wbrisett

Personally, I've found that washing producer's cars and mowing lawns has gotten me the most work.

NOW you tell me! Man, I've been doing this wrong all along. Back to square one for me. Time to find a bucket and some soap. :-)

Wayne

With location sound aren't demo reels tough? I mean, almost everything gets to post, where they will sweeten/screw around with/sometimes screw up the location sound, so what the final product is isn't necessarily 100% your work.

Then there are the downsides... I recently did an industrial shoot where when I heard one of the "final" mixes, I cringed and went back to listen to what I gave them. They really screwed around with it to the point where it really sounded bad. I ended up working with the individual working on post production and found he was making some very bad choices in Final Cut/soundtrack (he really was a video guy, who now had the opportunity to twiddle with sound, so he did... sometimes I'm not sure the masses are ready for the power they have been handed by Apple).

I wonder if maybe raw tracks shouldn't be used... but again, usually what tends to happen is I get calls because I've worked with X, and they recommended me to Y.

Wayne

I own two. I have the Lowrance iWay350 for the car and the Garmin Zumo 450 for my motorcycle. There are pluses to both systems, but I find the Garmin simply works faster in hooking up with the satellites, and I like some of the features a bit better, such as showing me the road name of the road ahead when it hasn't planned a route and is simply showing me the map of where I am. However, the Lowrance is probably one of the most customizable units on the market (I think most of the Lowrance product line is like this), so you can put a whole host of information on your display. Maybe a bit too much if you're not careful. My particular model is a bit bulky because it has a hard drive in the unit and can store MP3's and other things I simply don't and won't ever use, but I got a good deal on it at the time.

Planning routes is very different. On the Garmin, they included software (Windows only), that I can use to plan routes. I like this a lot particularly on my bike where the best route between two points is not a straight line, but those with lots of twists and turns. Routes are uploaded to the Garmin if you use the windows software to plan routes, but I like trying to come up with routes I've never been on to get places and it gives me estimated times which helps.

On the Lowrance, you plan your trip on the unit itself which can be a bit tedious at times.

Both units will get you from point A to B, but I find that sometimes the Garmin doesn't tell me when I need to turn soon enough, so I'm two lanes over and the exit is nearly on top of me when it tells me I need to turn. The Lowrance seems a bit better when it comes to letting me know ahead of time that I need to turn ahead.

The Garmin car units I've seen follow the same interface as the Zumo for the most part (they lack the person on the bike icon, go figure), and I do like the simplicity of the interface. When working on a shoot in Fort Worth, a town I'm not too familiar with, both the Lowrance I had and the cameraman's Tom Tom unit got us a wee bit lost when we didn't know if the place we were looking for was a DR or PL (WHY towns constantly have the same street name with different endings in different quadrants of a zip code blow me away).

My parents liked my GPS when they used my car, and got a different brand (I forget what brand) and seem to really like it. I think in most cases it boils down to size, and features you want. I think both of my units are a bit larger than most, but both also have larger screens on them than a lot of units I've seen.

You might be best served by going into some electronics box store that has multiple brands and seeing what you like and don't like about each.

Wayne

not a backup recorder, but a main recorder.

I had lunch yesterday with a producer in Austin who recently worked with a RED on a project. He was telling me that audio is a b*tch, because the fans on the unit keep kicking on.

Has anybody worked with one of the cameras in person? Is it as bad as he was painting the picture?

Wayne

Wow! hard to believe but they reduced the entire 10 hours of shooting down to less than 3 minutes and reduced 2 long interviews down to 4 sentences from one researcher. In fact, one of the researchers didn't even get aired. I guess I shouldn't feel so bad about being left out of the credits... at least I didn't get my whole segment cut out. ;-)

Wayne

Anybody get a price on the Deva-16 yet? I'm curious what the difference will be between that and the 5.8.

I don't know the price, but 12 analog XLR inputs is one of the major differences.

Wayne

Ape Genius. It's part of the Nova series.

