Wandering Ear

The producers choice black/white are worth it.  2 of them fit perfectly on a 12 by t- bar which can be hung on a single stand (I recommended two sand bags).  I usually try to negotiate with the grips to supply the stand and bar, offering to set/move/manage it myself.  It's not always successful, but when it pans out it can be really worth it.

I also carry rubber backed carpets for foot steps, and for under / around an interviewees chair.  I'm not a fan of blankets on the ground because they are slippery, but if noone is walking on them they help.

I often want to get blankets up and can't make it happen for many different reasons, but when the room warrants it and I'm able to get them up it makes all the unsuccessful attempts worth it.

Throwing my site out there too.  Feedback welcome.

https://wanderingear.net/

Kelsey

I've never come across a situation where power levels were checked, so I don't see the licensing requirement as it relates to power as being a consideration.  The power requirements seem mostly only regulated on the sales side.

Even when working with frequency coordinators at big events or sports games they don't seem to care that I have a license.  I plan on staying licensed, and just generally hope that UHF whitespace devices never substantially materialize.

Working with 2 Venices today.  DIT mentioned the video files come in with 8 channels of audio recorded.  I'm feeding two analog line level via the 5 pin XLR.  I went through the menus with the 1st AC and couldn't find any option to choose what audio tracks to record or not.  Anyone come across a way to choose which audio tracks to include?

I helped on a show not too long ago that made a custom carbon arc lamp in an all clear housing to create lightning effects covering a large area in the forest.  Cool to see it done, but I can only imagine the trouble that would be as a primary lighting source.

Considering how often I have to explain that the blinking red light on a comtek means it's working not that the battery is dead, and there is no sound because we are still lighting, I can't imagine trying to get 15 + agency folks to understand / care about switching channels on their ifb.

If you can convince production to get the village far enough from set to be out of earshot they can listen through vtr's speaker which is delayed with picture, then comteks can be live so anyone who is bouncing back and forth can have both options without complication.  However this doesn't work when village is just in a blacked out tent 15' away.

I agree.  Having echo from a delayed feed and being close to set is way worse than a little sync offset to the monitors.

As a side note, what are you using to delay your IFB feed?  I don't have a small delay box so last time I had to do it without a console I came up with a weird routing scheme sending audio through an ERX to the Comtek transmitter and using the built in delay of the ERX.

I only end up having to deal with the sync delay when VTR is doing live processing, like live keying or frame overlays, etc.  The extra processing can delay the video over a second or two which is too much to get away with.  For this situation I mostly run a comtek transmitter off the VTR cart and let their software match the delay rather than doing a clap test and trying to manually dial it in.  For the folks who are close to set, they are also watching the delayed picture so the delayed sync still works.  If the echo is annoying cause they are on set and usually end up taking their headphones off.

The couple frames that is inherent in the picture flow these days I have never received a complaint about so I don't try to match it.

They've always been from Hong Kong when they contacted me. 

"Lucrative job" .. "Trial run" .. 

Glad to hear the FBI is paying attention, but unfortunately that also means more than a few people have been caught up in this scam.

This is true.  But no matter how small something gets, there will always be an AC wanting it smaller to fit somewhere on the ever decreasing size of camera bodies. 

If you want it to be easy there is always UPS / FedEx freight services.

You're probably going to end up putting them on pallets and securing them no matter how you go.

That's a pretty huge (and wrong) assumption that only people under 25 can hear above 18khz. 

1 hour ago, tourtelot said:

Back in the day . . . 😀

 

If I had 6 Comteks on a commercial shoot, I needed six.  If I had two dozen, well, you get the point.  I always brought as many as I had and they always contributed to a "fat" kit rental.  Haha.

 

D.

Unfortunately it seems these days it always a "conversation"

On 6/26/2019 at 5:05 AM, glenn said:

 

The 5 pots of the Nomad are set up with instant access of 4 banks of assignable routing allowing 20 channels to be controlled with unparalleled flexibility .  I think it is time to look at faders differently. Nova is a new common sense approach that allows the same fader knob to control fader levels and trims with the same large no compromise knob. All adjustments have a great smooth feel on a spacious non cluttered  control area that we are sure will be a future trend. The single size control knob combined with the channel assignable banks and LED input meters with fader position indication are a defining feature of Nova and one that I am very happy that we went with.

I agree.  Banked faders may take some getting used to in production, if they are silent, then they can easily be as or more efficient than other solutions.  Motorized and banked faders are common in the rest of the audio industry and imo are a welcome step forward for location sound.   Miniature rotary knobs are not a solution for me.

Through flexibility being able to keep a couple faders static and bank through other options on the other faders is fantastic.

It may not apply to everyone here, but I am in a middle market and the work I do from one day to the next can vary wildly.  Flexibility, control, and efficiency are key for me.

I look forward to seeing the Nova in person.

