Jim Feeley

Speaking of lawsuits: Apple Seen Hurting Shareholders With Jobs’s Thermonuclear Patent War: Tech By Peter Burrows - Dec 27, 2011 9:01 PM PT http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-28/apple-seen-hurting-shareholders-with-jobs-s-thermonuclear-patent-war-tech.html As for RED v ARRI, those with way too much spare time on their hands can download RED's complaint here: http://ia700800.us.archive.org/5/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.520148/gov.uscourts.cacd.520148.docket.html Going to be a tricky case for RED, I'd think. But as a PR move, they've already had the impact they want... or so it seems to me. Will be interesting to see how this falls out.

Guys, the thing is booth candy for Behringer's rollout out of consumer products at the CES Expo next month. There are plenty of reasons to be upset about Behringer, but this isn't one of them. Hmm... the image link isn't loading right now. So for late comers, here's a picture of what we're talking about. Note the little iPhone/iPod sitting at the top.

I don't think anyone will accuse Behringer of ripping off this design. Pretty funny... hats off to those guys. BEHRINGER Explodes into Consumer Electronics Market with iNuke Boom – The World’s Loudest iPhone®/iPod® Dock with 10,000 Watts of Power Bothell, WA – December 6, 2011 – BEHRINGER, award-winning innovator of affordable professional audio and music equipment, is excited to announce the launch of the Eurosound consumer electronics brand — concert quality sound at an amazing value. To celebrate the launch, BEHRINGER will unveil the iNuke Boom, the loudest iPod® and iPhone® dock you’ve ever heard at CES 2012. The $29,999.99 (manufacturer’s suggested retail price) monster speaker system measures a whopping 8 feet wide by 4 feet tall, weighs over 700 pounds and pumps out over 10,000 Watts of power. Rest of the release: http://www.behringer...ith-inuke-boom/

Marc, you might be right. But Bandpro is an Arri dealer, a connected guy like Bravin had lots of venues to find out about Reds plans (or planned plans), Jannard reportedly made claims about his email account being hacked (rather than just his emails to other people being read)... who knows? The scuttlebutt I hear is this was mainly between Amnon and Michael. Jannard wasn't part of this case and hasn't filed a related suit, as far as I know. Not that I'm really paying all that much attention. Glad to see the competition between location audio equipment manufacturers and sellers is spirited, but not as vituperative or criminal.

Marc, first let me say I've been acquainted with Michael Bravin, the "former Arri exec," for several years. But we're not close buddies or anything. Sometimes cranky but mostly helpful guy. Bravin's case and plea involved his accessing the email account of Amnon Band, the CEO of Band Pro. Bravin used to work at Band Pro. Perhaps he knew Band's email password from when he worked for the guy. I don't think he hacked his way in. Instead, he did something stupid and illegal. Perhaps there was some residual bad blood from when Bravin left to work for Arri. Arri benefited from his work for them. As far as I know, the only guy accusing or implying that Bravin/Arri "hacked" into Jannard's email account is Jannard. Jannard says all sorts of things. And he gets upset about all sorts of things. I have direct personal experience with his temper. So I don't know if Bravin accessed Jannard's email; seems like it would be a lot harder for him to do that than to access the email account of a former boss. As for cameras, I agree with you.

Hmm. Looks like Marketplace, a well-established show, is having some DNS problems. You can look at the (messy) Google cached version here: http://bit.ly/seZ7dA Or try the above link later today. --Jim

From the US public-radio show Marketplace comes this story: The story begins with a factory just outside of Shanghai. It's three football fields long; it's blue and gray; and it's owned by the Taiwanese company Kaedar Electronics. In August, environmental groups released a report saying Kaedar's factory was emitting toxic levels of pollution. The report also said the company was making products for Apple -- which is notorious for keeping its supply chain secret. The report said the pollution was so bad that it was making people in a nearby village sick. So, I went there. You can listen or read the story and see some pictures here: http://www.marketpla...-apple-products

So how long until Sound Devices adds a PL mount to PIX?

