The future of audio

[Steve Eagle]

I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, and have heard some valuable insight from mixers and editors about where they think the industry is heading. RF spectrum being sold, no more lead manufacturing, more competition, and so on and so forth. I am more interested in where the technology is heading. Here are a couple of ideas (take with a few thousand grains of salt), feel free to add your own:

- Satellite-based wireless: send your signal directly to satellite and have your audio recording transfer in real time to a studio. Eliminate deliveries and save manpower for other tasks. Imagine having your pre-fade iso tracks go directly to a post production house (or anywhere else, for that matter) where they are reviewed in real time. picture, too. we already have the technolgoy to do satellite broadcasts, why not satellite recordings?

- Camo-Lavs: using top secret Army "cloaking" technology, no more problems with wardrobe. Oh, and the lavs would sound as good as a 416, of course.

- Master Cable: one cable transfering all data including timecode, metadata, digital audio, analog audio, surround sound... comes with breakaway and a tiny universal adapter that works with every single audio device on the market. Thin as a phone cord and strong as titanium.

- Film-In-A-Box: students, no need to worry, now for your next film project you just press a button and the machine chooses from an infinte number of combinations to produce a 10 minute short, 30 minute documentary or 120 minute feature. Operates on two AA batteries.

[curleysound]

You forgot about transparent sound blankets

[Philip Perkins]

How about invisible light-scattering mics and fishpoles?  Unfailingly polite cyborg ADs?  A silence force-field generator that would invisibly block out all noise coming from outside a given perimeter? 

Philip Perkins

[Eric Toline]

Of all the ideas, the sat based one is most likely going to be first with audio & video being bounced to a computer machine room somewhere. Within 5 years is my guess.

Eric

[tim apter]

in the dv/eng front, Ive often wondered whether any manufacturer (like sony or pana) will ever decide to take the audio hardware OUT of the camera (A/Ds, pre's, mini lcd, meters, setup menu) in the form of a little black box and have a digital cable linking it to the camera (firewire type thing/cat5?). This way, we could eliminate umbilicals to one small cable, and be able to monitor ALL audio aspects of a shoot without ever touching the camera.

Just plug your mixer into the break out box with short xlrs, and monitor levels, frame size etc from the bag.

That would be cool...

[miker71]

bah! who wants to hear actors talking anyway?!

[curleysound]

It seems like it wouldn't be hard to make the XLR inputs of any format of DV camera act as AES inputs. That way we wouldn't be bound to the sorry electronics in those things!

[tim apter]

yes, thats a great idea, and quite do-able too! I just love the idea of getting a little box that has an lcd screen on it that mirrors the lcd on the camera so we can see framing and cam levels on eng shoots, and allows us to get away from the damn camera! personally i always hate it that the most critical part of the transfer to tape process (the a/d business) is meters away from us being run by (ugh) the camera man

[bperlman]

Okay, everybody, I know I'm an old dog, but let me ask this.  Why are we spending so much time catering to a system that marginalizes what we do and doesn't build on the developments of the past?  I am referring principally to docs and these so called reality shows.  From recording on a magnetic strip on 16mm film, to a sync cable between sound and camera, to crystal sync, we evolved an elegant system where the camera did their thing and we did ours.  It took some ingenuity and refining to get the slating right but it worked and it worked well.  We could focus on our recording and not being of service to the camera.  It was a dance, a partnership.

So, I ask why does the camera need our sound at all.  Why can't we let the editors once again do the marrying of sound and picture.  If the camera wants to use an onboard mic for reference and ambience, great.  But wouldn't the shooters be happier without cables, headphones, receivers and our hands all over their cameras.  Wouldn't their cool little cameras be cooler without our add-ons?

I'm not a ludite.  I know that electronic media is taking us to places we only dreamed of in the past.  But really folks, shouldn't we be fighting for a truly better way to practice our craft, not merely solutions to problems that  have nothing to so with sound recording.  Just because cameras can record sound... should they?

My last thought.  I recently finished a doc where the producer has to balls to not worry about getting sound on the camera, save an onboard mic.  We shot slates and the assistant editor did the syncing.  Just like film.  It worked and everybody was happy with what we got.

Just asking.

Bruce

[tim apter]

I think in the upper levels of film making you are completely right.

But at the level I often work at, we shoot with cameras that dont have the capability to make the post sync-up an easy process; primarily in that they dont offer methods of getting timecode in and out of them to allow for any sort of "auto conform" (Im thinking of the Sony HDV-Z1 here).

Problem is, I suspect, that editors and the folks paying for mid-level professional work actually LIKE not worrying about any kind of sync process, regardless of how this affects us as sound gatherers and even the camera folk as image gatherers.

Heres an idea:

Seems Panasonic is trying to push the P2 revolution, which is of course a non-linear system. How cool would it be to get recorders that communicate wirelessly with the P2 camera, and transfer the digital audio to the pictures on the camera by 802.11g or other wireless methods. and even cooler, some kind of system where the camera and recorder "talk" to each other and continually ensure that they are stamping sound and image with matching timecode so that these non-linear transfers could start when record is hit, and if the process is delayed by, say, a momentary signal loss, that the system catches up after you stop recording.

Although thats probably too complicated to be realistic, it would be great to even just have the wireless recognition between cam and recorder that allows them to maintain a solid timecode sync whenever you roll - that would make an auto conform a total snap (plus no slates or anything)

[cmgoodin]

You are all forgetting that the evolution of the Video Camera from Imaging device to CamCorder was done to eliminate the need for a Sound/Video Recordist, that was tethered to the camera.  It was sold to many TV station owners on the premise that they no longer had to send out a 2 Man News crew.  The Cameraman would record the Video and Sound inside the camera thereby eliminating the need for a separate recordist saving them 50% of their crew costs.

Most consumer and pro-sumer camcorders assume they will be used by this crew of 1, so manufacturers pay little attention to any methods needed to sync-up or even accomodate off-board audio.  The new Mini Sony HDR-HC3 HDV Camcorder dosen't even have an external audio or mic in.  And of course no Timecode.

---Courtney