Multiple Formats and Digital Recorders

[Bartek]

Hello,

I was just wondering how people are dealing with multiple shooting fromats on the same production with regards to digital audio recorders. In the DAT days you simply had a tape for film audio and a separate tape for video audio.

I have the 744 as my primary recorder, and thus far i have been creating folders for each format, and delivering the audio on two separate DVD-Rs. This method however can be cumbersome and there is a lot of "homework" involved (splitting/ combining folders, etc.).

Is there a simpler way of doing this. 

I would love to hear how other people are dealing with this.

Bartek

[Jeff Wexler]

Hello,

I was just wondering how people are dealing with multiple shooting fromats on the same production with regards to digital audio recorders.

I have the 744 as my primary recorder, and thus far i have been creating folders for each format, and delivering the audio on two separate DVD-Rs. This method however can be cumbersome and there is a lot of "homework" involved (splitting/ combining folders, etc.).

Is there a simpler way of doing this.

Bartek

I am not sure what you mean by "multiple shooting formats" on the same production. I think if you mean you are dealing with one production that on certain days you are shooting standard 35 mm film at 24 fps, for example, and on another day you are shooting DVCam or HD video, you will have to configure your recording "session" to suit the picture format being used. It seems only logical that you will have to deliver different "sound rolls" (files on a disk) for the different format settings. If you are talking about a job where multiple formats may be in use during one scene (something being shot on film and video for example) this is probably something which you alone will not be able to accomodate. Your primary recording, at least on one machine, will only be set up one way, and these settings should match whatever is deemed to be the primary format. To make all these formats work properly together is a problem that confronts the picture department as well and an editorial workflow involving various conversions and re-sampling will probably be required.

I am sure we have some people here who have had such experiences and most probably they could shed some light on how this all relates to the sound department.

Regards,  Jeff Wexler

[Philip Perkins]

There have been situations where productions wanted to shoot 24 fps film (to be telecined @ 23.976) and 24p HD video.  The issue then is what will the frame rate of the HD video be, which opens a fair size post production can of worms for all depts.  A serious meeting is in order before trying this.  In the case of needing both BWAV and a compressed format like MP3 (for transcription etc)  it's fairly simple to run a 2nd recorder to do this, or to merely copy and convert the BWAV files to the other format after the shoot.  I often end up in situations where we are recording to the tracks of an HD camcorder, to a backup BWAV NL recorder (w/ TC from video) and an MP3 recorder of some kind as well for transcriber upload.

Philip Perkins