Courtney, are you thinking of prEdit from Intelligent Assistance? I haven't used it, but I've thought about it (and I'm acquainted with Philip Hodgetts, one of the guys behind it). As you say, it kind of automates the move from paper edit to assemble. http://assistedediting.intelligentassistance.com/prEdit/ They have some other clever tools that try to automate even more stuff, too.

I've used it with Avid Media Composer. Very handy, pretty well integrated, esp when working with tons of material.

Soundbite is based on technology from Nexidia (heck, maybe Nexidia makes the app; I can't recall). Same technology that is behind Avid Phrasefind and ScriptSync http://www.nexidia.com/media/products http://shop.avid.com/store/product.do?product=307190015850032 http://www.avid.com/US/products/scriptsync Ya, very useful stuff.

Sort of like this, but focused on hopeful filmmakers rather than investors: Federal Agents Arrest 11, Charge 18, in Independent Film Scam Published: June 17, 2011 @ 3:09 pm Federal authorities have charged 18 people in a boiler room scam, accusing them of bilking investors in indie films out of millions of dollars, the U.S. Attorney's Office said Friday. Rest of the story: http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/fbi-arrests-12-independent-film-scam-28354

You can buffer the SSD phasing issues by using liquid mercury aqueduct interconnects (LMAI) between your amplifier and speakers. Jim

I have a EV 635 that I haven't managed to destroy. Still sounds like a 635, for good and ill. A few times on jobs with high ambient noise (sports, conventions), I've been handed a Sennheiser MD 46, a cardioid dynamic. Worked pretty well. Long handle, low handling noise, pretty good rejection/reach, sounds pretty decent. I think there are a couple for sale here on the boards. But give one a listen to see if it's for you.

Today TV Broadcast posted a short article about the Spectrum Bridge test. Several links to FCC documents: http://www.televisio.../article/126046 Nut grafs: You can file comments here: http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display

Pete, Nice and generous offer. Maybe make it an event to get a bunch of us together at the same time? That could be a lot of fun... It could be a BYOFBNB event.

Bill and Jack, for how long have you been a comedy team?

I think the trial ended yesterday. Spectrum Bridge is supposed to send a report to the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology. Then there's a comment period. And there's also the trials of Google, Comcast, Microsoft, and the other potential white space database entities; I don't think any dates have been announced for those trials. So I think it's going to be a while before we hear anything official... or even hear much unofficial info that's reliable enough to be useful. More information might show up here: http://www.fcc.gov/office-engineering-technology Or here: http://www.fcc.gov/topic/white-space Of course, someone else here might know more about what's going on... Ya, I have an unhealthy interest in spectrum policy. --Jim

Wes Plate is an old buddy though we mainly see each other at trade shows these days. He's now a product marketing manager in Adobe's Seattle office. Mainly working with the After Effects team, but also working on some other stuff. Make sense; Adobe's all about the "suite" bundles of their applications, they just bought Iridas, and Wes was a working (and good!) editor for many years. Harry, the main programmer at Duck, is also Wes's dad. He was a long-time programmer for HP or some similar corporation. He's going to be fine, too. Wes being at Adobe sounds really good for him and fantastic for Adobe. And potentially good for all of us. As for FCP X and import/export, well it does now have an available XML format. The guys at Intelligent Assistance just release Project X27, "an import translator for Final Cut Pro 7 - translates the brand new Final Cut Pro X Project XML (fcpxml) and converts it to Sequence XML for import into Final Cut Pro 7 or other applications." And then from FCP7 to Pro Tools... More info: http://assistedediti...om/ProjectXto7/ There's also Foolcut_AE that lets you move from FCPX to After Effects: http://foolcolor.net/ None of these are quite what we want, but perhaps Apple's going after the big schools of fish (DSL users, etc) and leaving the small fishies for 3rd party developers... or for FCPX 1.5 or 2.0. Avid is still a nice place to be. Looks like Media Composer 6.0 will be released or at least announced next week. But on the down side, I'm told Avid laid off 200 people last week. And their stock price is super low. Anyway, it's great that the AD stuff is free. Their tools are really useful timesavers.

