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Seperate SD cards - One PolyWav File?


TSONeill

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Hey,

 

So im new here. Great site with a wealth of info - i hope to share some of my experiences as time goes by.

Im kinda new to the Film Sound world and have been gathering great experiences for the past few months - I work mainly as a " 1-man-band ", doing all the Booming, Mixing and Recording on Indie productions. I love it and hope to make a career as a Sound Recordist.

Heres my Situation:

SOUND DEVICES 552 feeding a TASCAM dr70D Recorder - 

Outputing 552 DIRECT OUT, PRE-FADE to the Tascam = 4 channels of I.S.O 

Using the Internal 552 recorder as a MIX . eg: Lavs Left MIX / Booms Right Mix.

On my latest project, Post want a POLY - Wav FILE.  6 Channels ( 4 I.S.O & 2 MIX) for each shot. 

Since this is my first request for such( most are fine with re-named mono files) in my ignorance I've been trying , un-successfully, to combine the files in WAVE AGENT but with no luck. It seems to be a problem due to the start/end times of each recording not matching exactly - since I have to press record on the 2 machines for each shot/take.

My question : Is it even possible to combine files from 2 seperate machines into a single polyfile. Is there a work around for this?

Anyone been here before and can offer me some advice would be great! I just wanna do what is standard operating procedure for the future ;-)

Im not using Timecode

Cheers,

Tim

 

 

 

 

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No, not in Wave Agent.  You've found the problem--Wave Agent will only combine files with exactly the same start time and length.  You could combine them+export in a DAW, but that would be way tedious.  Best you can offer that I know of is the two batches of polys with very coherent file naming, take numbers and notes.  It will be a bit work work for post to sync the files up but PluralEyes etc should help a lot, as will making sure at least one channel of each file hears a clap slate clearly.  Getting the cam dept to fully announce the take each time ("scene 1 take 3 MARK" will help the posties a lot of they get confused.

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Thanks Philip,

Yes i considered importing to DAW and then exporting BUT it would mean syncing every single take manually and with other projects on the go and 9gb of files I quickly reverted to offering 2 seperate Poly files!! It annoys me that I cannot give the requested format but I'm expecting the quality of my On-Set work will make up for that !!

So am I correct in stating that in order for the SD552 Mixer to be able to offer both ISO and MIX Poly files, I would need to upgrade to a Time Code capable Recorder with SEND TC / or units which will recieve TC from a box, eg DENEKE or similar ?  , something that I plan for the future anyway but right now im broke!!

 

Best,

 

Tim

 

 

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You can get files with identical TC by adding a TC capable recorder to your rig and feeding the 552 with that code.  If you start the machines manually the resulting files will be slightly different lengths, and thus Wave Agent won't combine them.  But the 552 can do an autostart from external code, which might work for you if you can get away with using record-run TC.  You'd have to try this to make sure it really worked, but in theory if you put another TC recorder in record and it started sending ascending TC to the 552 at that moment, the 552 would start recording with the same timestamp, and stop at the moment the ext TC stopped, with the same file length--supposedly combineable in Wave Agent.  This scenario won't work with a standard jam-synced TC slate (you'd have to transmit code to the slate instead of using its onboard generator in jam mode) and I have not done tests of this idea with the 552, but in theory it should work.  As a comparison, for some years I rolled a Tascam HD-P2 recorder with external TC coming from an HD camera in record-run TC mode.  When the camera rolled, its TC would start to count, and that would start the HDP2 at the same TC address, as well as stop it when the camera cut.  This method was not without its issues and eventually we abandoned it, but it did work pretty well for a few years.  Worth a try if you can assemble the gear...read your manual!

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