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Noiz2

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Everything posted by Noiz2

  1. Kind of old topic but I thought "and find the signal/noise ratio, let alone the community/bile ratio, to be pretty bottom heavy." Pretty much sums up why it's nice to have a forum that is not so full of non professionals. DVXUser is a good place to ask basic questions and get help if you are not a sound professional or just have really basic questions. I spend a fair amount of time trying to help folks out there. I will even give a question a try now and again because there are some pretty experienced folks there also. But generally if I am asking the question and it's about recording this is the place I'm likely to get an answer. I do mostly post and DUC's post section is pretty good but most of the other sections are close to the quote above.
  2. Maybe on some TV shows but feature films don't generally do this. Mostly because as I mentioned the sound of the space your shooting in is almost never the sound of the space the story takes place in. So boom/ lav mix to give a more natural tone is done but using "ambience" from the set is almost never done. Now in music yes that makes sense since the "story" is the same location as the "set". I could also see it for documentary shoots being maybe useful. So it depends, as most things do, on what you are shooting. On a narrative post I'm not even going to listen to "ambience" tracks as a rule. Maybe if the location has a unique sound to it. But realistically IF the director wants to use sound from the location they should have brought on an FX recordist to do the location, when there is no crew around so you can get a clean version. I have often gone to locations after the production crew is long gone to cover the ambiences of the location, as opposed to the sound of the set.
  3. Have to say as a post person, mostly, there is an extremely small chance I would use anything from this track. But maybe a video editor on some slam it on the air show might find it useful? The reasons are that as others have pointed out it will be useless for Noise Reduction, or Room Tone and it is not going to sound like the location of the story. A lot of folks think that you can record ambiences on the set, but as a rule that is not any use to post. The set is hardly ever in the location, or world, that the story is taking place in so it does not sound right. Mostly it sounds like a movie set so unless your story takes place ON a movie set the only thing I will use from production is the dialog. Room Tone is not to provide "ambience" it is to provide filler for places where non dialog sounds have been cut out of the production tracks. On even a small budgeted film the dialog editors will cut out anything that is not dialog. They will in most cases put things like door closes etc. on a PFX (production FX) track. But that is used only for reference. With very rare exceptions everything except the dialog will be added by the sound post team.
  4. One reason PluralEyes can be better than TC in todays file based systems is that it is a continuous sync check. Unless you are recording LTC on an audio track on all the devices you are only getting a starting time stamp with TC. It's great for getting your start's lined up but it's basically useless for running sync. With matching guide tracks post can tell if there is drift in an instant and how much that drift is. So you get positional sync AND running sync. Post places that did mostly video and worked with tape should be familiar with TC. Sound post back in the 90's when I worked at a number of big post facilities in the Bay Area, of the big three only one actually had a TC reading DAT player. Every one else transferred based on slates and had assistants "phase in" the production sound. Even the one that did use TC still had assistants Phase everything. We all used TC all the time because picture was on tape and you needed to sync ProTools to the tape deck. And PT used TC to sync to the stage, etc. But hardly anybody was using TC for syncing production tracks. As I understand it the reverse was mostly the case with all video workflows for TV etc. Having worked both ways, and really loving watching analog machines chase sync (a really fascinating mechanical ballet) I would recommend TC in only a few situations and none of those would involve DSLR's. A bunch of cameras (that are built for TC) where you have short turnaround and slates are not practical would be one. With file based systems you can get rough positional sync by just getting all the clocks to be the same. Then something like PluralEyes will do the fine work and you don't run a chance of having the TC get wonked for some reason and leave you trying to visually sync everything, or having the TC bleed on to your audio tracks. The later should not really be a possibility with digital but I have heard it bleed across on a interleaved stereo track on rare occasions.
  5. Actually no. Warm air holds more moisture than cold so going from warm to cold creates condensation. Think of the outside of a glass filled with ice water. The cold glass is condensing the water out of the air. Or the ice inside your freezer (if you don't have a no frost one.
