audio reference tone?

[Chris Borjis]

when you edit or assemble to tape in fcp, pick the middle
tab at the top and set the tone level to -20 (it might be -12)

thats it.

[Oliver Jones]

Thanks.

Could you tell me what this reference tone means?

[Del Holford]

On a betaSP that would be a 1KHz tone set at 0 on the machine’s analog audio meter. On a digital scale that would show up as -20 so if you set your NLE to create bars & tone at -20 (standard tone) and set your record machine to 0 db, you should have it correctly set.
That is, of course, provided you set your program levels to match your tone.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS3
Charlotte Public Television
del underscore edits at wtvi dot org

[Del Holford]

The tone is a reference meaning that the average of the program audio falls at the 0 VU level. Excursions over of up to 12 db or so and audio under -8 or so (analog) are all right but most of the audio will fall near that level.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS3
Charlotte Public Television
del underscore edits at wtvi dot org

[Bob Zelin]

I dare to ask the obvious question –
Oliver – have you ever seen a Beta VTR ? Are you familiar with the meters on the front of a Beta VTR ? Do you see where it indicates
0 VU on the meter ? Do you see the record level knobs on the Beta VTR ? Do you have an audio mixer on your system ? When you raise and lower the faders on the mixer, do the levels on your Beta VTR input meters go up and down ?

bob Zelin

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
‘Lol!
Some things you can google…
Some things you’ve just gotta ‘ask the experts”…

Happy Christmas.
Keep telling it like it is. 🙂

[Oliver Jones]

I won’t actually be doing the Beta transfer, I’ll be going to a transfer house. However, I generally record onto a DV tape and go from there.

I suppose the transfer house are set at 0db right?

[Chris Borjis]

If they know what they are doing yes.

I get a lot of DV dubs at 0 digital peak meter which is too hot. (cd audio levels)

if you can make sure your audio peaks bounce between -10 and -6 on your
editing systems audio meters, it should be close enough.

[Michael Gissing]

[Chris Borjis] “if you can make sure your audio peaks bounce between -10 and -6 on your
editing systems audio meters, it should be close enough.”

Unfortunately beta SP doesn’t have that much headroom. Peaks shouldn’t be more than 8db above your reference tone.

Ironically, reference tone only really exists for analog dubs. In the digital domain, it is irrelevant.

If your tone is set to -20db on your QT file, then your audio peaks should not exceed -12db if it is going to go to SP beta. You either have the choice of adjusting your master level to make this so or choosing a reference tone level that is 8db below your peaks. The better practice is the former as the dub house will be expecting those levels. As others have said, don’t present higher levels (ie close to 0dbfs) as they will be often too high for analog routers etc at the dub house.