commpost

I want to clean up the outside of an AKG 414 silver. It has a few light scuff marks and a light tarnish. I'd like to try a very gentle test with brasso first to see what happens. Any other recommendations for cleaning AKG silver finishes? thx John

OK, thanks for the insights, guys. I will look into those avenues of inquiry. Commpost

Can anyone recommend a library resource for REAL 1920's or before jazz recordings that might be licensed for a movie I am working on? (Not contemporary recordings -- i want low fidelity 78rpm sound.) thx Commpost

Cheap Chinese imports are destroying lives, businesses, and jobs in Europe and the US. If I'm gonna kill some jobs, I'd rather do it at Harbor Freight than at Lowe's. It does smell a bit rubbery at times....the smell of burning American jobs.... commpost

I detest ebay now because it takes so long to get paid on sales i make. Sure, the seller pays within a day or two, but paypal holds up the funds for weeks! It's awful. Unless you're making 25 sales a month, payment process has become constipated on that site. Sure takes all the fun out of selling. commpost

Hi ~ I've been having trouble getting a certain high-profile project I had worked on listed on my IMDB page. I have repeatedly tried to get my credit recognized on my IMDB listing, but IMDB keeps telling me that the credit list is "full", even though my name is listed in the end roll credits as, I believe, a matte camera operator. I made almost 50K working on this particular production, though it was a while ago....1991. I have tried different combinations of occupations, such as "special effects" "fx camera" and what have you; IMDB seems to reject them and never gets it listed. Is there an email or a way to contact IMDB directly to get this credit fixed? Anybody else had problems of this nature? thanks commpost

I recently had my old AKG 452 (which I bought new 35 years ago) serviced by a reputable dealer, but after sitting in the case for a month or two, the performance seems worse than ever. The output is low, and there is significant white noise in the output. Is the problem in the preamp or in the CK1 capsule? Can it be repaired? thx Commpost

This is a great thread. I really appreciate the equipment recommendations! Cart picture monitoring is something I want for mine. The camera dept have their video village; I have come to call my cart the "sound town". You are so right -- a sound cart can attract a crowd of it's own if properly equipped. What has bugged me almost more than anything is when the video cart gets moved around, and I have to chase it. I suppose on some shoots you wanna be near the video cart, on others you don't. It's a political decision. For the moment, I am done chasing the video village all over the place. Even when I'm near it, I usually can't see the picture because it's got blinders and people crowd around it anyway. ~ Commpost

But it would be nutzoid to mix the two mics together, no? This would introduce phase problems, and would probably sound weird and unnatural. But having a choice of levels or perspectives is the only sensible purpose of this. ~ Commpost

I was having dinner with a european producer last night and he was talking about a 2-mic proximity ADR technique? I have never heard of such a thing. Been looping dialogue for years, and sometimes of course the actor may distance himself from the mic for a proximity effect, but 2 spaced mics on a sound stage for a single actor? Can anyone give me some details on this, or was this guy talking through his hat? thx Commpost

I use the countryman B6's constantly with viper clips and lectro R400a's -- superb equipment! Commpost

A classic slate reminds on-the-set visitors that we are making a movie and adds to the glamour of the profession. ;o) Just kidding. On the two-Red shoot I'm working now, first thing i do is sync the cameras to my 788t by jamming the lockboxes. I change their rechargeable NIMH batteries every morning. The crew also slates the shot with conventional clappers as a redundancy measure. Spending the money on a timecode slate would be silly, since the dailies always sync up. ~Commpost

In the manual, it does not say how to format the primary INHDD. Am I wrong? commpost

OK, so the orange lights after recording are nothing to worry about, as it is normal for disk activity to continue for up to 30 secs after recording activity has taken place. That seems to be what is happening. Still I am having some minor glitchy problems w the 788t, generally associated with connecting to my notebook PC for xfer to thumb drive. 1) Sometimes the 788t will not shut off. I press the power button and it says "closing files" and just hangs there for minutes. The only way to turn off (i.e. reboot) at that point is to unplug AC power and also pull the attached battery. 2) Last night as shooting was going on, the 788t would not play back any files. This was rather disturbing. If I hit playback it would prompt me to check the HDD for a list of takes. Still, the takes I had recorded were there and I was able to dump the files to thumb drive. Both drive lights were green during the no-playback incident. 3) IN recent days, when i attach the external notebook computer to 788t via USB cable, the 788t will not recognize it and not come online. I have to keep plugging in the cable repeatedly, reboot either the 788t or the notebook, or both, in order to get the 788t to come online so I can copy files to thumb drive for the data wrangler. 4) I am making a point of ejecting the 788t before removing the cable, but that is also a problematic procedure, and doesn't always work perfectly. Again, I have just completed my 3rd week of shooting so maybe it is time to reformat the drive -- or pull the CF card, as some have suggested. I had pulled another CF card over a week ago and it seemed to clear up some problems at that time. The brand of CF card is the Transcend 32gb, which i bought from Coffey. thanks John