How would that work? The HP TouchPad has a miniUSB connector, but runs webOS, a Linux mutation/variant webOS. Is there an app (or built-in capability) to backup cards to a TouchPad? That'd be cool (if I could only get ahold of a TouchPad). So how would this work?

And watch out for red hartebeests:

Alan, great comments and suggestions. But in my experience, professional cyclists are fine with stuff attached to them, especially the small amounts of stuff we're talking about here. Happens all the time. Low-level amateurs are the ones that get nervous. (Note that long ago raced bikes full time; I was the slow guy on the fast team). Anyway, lots of options for Pete. Going to be a fun gig, as long as it's not too rushed...

I'd think lavs on the rider will work better than lavs on the bike. I'm guessing Specialized will want some fairly aggressive downhill riding. If you have lavs and recorders mounted on the bike, I can see a couple potential problems besides vibrations: -Unwanted noise. You might pick up more chain slap, parts/shock squeak, tire noise, and branch whipping than you want. -Visibility. Perhaps you'll have a few POV cameras on the bike to show off the cool new shock, brakes, or whatever. Or maybe you'll have a few cameras following or tracking the downhill. I'd think the best places on the bike to place a lav, esp a lav with wind protection, would end up being visible in the POV or other camera shots. -Crashing. That might not be so good for your recorders. Unless you can stick the recorders in a saddle bag (wrapped in dense foam). But would a saddle bag give the look that you/Specialized wants? If you put the mics on the rider, you'd get better distance from noisy bike parts, but still grab some good bike, tire, & ride ambience. I'd first try sticking lavs down the rider's shorts with the head just peaking out the leg opening. I've done that and with good modern cycling shorts haven't even needed tape...modern shorts grippers hold mics fairly stable and doesn't have the sweat/exposure/muscle-movement issues of tape. Depending on what you're after, you could try the right leg (to get a little bit of shifting noise), left leg, or both. Then a lav at the bottom-back of the rider's jersey. Less body/tummy movement than at the bottom-front of the jersey. If you want some breathing noise, either a standard chest placement (depending on how the rider's dressed), or hidden in the rider's helmet (see earlier in this thread). All this depends on how many recorders you want to stick on the person. I'm assuming you're thinking of small Zoom/Tascam/Zax-style recorders. Depending on wardrobe, you could hide the recorder in the rider's back jersey pocket(s), or in the race-radio pocket if the rider is wearing pro-style bib shorts (or if wardrobe wants to do some sewing). I'd wrap the recorder(s) in dense foam...like from a yoga or sleeping-bag mat in case of a crash. That'll protect your recorders, and more importantly, will protect the rider. Added advantages of micing rider: -Switching to a different bike is no big deal. -Bike looks clean so camera can get what they want when they want. Well that's what I think. But note that I have more experience mic'ing road bikes and going for the sound and words of the rider. YMMV. Would love to know what you end up doing. Sounds like a fun gig. Let me know if you need an extra rider... :-)

Eric beat me to the punch, but here's the specific page on Countryman.com that's closest to what you want: http://www.countryman.com/display.asp?catid=4&pid=80 For the Zoom H2 & H4 with the 3.5mm connector, it looks like the B6 and EMW can work, but the B3 is listed as not compatible. For the latest on the H1, contact Countryman directly: http://www.countryman.com/contact/default.asp

I've done the Eric-style real job. It's fine, but it's not what I'm doing now. So currently, I take the amount of money I need to make each year (including taxes, retirement contributions, health coverage), divide that by the number of days I realistically expect to be working during the year. That gives me a day rate. If a job meets or exceeds that day rate, then I consider it a real job. Jobs that pay below that rate aren't quite real jobs. They may be good investments (will give me new challenges/skills/etc), but I strive to remember that I am investing something and I need that investment to pay off in some way. And I need to make up the pay difference with other jobs or additional days. -Signed, Mr. Obvious.