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Is anyone else afraid the bean counters will think cell phone audio is the new way to save money


jpb2

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Once the world decided dumbing it down to MP3's seamlessly I was shocked! Now I can't help thinking how many jobs will be lost to "Home Interviews" with a cell phone links... FOREVER! The people who run TV and Radio stations dont care about audio quality. it is a number game to them. And right now the numbers are high!  If they can eliminate and Audio Engineer from the process welll... People have accepted a HUGE dumbing down to mp3's and did not care, what is in store for us? Yikes! JP

 

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Unfortunately the Pandemic has forced everyone to learn how to become experts at Skype, Zoom and other types of Video and Audio capture devices just to attend work meetings or remote school sessions.  These streaming platforms can do quite an adequate job of acquiring broadcast "acceptable" audio and video.  Also broadcast standards have dipped  to allow cell phone captured video to be the major source of "breaking News"  source material.  Since almost everyone out in public now has the equivalent of an HD camcorder including digital audio in their hands ready to capture any event at a moments notice, the need for an AV professional to be dispatched to a news story or to capture an interview has been reduced dramatically.

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1 hour ago, Philip Perkins said:

We're already there!

 

We've been there for years ... Adjust the skills so we are still needed, and then ... BINGO! folks need quality again, for whatever reason.

 

 

Just noticed my 700th post (whey hey!) coincides with Philip's 10,001!  (This was the edit). J

Edited by The Immoral Mr Teas
head injury
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8 hours ago, The Immoral Mr Teas said:

 

We've been there for years ... Adjust the skills so we are still needed, and then ... BINGO! folks need quality again, for whatever reason.

We're all an algorithm away from obsolescence - obviously someone will still need to plug the computer in.

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4 hours ago, daniel said:

We're all an algorithm away from obsolescence - obviously someone will still need to plug the computer in.

I will start exercising my "turn on and plug-in" finger next week. This week I am sheltering in place... Pffft

 

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I have been recognizing since pandemic that Skype / Zoom / Facetime interviews have become accepted as a common way of producing. Of course, often there's no other choice (Covid risk) but sometimes they even do Skype interviews with people just a 20 minute drive away. Not good for the product, neither for the shooters nor for sound recordists.

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Well... for me, the only work I've had recently is because of Zoom and Microsoft Teams!

 

One of my corporate clients wants to continue to communicate with their employees, so they use Microsoft teams.  But they're doing it a little differently.  They have each presenter call into their own individual "Teams" meeting.  The only other person on these individual meetings is "us", in the control room.  This allows us (from their control room) to crop and grab almost a full screen iso shot of each presenter that they can switch to at any time and not be at the mercy of "Teams" auto switching.  Then we sent it back out to their employees on yet another separate "Teams" meeting. 

 

The dilemma is the audio, for which they've been hiring me.  Because they have set up all the presenters into different "meetings", and because the employees log into still another meeting to watch and listen, I have to get audio out of all the various meetings (multiple computers) and feed them to the others via multiple mix minuses.  

 

Not all of these "meetings" are sent out live.  Some are edited and sent out later, which allows them to switch to other presenters for reactions shots, something that's not so easily done with multiple people logged into single meeting. 

 

Of course none of this is "location sound", but I'm sure grateful to have the work!

 

Tom

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On 13 July 2020 at 2:03 PM, TomBoisseau said:

Well... for me, the only work I've had recently is because of Zoom and Microsoft Teams!

 

One of my corporate clients wants to continue to communicate with their employees, so they use Microsoft teams.  But they're doing it a little differently.  They have each presenter call into their own individual "Teams" meeting.  The only other person on these individual meetings is "us", in the control room.  This allows us (from their control room) to crop and grab almost a full screen iso shot of each presenter that they can switch to at any time and not be at the mercy of "Teams" auto switching.  Then we sent it back out to their employees on yet another separate "Teams" meeting. 

 

The dilemma is the audio, for which they've been hiring me.  Because they have set up all the presenters into different "meetings", and because the employees log into still another meeting to watch and listen, I have to get audio out of all the various meetings (multiple computers) and feed them to the others via multiple mix minuses.  

 

Not all of these "meetings" are sent out live.  Some are edited and sent out later, which allows them to switch to other presenters for reactions shots, something that's not so easily done with multiple people logged into single meeting. 

 

Of course none of this is "location sound", but I'm sure grateful to have the work!

 

Tom

 

Tom, DAMN! Is it good to hear a happy story! Thank you!

 

J

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Well, I for one am certainly tired of seeing up people’s noses and the rest of half of their out-of-focus-to-close-to-the-camera-faces and matching garbly (if that’s a word) audio. I‘m sure many others are too, and eventually everyone will be longing to return to normal - in-person - interviews. 
 

Maybe someone can come up with an all-in-one solution with camera and mic and interface, clear instructions for setting up and installing on a computer or tablet, which is really easy to use and could be sent out by producers to interviewees beforehand, so that sound and picture will improve considerably, but distance can be maintained. 
perhaps this could even record a small recorder, so the interview can be recorded for quality or backup and sent back to the producer for further use. 

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  • 3 months later...

I'll read how you all weighed in, however consider that the latest Izotope RX8 has plug-ins for interpolating sample rates and frequency ranges that have been truncated. This is a cultural observation, I believe, in that podcasts, remote interviews, and other new media have a context for "bad" audio.

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