[Andrew Rendell]

You need to look at the “Inspector” window for what the settings actually are, rather than the preset.

In general, the things that slow Compressor down are having the “better” or “best” choices in the Resize Filter, Deinterlace and Rate Conversion sections in the Frame Controls and doing a two pass rather than one pass conversion. (Mpeg Streamclip also slows down if you choose multi-pass for your conversion – those things add to the amount of work the computer has to do). I think it’s often worth doing a couple of tests with different settings and looking at the resulting files very carefully to decide whether it’s worth spending the extra time to get what may be only marginally better quality (sometimes it makes a big difference, sometimes it’s hardly noticeable, it depends on the source material and the end use).

[Andrew Rendell]

Not quite sure what you’re asking…

I’ve never had a problem mixing stereo and mono tracks in a sequence.

You can switch snapping on and off, but do you mean linking (where, for example, cutting an audio track would cut the linked video track at the same time)?

[Andrew Rendell]

Used to see the AKG C451 in studios a lot. Coles 4038 for radio/comm recording. Those are excellent mics that still get used but aren’t quite as ubiquitous as they used to be.

I’ve got a BBC information sheet from 1982 which lists these (although the sheet would cover all uses of microphones so you wouldn’t necessarily find all of these “on set”):
AKG C414 EB
AKG C422
AKG C451
AKG D109
AKG D202
AKG D222
AKG D224
BEYER M160
BEYER M201
CALREC 1000 & 2000
ELECTROVOICE 635A
NEUMANN SM69
NEUMANN U87
SENNHEISER MKH 416
SENNHEISER MKH 805
SENNHEISER MKH 815
SENNHEISER MKH 816P
SHURE SM58
SHURE SM81
SONY ECM 50
SONY ECM 50P
STC 4038
STC 4104
and then as a separate list, older microphones that were still in use in the ’80s:
AKG C12
AKG C12A
AKG C24
AKG C28
AKG D25
STC 4037

[Andrew Rendell]

To avoid aliasing audio signals have a very steep low pass filter (a “brick wall” filter) at 20kHz before being digitized, and practically nothing over that gets through.

IIRC, Apogee established their reputation with brick wall filters back in the ’80s.

[Andrew Rendell]

A big part of the sound of a compact cassette is precisely the speed instability which leads it to not be able to stay in sync with a video feed. IIRC, Sony did make a crystal-locked cassette recorder at one point (sometime in the mid 1980’s) which would stay in sync.

Once you’ve recorded it into the computer, that audio will always play back at the same speed, as you’ve basically frozen the speed variables of one particular playback.

There’s not much you can really do apart from play the tape back in the same machine that recorded it and perhaps do it a couple of times to see if one playback runs at a closer speed to your video than another. As Steve says, you’ll probably have to do quite a lot of editing to get it to track the way you want it to.

ETA: I see that the Sony WM-D6C does still come up on ebay. I guess that would be better than the Radio Shack recorder if you can find one in very good condition.

[Andrew Rendell]

Yeah, it’s a catch 22 that we all had to go through. I don’t really have much to say about a reel because in 20 years of cutting I still haven’t got around to making one for myself yet, other than: keep it short, to the point and be absolutely clear about what you did to meet the brief. If you sell yourself as “gods gift” then you better be able to deliver amazingly good stuff staggeringly fast, because you won’t be able to hide it if you can’t. It might be better to sell yourself as a team player who’ll fit in with whatever way of working they happen to use and do whatever they need to get done (because, frankly, that’s the kind of person that most places want to have around).

[Andrew Rendell]

Don’t use USB2 as it struggles too much/isn’t really fast enough for high quality video. IIRC that MBP gives you firewire and an expresscard slot – firewire is ok, but I usually use an esata adapter in the expresscard slot and I can tell the difference between that and the firewire.

As you’d be paying more for a firewire (or USB3) version of the GoFlex over the USB2 version, the price difference between that and the G Drive isn’t all that much. I have good experince with G Drives, so I’d personally go for that and regard the extra cost as money well spent.

[Andrew Rendell]

It’s an overdriven analogue recording. To match it you’ll need:
Hard compression (10 or more in the ratio), or a limiter (drive the signal into it at high volume so that it’s constantly reducing the level).
Distortion (just a little).
Probably a noise gate (or take a razor blade tool and cut out the quiet bits in between the words/sentences).
For the sections with reverb, I’d suggest a “plate” emulation to get that old style vibe.
A continuous loop of low level hiss would probably help as well.

Add the effects one at a time and adjust each one to find the “sweet spot” before you add the next one.

[Andrew Rendell]

I’d copy/paste the text into one of the title tools (just to avoid typing) then adjust the font, spacing, etc, to get it looking right. For that it doesn’t make much difference what file format it comes in as long as the Mac can display it.

Motion is better than doing it in FCP, depending on how you want it to look (for plain white text on a black background I’d probably just do it in FCP).

[Andrew Rendell]

I sometimes make DVDs with iDVD for one of my clients, which are basically viewing copies of finished programmes (which are 16:9), and they get played on a motley collection of PCs and DVD players. In that context I’ve found it much more reliable to make the DVDs as 4:3 with the programme letterboxed as I can’t be sure of what player might be used (some of them are older software and don’t show 16:9 non-square pixels properly).