in a new chip or get an eprom programmer to tune them. 2. AA batteries. I'm trying to get everything on to AA rather than 9V. 3. Price. The cost on the Listen's is much lower than the Comteks. Downsides to the Listens: 1. They are bigger than Comteks by probably 15% or so 2. The clip is not as firm as I would like. Adding the case seems to help firm it up a bit. Overall, I really like the Listens and highly recommend them. Phil

Courtney, Does BWF Widget Pro work on a Mac running Windows with Bootcamp? Thanks! Phil

Hi all, I've just installed Boot Camp and am doing some testing to see if I can get rid of my Windows only notebook and came across a really wierd problem and was hoping someone here might have a suggestion. I'm rendering a video on the Mac (in Windows) and my output is targetting an external drive (Seagate 300 GB FW). I can see the render writing the files out, but when it is done, and I shut down and start the other computer, the files are gone. There is just one file in the folder, called change.log. Any ideas? I really want to switch to the Mac for everything (it renders the same video 1 hour faster - huge difference). Thanks in advance! Phil

You might want to get a couple of small pieces of foam and put it over the batteries before replacing the cover (I haven't used a TS-C, but if it is like the TS2, this might help). Phil

I guess the real question is, if you have a TC slate already, why not use it? The most it will do is cost you some extra batteries. I do lots of low budget projects, mostly shot on DVX/HVX cams from Panasonic (no TC capabilities). I still use TC for everything, because it does give you one additional verification/synch point if the sound reports get lost. The slate is still in the image, and the header in the bwf has the TC embedded. So, it becomes one more level of reduncancy, which isn't a bad thing. (And we all know redundancy is a good thing - I recently had a director call me and ask if I still had the sound files from a shoot that took place over a year ago - he was finally getting down to edit and had lost the DVD's I handed off each day. Lucky for him, I keep a backup set of DVD's at home. Doesn't cost me anything, but pays off in good will.) Phil

Drive-wise, I have been using the newer Seagate 300GB 16MB cache drives that are dual FW and USB. I have one that has been running on my desk serving two computers (one through FW, one through a shared folder network connection - NEVER try to hook up two computers to one drive) and it has been running for about 4 months now non-stop (granted not writing to the drive all the time, but in use a lot, mostly doing renders) and it has never even gotten warm (the power brick does get a bit warm, but not bad). And, best of all, you can get the Seagate at Fry's for about $129 when it is on sale. Another drive I'm considering for my cart is the Maxtor Terabyte system (yes, way too much drive space). The benefit of this system is it can run the RAID option that allows for mirroring of the two drives (500GBx2) so you get additional backup in case something goes wrong, and it's all automatic. Fry's had these on sale for $319 a few weeks ago. Phil

Hey all, Not sure if this is better here or in the Mac section. My question is, if I'm going with BoomRecorder and have my mixer and an external hard drive is it better to go Mac->Mixer->HD or Mac->HD->Mixer. My instinct says the HD should be as close to the Mac in the chain as possible, but just want to see if anyone has had good or bad experiences either way. Thanks, and thank you to everyone for all of the useful information and to our host who keeps things on topic and topical. Happy and safe holidays to all! Phil