So far I find the URX100 to be great.  It's a great solution for commercial boom ops who also double as utility.

I have to be honest, I don't really understand the choices made around the walkie interface.  Besides maybe a reality TV field producer, I'm not sure who it's directed at, and $900 is a lot of money for a unit that will be dropped in the mud, stepped on, etc, especially at the rates those shows offer.

Personally I see a lot more use for the unit as a camera hop, where two balanced outputs, 1 with switchable TC, would be way more beneficial.    I wonder if a HW update could make this a menu switchable option between balanced outs and walkie?  I would mount this on camera a lot more if I didn't have to use the 3.5mm jack.  I understand there is an RX200 for this option too, but that unit is a bit more single purpose, and this unit, in my mind, would fit a lot more of my work if I could use it for boom ops and on camera.  I would also buy at least one or two more if this were the case.

Don't get me wrong, my criticism is suggestive in nature, I think the URX is a great unit and am glad to have it in my kit so far.

A hanging rack of them near or behind the monitor has worked well for me.  Maybe only have to chase down 1 or 2 sometimes, but usually no big deal. 

R.E. Sign up sheet, I don't have the capacity or desire to manage that, That happens to also be the justification I use to producers who want me to bring 15+ comteks but only want to pay for 7 "unless used". Since I'm unable to track what comteks are grabbed at village, any comtek I put a battery in and put out I consider used and charge for.  Usually they just order the full amount cause they need them either way.

I have had DPA replace the microdot for me in the past.  They were fast and easy to deal with.

I've been using Reaper more and more these days, but still haven't done much post mixing in it.  I use it for live recording, sfx editing, and recently have been using it as a sfx library manager to search and find sfx for sound design work.  As with all software there are things I wish it did differently, like metering a mono track in a 3rd order Ambisonics workflow (why do I have to see 16 meters in the mono track?!?!?), but I have little gripes like that about all software.  All in all I have been really enjoying using it, and I find it to be very stable and efficient CPU wise.  Enough so that I have been doing some live mixing on it for custom routing setups that my console can't handle.

It took me a minute to figure out how they implemented it, but the LTC generator that can be put on a track is a handy feature too and negates the need for me to keep pre made ltc audio files around.

On 5/21/2019 at 8:08 AM, Henchman said:

 

This isn't about the DAW. It's about the fact that reaper does not timestamp the sound files with SMPTE timecode. 

 

Why this even is an option, instead of a standard feature is puzzling to me. 

 Reaper is a highly flexible DAW.   You have more options than just recording bwavs.  You can record rf64 or wav64 too, or just standard wav files whose standard does not support the timestamp metadata.  Should those options be on by default too?  Which one?  I really don't see how giving people control over their recording file type is not a good thing.

I would argue that if you are getting files that need timestamps but don't have them it is the oversight of the recordist, not the software.

3 hours ago, tourtelot said:

Am I just missing the IOS app?  Looks good for OSX.

 

D.

No iOS app.  OS X and Windows only.

23 hours ago, Henchman said:

Furthermore,, Reaper is useless as it doesn't timestamps teh wave files, making it useless to auto synch in resolve.

Reaper writes the timestamps to the wave files if you have "Write BWF (bext) Chunk" selected in project settings.

1 hour ago, tourtelot said:

Oh, jpb2.  I went through that list and a whole lot more.  PT was so unreliable in the field, and it bit me twice with high-profile clients.  I survived both encounters but never again.

 

The MIDI input on the m108 is for control only, specifically from ProTools HD (curiously enough).

 

D.

You might be able to get mtc into the iPad via WiFi.  I haven't tried this, but I know ios and macos can communicate midi via WiFi.  A raspberry pi or similar could probably be setup to handle the ltc to mtc conversion and broadcast the MTC to the iPad.  Ping me offline again if you want to play around with this.

It happens to me some times, but not always, so I just figured it was low level interference on the channel.  

Last comedy show I did I think I used 3 pairs of audience mics.  4 along the stage, 2 on the outside corners and 2 spread in the middle, plus a stereo pair above the audience.  I felt it gave me a good balance and control over difuse crowd in the room and direct without focusing on one person's reaction.  

Picking up the PA system on audience mics is inevitable.  If you time align the mics you can play it off as reverb rather than echo, and then adjust to taste.  A dynamic mic won't reduce the amount of bleed.

I don't actually know this is what's happening, it's just a thing to check and possibly rule out.  With the slates the solution is to set the TC rate manually.

I don't think i've tried my mixpre getting TC from the ifb200, but I have had problems with the tentacles not taking a jam from Zaxcom at certain frame rates. 

It's possible this is related to the jitter in Zaxcom's tc stream fooling the mixpre's auto frame rate detection similar to the way it fools denecke slates.  If you don't have another generator to try, try different frame rates and see if you find the same behavior.