Wayne

I just got an email from the production company. It seems that one of my first "major" jobs in the film/video industry (done for National Geographic) will air tomorrow night. Ironically right after that shoot, things took off and I can't even remember when we shot the locally (Austin, TX) done video.

Wayne

However, I would like to see a sping installed that keeps the plunger retracted (and quiet) when a battery is not installed.

Actually one other area that would be nice to have a spring is on the door lock. I can't tell you how many times I've used my Deva over-the-shoulder and have to put tape over the door so it doesn't flap around as I'm walking.

Wayne

These types of ads are all over the place on Craigslist. I received a call from one filmmaker who wanted me to give up 4 weeks of my life for $400 a week! I politely declined. He did ask me what was fair, so I gave him some basic day rates and haven't heard back from him since. Ironically, I saw he is still looking to fill the position and has it now posted on the state film commission's site. I seriously doubt he is going to find anybody for that. Hell, I could flip burgers for that sort of money.

Wayne

You have to poke a metal stick from one

side to push the battery, not quite far enough to get a hold of, out

the other side. It's even worse if you use Lithium NP1's (lighter).

At least it's now part of the machine. When I got my Deva initially, there was just a hole and I had to keep a screwdriver around to poke the battery with. The worst part was getting a screwdriver long enough to tighten the screw when they sent me the battery ejector.

Wayne

Thanks Vin. I'll pass their name along. I suspect they will have leads for the group going over.

Wayne

I have been asked to see if I can find somebody in Tokyo to work on a documentary project  (must speak Japanese). If you know of any documentary sound recordist/mixers, let me know and I'll put you in touch with the people doing this project.  The project is expected to last 5 days.

Wayne

FYI, I had Wendt modify my X4 so that it was line out instead of mic out. He did that for nothing when I ordered the unit. I don't know what he would charge if you wanted to have your unit modified, but I do know he will build them that way if you want.

Wayne

I thought I would update folks on my deadbeat production. I was told that the check was signed and was going out in today's mail. Now, I still have to see if it happens and if the check itself clears (really I doubt if I'll have problems with it clearing), but at least in my case things do seem to be resolving themselves.

Wayne

I think the 32GB compact flash cards will be out before too long.

Marc:

They (32 GB CF cards) are already out, but still quite expensive ($200+).

Wayne

Sadly, I am in a similar boat with one production I worked on. They owe me several thousands of dollars, but seem unwilling to part with the money. Pretty much everybody else who has worked on this production is in the same boat.

I'm giving them another 30 days then I suspect I'll end up writing it off.

Wayne

Makes me wonder if some of the other tools wouldn't be a better option. I Still use Quicken 2007, but I every single time I see other financial tools, I look at them, because I haven't been satisfied with Intuit. For my business, I use MYOB's product, which they have at least seemed to try to make more mac-like.

Wayne

I know there is the Lectrosonic UT400 Hand held wireless, which I assume would work with my current 411 receiver (obviously if ordered in the same block), but what other portable options are there? Seems most of the wireless hand held (AKA Stick) mics are designed for stage use and I need this mic for man in the street sort of thing.

Thanks,

Wayne

I'm thinking seriously about going this year, and would love to meet with a lot of folks I only tend to "see" online, so put me down.

Wayne

Hi Mike:

What I took away from that message Glenn posted was this. UDF really isn't as universal as the name implies. When it comes to computers, this is very true. Let's say you want to add PDF of your sound report on a daily DVD-RAM (this of course assumes that your computer you have in the field supports DVD-RAM, which is another topic all together), if the OS doesn't support UDF for both reading and writing, then you won't be able to do it. For example, Mac OS X supports reading the UDF format, but not writing to it without special software (WriteUDF!) from Software Architects. However, formatting the disc as FAT-32 means the OS (Mac OS X in my example) natively supports both reading and writing. Moving to post production, I'm not sure that they really had problems with either format. Or more correctly, I don't remember people complaining in that post houses were having issues with  either one... but if that's the case, why keep two formatting options on the Deva?

Again, this pretty much is what I gathered from reading Glenn's note this morning, what the real reason is, beyond me.