  6. Somehow I missed posting on this thread. I do see the reasons for anonymity. Companies like Apple and I assume everyone else in the tech industry comb forums constantly for any post by anyone ever associated with the company and if they think you have talked out of school then you get a big brother email. Out of school in their book basically means saying anything about Apple. I don't mean to pick on them because I'm sure it's common practice with all of the bigger players. My general opinion is that I like to know who's saying what because it gives me some way to evaluate how likely the info is to be useful. It's no guarantee and IF you read enough posts by XXZZYY then you also have a feeling for the quality of info. I have opinions and I own them. People may disagree but that is fine. The anonymous nature of a lot of forums ups the "violence" level, IMHO, a lot. I tend to use the same moniker everywhere so it really doesn't matter that much. I was moderating a forum what did distribution trees (old radio shows) and we wanted to have people put their phone numbers in the membership list because when the tree would break down it was sometimes very hard to track things down and a phone call would have been quick and easy. It was a private members only list so it wasn't out in the public, but most of the membership was too paranoid about privacy. As a test me and another member volunteered to do a test and we gave each other 24 hours to find out as much as possible about each other. Neither of us had ever met and we couldn't use any paid services. We both came back with full names, addresses and phone numbers. She managed to get a bunch of photos of me I only fount a few of her (and her children). I found all her elementary and high schools and when and where she graduated from college. And two or three of her employers including current and where her husband worked. She found a bio work history (the non film parts were a bit harder to get then) and my schools and five or six prior residences and that I was married. The point is that we didn't know what we were doing and we got huge results in 24 hours. There is very little privacy on the web IF someone wants to find out who you are. A moniker is not a firewall, it wont keep you anonymous from someone who is determined. And the chief argument for it is that it will keep you anonymous from folks who are trying to find out who you are. Nobody has expressed any great worries that Jeff know who they are. It's those big companies and other organizations. Well here's the scoop IF they want to know who you are they already DO. So relax, kick back and have a homebrew. Don't waste energy trying to protect something you lost when you got a social Security card, and for many of you that was the day you were born.
  7. AS an update they are back in stock. http://www.hoodmanusa.com/products.asp?dept=1064
  8. Philip, I was sending the same thing to 72 different files. 14 is the most number of inputs I've used. Multiple devices would probably add a bunch of overhead so that should knock down the track count. The most I've done in a real situation was 14 inputs individually to two different drives plus three "stereo" crash down mixes. So 28 mono and 3 stereo files. The discussion may be moot though since BR is no longer available for sale. The developer is too busy with other projects and has closed the store. It's not "dead" yet and he hopes to have the time to get back to developing it but at least at the moment you can buy it.
  9. This is from a few years ago. I was recording feeds from the stage and two translators for the teachings. And then RnG at the public talk and various audiences. And more recently a big venue that despite many emails was not prepared for our arrival, the board they rented had no direct outs and well didn't work at all so two boards later they actually got one that was functional with enough ways to cheat. I was recording 10 -12 feeds including two translators and doing crash down mixes of the three versions (English, Chinese, and Spanish). I'm actually backing up in the shot (Chronosync)
  10. Well you could set BR to auto and it will start recording when it sees valid TC coming in and will stop when the TC does. The manual says there is a slight delay but you can set the pre record buffer to compensate so it's essentially an instant on.
  11. I haven't used MC so I can only talk about BR. I have used BR on a number of concert/ doc situations where I was recording 10 - 14 inputs often with mirrored files (so 20 -28 files) for takes up to two hours with never a hiccup, to a buss powered USB2 drive no less. I did a test to see how many tracks I could record simultaneously to the drive before using it live. I was able to record 72 tracks 48/24 with out having a buffer overrun. I only ran that for 10 min. but I knew I was never going to get anywhere close to that in real life. Talking to the developer about drives FW and USB2 were preferred over eSATA. The USB2 drive also has an eSATA port and that is what I had planned to used but apparently eSATA isn't a particularly smart protocol and so wasn't a first choice because it doesn't talk back to the app. On the last Dalai Lama gig I had 14 lines in going to 14 discrete files plus three different stereo crash down "mixes" (for different translations), and mirrored those to a second drive. So 40 files being written. The teachings were 2-3 hours long each so VERY long takes. No issues at all. It would be nice to drop TC marked notes but you can take notes while recording and type in the TC, not frame accurate but close enough for what I have been doing. And you could if you wanted split the recording and mark it that way. BR has user settable pre and post roll so if you split a file on the fly you have overlap if you need to phase them in later. You get very nice sound reports after with hyperlinks to the files. MBP first gen with 2gigs of ram
  12. This is the only reason that makes any sense. And despite a post above it does work better in stretching and manipulating and it is not unusual for FX recordists to record at 96. I don't, well very rarely but a number do regularly. THis is pretty much B.S. Just because you have more bits doesn't give you more error correction. Component and design quality count a lot more. And there is also some evidence that not pushing the converters lets them be "more accurate" so that would argue against 96 et all. Higher bit rate doesn't give you more headroom, it gives you higher frequency response. Well yes that would seal the deal. You can also record with a wire recorder. I'm mostly in post and the first thing I would do with your 96k files is SRC down to 48k. 96k FX files are used in design sessions and bounced down to 48 for editing and mixing. From a post perspective 96 makes no sense unless someone demands it.
