Siddho

my (limited) experience with sound blankets has been this: i might have the 'best' blankets and some knowledge of acoustics but i also will need: an understanding and patient DoP, an understanding and accomadating Gaffer, an undrestanding and helpful set dresser, an understanding and helpful AD, enough time, room and assistance to hang the blanket(s) where i think might be the right place. i may as well play the lottery as i will have a better chance of winning than having all those things at exactly the right time when i need them on a scripted shoot! but hey, if you dont play you wont win!

"I also think muttering is something we could have a look at." well it seems to me that even here in Germany there is an epidemic of actors whispering, mumbling or who are too busy trying to project an affected vocal performance. so often i have to deal with actors standing meters apart from eachother in a scene and whispering their dialogue as if talking only to themselves, and this even in scenes happening in bars or discos when later in post loud ambience and music will be pasted on top. and sometimes when i have intervened the directors say to me: "well, i can understand what they are saying". and yes they can, because they know the script. the future viewer is not in that privileged position. some years ago i did a film in which the main actor had lines both in german and english. his german was eloquent and precise but everytime he had an english line he suddenly tried to emulate Marlon Brando's Godfather voice! i, as a native english speaker, couldnt make head or tail of it. the lines were later all dubbed!

thanks Jim, i suddenly dont feel so alone anymore!! :-) Siddho

ok, i am being a nerd and this is possibly way too easy but, anyway, spot the mistake in this screen-grab from the current OJ Simpson series:

i just got myself an OR 34. it has almost all the new features Chris mentioned and yes, it is a magnificent bag; the best i have had - and i have had a few over the years. i, too, can highly recommend them.

Jack, i do get it that both mix tracks will be available and in sync but, unless something extremely clever is going on, then a badly mixed track and the Mixahead track will be as good or bad or as useful or useless as eachother unless the recorded take has identical miss-timed fader moves on all those moves within the take, i.e. when all the fade ups and downs within a take are identically late. again, maybe i have misunderstood something but the marketing blurb:"the advantage of knowing the future" does imply something more than just a set delay to compensate for late fader moves!

i must be missing something but some immediate question are: what happens to those takes in which some of my fader moves are good and other slightly late? this happens to me often in improvised scenes: i can preempt some moves perfectly but will miss others. does this mean that neither my mix track nor the mixahead track will be good? is there some intelligent algorithm comparing good level (ie. dialogue) against background level in real time and hence making decisions as to when my fader moves were good and when not? what happens if my fade ups are late and the corresponding fade down is perfectly timed? what happens to miss timed cross-fades (when one half of the cross-fade is good and the other is miss timed)?

Jeff, have you done something? this morning, 24th of Feb, everything is suddenly fine! pages load instantly. :-) cant believe it. great stuff. hope it stays this way. many thanks.

same here. i am in Köln. on a windows 7 with Firefox or an iPad or an iPhone.... the pages take ages to load... up to 15 seconds sometimes. some days everything is almost ok but most days very slow. bloody annoying!

its called advertising! but the info is of interest non-the-less.

hi Matt, thanks for your reply. i will send the settings to SD tomorrow. and yes, when i get the warning, the system time and date are correct and dont need any resetting or further correction, although i have tried both resetting the date and time and ignoring the warning, both to no avail. regards, Siddho ps. on the PC Waveagent also shows the dates to be 32/12/235.

since i updated to firmware 1.04 i am getting some very strange metadata on my CF card with the SD633. i have posted on the SD forums and am waiting a concrete reply but i though i might ask here incase anyone is also noticing this behaviour. the problem: on the CF card the date stamp is set to 32/12/235!!! and the time stamp to 00:00. everything else, including the timecode, is correct. on the SD card, for the identical take, all is ok apart from the date stamp which is set to the end of the recording and not the start (as i guess is should be). also, occasionally, i get a warning on start that the system date and time are incorrect and to please change etc. which i do. the way i managed to get this problem to go away, at least for a couple of days, was to reinstall 1.04, then trash all my settings and go back to factory default and start from scratch. but after two days the problem returned without me having changed any settings wahtsoever. the recordings are all fine but this prohibits my giving the CF to production at the end of the days shoot. fortunately the SD is almost OK! unfortunately this doesnt inspire confidence in the recorder for me at the moment. i have only approved Sandisk cards (several CF and SD cards) which have been flawless for a year. anyway, it would be silly if a brand of CF card was causing the recorder to time stamp 32/12/235! it sounds like a coding problem to me but i could be wrong of course. any ideas what to do apart from waiting for a solution from SD??