UDF by the way is the format used to make DVD discs (commercial movies), so I don't think the format itself is going away, just away from Deva 4/5/5.8 users... Although one part of his message was confusing, which was machines that use to use UDF would continue to have UDF support. So maybe the Deva IV and V will continue to have UDF support. I don't know.

Wayne

Edit: I did get some clarification from Glenn on this. The missing UDF must not really be an issue since only some of the early model Deva IV and V units have it. Apparently it was pulled as a formatting option quite some time back so those getting their Deva IV and V over the past year or so didn't have that option. The Deva 5.8 never had the option  (I think the original question came from somebody who use to have the UDF option and upgraded to the newer machine).

Here is a wireless hop question, and I'm sure I'm missing something fundamental here...

So you go from the mixer to a transmitter, that goes to a receiver on the camera. Now, if you're fancy and went with a Zaxcom system, you've got the IFB100 on the camera, so you now have confidence audio you can monitor (or the camera op, or boom op). If time code is being used, it would seem that you would want to use the Deva or Cantar, or 744T, or (put your flavor of TC recorder here) to be the master TC source, and have the camera get jammed from that via wireless. Right now, none of the systems I'm aware of work this way. They use the TC from the camera via IFB to jam things. Why? When you've got to jam the camera from a lockit or similar device every time a battery is changed. Seems it would be easier and smarter to constantly jam the camera via wireless.

I'm sure I'm missing why this isn't happening, but I can't figure it out.

Wayne

I don't think there would be much of a speed difference between the 744 and the Deva as the 5x DVD-RAM media would be the limiting factor.

But there are of course more ways than DVD-RAM to mirror from the Deva. If I'm not having to do dailies, then I mirror to a hard drive which is pretty fast.

To be fair, while I didn't do direct comparisons, the one time I had to move files over from the 722, I didn't think it took any more time than mirroring the equivalent data I had on the Deva. But I was using 10.4/Tiger at the time.

Wayne

I do a great deal of music recording, mostly for new music labels doing improv, jazz and classical music etc, and I can tell you that room-pairs alone are not what is wanted anymore. 

Mind you, it's not exactly clear what is happening in this particular situation, but you're right. If this is for a label, then a single stereo pair ain't going to cut it. But if this some low budget or artist archive type of thing, then stereo pairs may do very well. Better than clipping an omni onto the sax.

Actually, music recording is one of those things that can be done in so many ways. Sometimes the way that ends up sounding the best isn't the way anybody would recommend. I remember reading that the would place an omni mike across the room from Nick Drake when they recorded his records and that's how they got that large sound. I doubt anybody today would recommend doing that, in fact we have so many tools today that help when recording. But the fact remains, there are so many ways of doing the same thing and some work better than others, but there really isn't any one way to do it. In fact as this thread shows, each of us would probably do things differently based on our experience doing it and what the end product is going to be used for.

Wayne

I've done a lot of music, in fact it was for a long time the only thing I did. Orchestras, bluegrass, rock, steel drums, you name it, I did it. That has changed over the past year or so, but I still do music.

The recommendations for the stereo pair are right on. In fact, the recommendation for ORTF is probably the best (or DIN, which is very close). The only other thing I'll recommend is that if you can, place a omnidirectional in between the two mics. You'll end up with some very nice recordings with a ORTF, omni combination.

I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that they should individually mic all instruments. That's the studio way of doing things, but for on-location recording, I don't recommend it. In fact, a local steel drum band (up to 40 players), puts on a semi-annual festival. One year they hired a local engineer (who has been nominated for a Grammy for his studio work), and he tried to do a lot of individual mic placements. It didn't work out so well. In fact, it was after this recording that I was asked to do the next one. I use a decca tree and one or two individually placed mics to record the band. The results are much better and I don't  have to worry about trying to remix everything in post. I am now the person this band uses whenever they put on their festivals, so it must work.

So, try the stereo mic pairs. They really are the way to get this done correctly. And use the recommendation of trying to arrange the players. That will help in the mix.

Wayne