  13. No, I tried. But you can disable tracks (not on the fly) in the patch bay and you end up with extremely small placeholder files which is very handy when the active tracks keep changing (live events concerts etc.).
  14. I just did a quick test and with my record drive not attached opening BR and going into record throws an appropriate error. I would check for a corrupt file in one of BR paths.
  15. I just had something similar happen. I inadvertently trashed a folder that I had one set of files pointed at. Going into record caused a freeze and a sudden quit. After that even recreating the folder didn't stop the sudden quit at launch. What I had to do was delete the files that had been created in the in the first record session. Explanation... I had discrete tracks going to one folder and three crash down mixes going to three other folders. BR had already created files in the existing directories before it locked up trying to write to the nonexistent fourth directory. I don't think I would have had a problem if I had not gone into record and created the corrupt files. I'm pretty sure that BR has handled bad paths better in the past but? Anyway I emailed Take also so I'm sure a fix will be forth coming.
  16. Well, while there is a lot more talk of viruses on PC's and there are a lot more documented viruses on PC's I'm not sure the end user experience has been drastically different. PC folks (I was one) have lots of virus protection apps and tend to use them so I don't think the virus issue is as great as the hype. I was on PC's on DOS, Win 3.0 - Win 98. In all that time I only had one virus and it was a mail related one. For work I switched to Mac's at OS6.4 and am still on Mac's. We had one half of a two part virus once on the Mac's (pre OSX) and I haven't met anybody that has had a virus on OSX. Well actually one person I know had a Word virus but it was a pass through in that it doesn't work on OSX but the document he got altered and passed on kept the virus, so I don't think that counts. This is not an OS critique, I think a lot of people who have "messed up" PC's are not the victims of a virus. More likely they are victims of Windows, which is loaded with ways of getting "messed up" with a little help from the user.
  17. This last year I did a lot more production work and almost all of it with Boom Recorder. I was recording the Dalai Lama's teachings in Bloomington and getting fed 12 tracks (lots of simultaneous translations) and saving that to two different drives (so writing 24 files @24/48). After some discussion with the developer I went with USB2 drive (I had tested the drive writing 74 files at one time with out glitches - though the buffer looked a little scary). Three two hour + sessions a day for a week and never a hiccup. Post was ecstatic since there earlier method had been multiple (unlocked) recorders and getting it all synced up was a pain. The over the shoulder is still 99% of my FX recording, which is about 80% of my recording.
  18. Sort of true but I don't actually think this list is going to get too many "pointless" posts, well I guess like this one also. There are lists where if you say something you will get 20 me to posts. But this forum seems pretty on point. At least I never feel like I'm wading through a bunch of junk to get to the good stuff.
  19. This is a good question (generalized) for the whole industry. When we started in post for ad's we couldn't get any idea what was considered normal. Even from folks we knew... silence. Now the thinking I have heard is everyone is paranoid that once people know your rate they will undercut you. My experience is that people undercut you because they don't know what the rate is. If I knew exactly what competitors were biding I would bid the same or higher. If you are the low bid they make your life hell because they assume you NEED the work and they can take advantage. We had producers (after the mix) say "you know we didn't use as much sound as we planned to", they wanted a discount - didn't get it. Personally I think we would all be better off with some sort of standard basic rate. Of course in union gig's that gets closer to a reality.
  20. Boom Recorder Mac Book Pro and Alesis mixer. That's what I'm using when I'm over two tracks.
  21. Philip, When I asked Take about this his answer was basically that under 12-16 tracks it shouldn't make much difference. I've done a number of jobs now using an external USB2 drive with no problems at all. THe drive also has a ESATA port and I was planning to use that but after talking to Take it seemed like the ESATA might be more problematic (seems it doesn't nec. flush it's buffers as intelligently). So in my test runs I tried writing 72 files simultaneously to the USB2 (I worked my way up) and had no errors on a 5 min take (48/24) but the ring buffer was getting 1/4 or so full before flushing. In practice I have done a doc (12 tracks plus a copy at -6db (I was paranoid)(24 files) 48/24 takes up to 1/2 hr, also a concert 4 tracks (again with -6 mirrors so 8 files) 48/24 ~~15 min takes, and the Dali Lama teachings (12 tracks 48/24 2+ hr takes). The only glitch I had was during testing (an abort) and that was fixed with a buffer adjustment. I think I had stopped and started too quickly and the pre and post roll buffers caused too beg a demand (but that is just a guess). Never had any issues in real life and the ring buffer has never gotten more than a slight pie slice of fill before flushing to disk. I had planed to use either ESATA or FW, but I have only one FW port and the ESATA seemed more fragile and poss more trouble.