i too have noticed a few problems with 1.04. my solution - which seems to be working so far - was to re-install 1.04 and then reset my settings to factory default and go from there as if from day one, make all settings new and save them. this got rid of all the small glitches i was having, including an intermittent keyboard. my guess is 1.04 doesnt like to work with setups saved in 1.02. makes sence somehow.

thank you very much for taking the time and replying to my post Chris. i hope my comments might help improve your new AO bags. i have already sent mine back and am waiting for my refund. i think i will stick with my trusty old Petrol 602 until something better (and readily available here in Europe) comes along. but still, i have to stay, that i was/am very taken with the design and the concept of the AO1.5, if not with its execution. i hope you will improve the production quality and then i will certainly try again. all the best and please, no hard feelings!

thanks Brian. but on the Porta Brace site the sizes for the two bags are slightly different: the AO1.5 is apparently sligtly wider (width) and that is why i ordered it. it is also supposed to come with 4 extra dividers. and yes, i have owned several Porta Brace bags over the years and they have been near immaculate. that is why i was so disappointed this time.

I bought a Porta Brace AO-1.5XB. I was shipped an AO-633 by mistake. Never mind. I am sending it back tomorrow and not asking for a replacement. Here is why: - The bag sits lopsided. I opened it up to get to the plastic frame to see why: The frame is just one piece of plastic bent into 3 to make a U shape. This has been done badly: one side has not been bent enough and the other too much so that the whole frame is wonky. It couldn’t be corrected as I would/might then tear its covering fabric. - Also, the copper colored fabric on the frame has been glued haphazardly and really rather badly and is already peeling off or crumpling together in the bent joints and hanging off the plastic frame. It won’t last. - The cable holes are just that: holes punched in the plastic and the copper material cut to let cables through. No double sewing of the material to avoid rips etc. - The long dividers are again just a piece of plastic, very badly covered with a black material. No double sewing or extra joints or plastic supporting strips to stop the material from peeling off over time. And the worst (which I unfortunately couldn’t take a convincing photo of!): - The top opening of the bag is smaller than the base. Putting the 633 into this bag made its base slip inwards towards the back (body) side. It just wouldn’t sit vertically without Velcro. The other parts of the bag were all OK. For the premium price charged for this bag here in Europe the quality control and/or workmanship are a joke. Sorry to be so harsh but you are catering to a professional market.

sorry to hear that Constantin. can you tell me which studio it was? (you can email me or pm me) and i will let everyone i know in here in Cologne about the theft and to keep an eye out. Siddho

sorry, thats not funny and is in bad taste as well as aiding the general anti-Iranian propaganda and misinformation. in Iran women have always been able (and allowed) to drive, as opposed to some of the other middle eastern countries who are "friends" of the west. also, no one in Iran wears the Burka. that is Afghanistan. in Iran women have the vote, can study, work, etc.

+1 and no hard feelings Chris! :-)

i could be wrong but its unlikely to be a typo, unless they misstyped both the Celsius and Farenheit figures! here is the link: http://www.trewaudio.com/PDF/Cyclone-Compatibility-Table.pdf

according to the Rycote Cyclone specs sheet "the maximum safe operating temperature" is 38°C (100°F)!! 38°C is not much! isnt that basically saying: dont use this outside in the summer, and/or in direct sunlight?? what will happen? will it melt? explode?? or just let the wind in again??

from 1:20 onwards - pure genius and beautifuly mixed!

i prefer these: http://pearlmicrophones.com/index.php/products/microphones-by-type/ms-stereo-quad/pearl-ms-2cl-ms-8cl-detail

no, i havent used any foam inserts. there are special dividers one can buy for the Euroboxes. i used those. here is the web page where i bought mine (its in german): http://www.1a-topstore.eu/Einteilungsmaterial-Einsatzkaesten

what do you need to know/see exactly??