  22. Jason, I would get as many mic's and recorders as you can out there. You could probably ask for folks on this list and poss the DUC. Depending on where you and the demolition is I bet you could get a few folks to help out recording as long as they get to keep/ use their recordings. I know a number in the Bay Area that would go for that deal if they were available. I often go off on FX collecting trips just to build the library, but you don't come across buildings comeing down all that often.
  23. Oh I agree completely. However on really low budget films these guys have been told all along that it's going to cost XXX and they have worked out some deal or gotten around it some how. Also by the time they get to post they are feeling poor (and sometimes are) and are generally just hammered. So I have found that they sort of have this "ya right" attitude about money (and they can always get some kid with an MBox to do there film after school, and you have Apple saying they can do it all in their own box). Time on the other hand they have a deep appreciation for. They are short on it and they don't have any good tricks to cheat on it. So in the end yes time=money but I have found that time is a better way to talk to these guys about sound than money since they think they can cheat their way around the money but Sundance has a deadline. If your talking to someone with enough experience who has a decent budget they want to talk money and time because they understand the connection, and the higher the budget the less you get to cheat on the cost of things. We counted a little differently but our numbers are pretty much the same.
  24. I was doing testing on FCS so I know it's an issue. FCP if you could get it to instal would probably work OK. Motion and Color would be probably unusable, Compressor would probably also be OK, DSP???, STP probably not so good but?? I'm not sure how you would install it though, and I don't know if it does system check on startup. I sort of doubt it since historically it didn't and you can install (or could) on systems you really shouldn't so I think it's an install only. So I guess if you were determined you could clone your laptop drive, boot an approved system off the clone, install then clone back to your laptop and cross your fingers. Or just spent a few hundred more and get the Pro. A good bit of advice I got from Phil, was to go to the Apple site and get a "remanufactured" unit. I got a first generation MBP all nice and updated with full warrantee looking and packaged like brand new for about 45% off and it came with a larger HD that listed. What's available changes constantly so you have to keep looking til what you wants comes up.
  25. I am also mostly a post person. To the first part of this thread Tom XXX is full of it. Having worked on huge films like Titanic to tiny films nobody has ever heard of, with few exceptions ADR is always avoided. Titanic recorded about 90% ADR (because of set construction while filming and such) but only used a fraction of that I forget the final number but it was well below 50% like maybe 25%. That is the highest percentage of any film I have worked on. The point being that the Could have gone for a lot of ADR, it was cut, but if there was any way to use production it was used. I would adjust Bob's numbers a bit since FX and Ambiance's are not really a separate category. THe time factor is something that should be drilled into the head of students, more than the $. It's often poss to save $ but time is still time. In a discussion on a post list I had observed that sound editorial always seems to end up around 10-15 man-hours per screen minute. Randy Thom who has worked on a lot more big features than I have said he noticed the same thing. Low budget films often tend to be on the high side of that figure because they don't have as much access to Foley stages or large enough crews to be really efficient. Now that was editorial not including the final mix. On low budget films you can pretty much do away with the premix since you're doing one as you edit but the final mix is still going to take days, if your lucky. In theory it could go fast but in reality this is where the directors starts doing a lot of fine tuning so it always takes a long time. You can, if your going to final on a stage that you have limited time on, do a premix with the director and get most of the time consuming parts done with but any way you look at it your going to spend time. I did a feature that had a very small window on a stage for a final (two days) so we premixed ti hell and gone (100 hours or so). So Time is what I would teach them. I can't tell you how many times I have seen projects that have gotten down to the wire and now they want audio post in a rush... We only have a week to meet the XXX film festival deadline. At that point I just say no. Who wants to put your name on something that is going to sound bad. My other little bit I would like them to think about is that I disagree that sound is 50% of the film. They don't really believe that anyway. I mean if you throw the script in yes your probably there but what people thing of when they hear the 50% figure is mostly FX and design. I think that number averages more around 25%. BUT sound is about 25% of the picture also. That door close off screen that lets us know the killer is in the house. Audiences "see" that they don't hear it. Aside for obvious sound FX that people remember as FX there is a huge amount of "visual" information that can come through the sound track. Nothing really looks big or heavy if it doesn't also sound big and heavy. A dark house with out a scary house "sound" isn't scary it's just dark. I know this is sort of the same as saying sound is 50% but I think it puts it in a context that is more meaning full to most (very vision centric) film students. Your film will look much better with a good sound track. Of course nobody will care if they cant understand what the actors are saying, or they don't sound like the space they are supposedly in.
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