Andrew Rendell
Forum Replies Created
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I’m not sure you need the 6″ ones, for what you’re talking about the 5″ ones should be fine (they’re Walter Biscardi’s choice https://www.biscardicreative.com/blog/2011/06/anatomy-of-an-edit-suite/ )
I bought Genelec 8020 but I’ve worked in suites with all kinds of speakers and TBH I wouldn’t be unhappy to walk into a cutting room edit with KRK Rokits (I do a lot of speech editing for factual tv/radio/web productions, someone doing other types of thing might have different preferences).
Remember, what you need from speakers when editing is to hear all the detail in the recording, to know what you’ve got. That’s not necessarily the most “musical” or flattering sound.
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A couple of years ago I did a “48 hour” film making challenge with a friend, we were told a title, a line that had to be included in the script and a prop which had to appear (it was “a bottle of red liquid” in the one we did IIRC) on a friday afternoon and had to post a short film (roughly 5 minutes) by 10am on monday morning. It was fun and a great way to really concentrate the mind on making creative decisions quickly, I’d recommend it (as long as the entry fee isn’t expensive).
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Loudness is now specified under the CALM act, here’s a page which links to information you need to know about https://www.qualisaudio.com/calm_act_loudness.htm
There are several software and hardware meters available. I’d never rely on FCP’s metering for anything for broadcast.
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I spent enough years working in rooms with no windows that I ended up having to take prescription strength vitamin D pills, so I really value natural light these days. But really, facing a window isn’t all that big a deal, I prefer it to the side so that the blinds can be left open for more of the time but two levels of curtaining sounds a great solution.
I have worked in a couple of different facilities with a mixture of different sized rooms, where the smaller ones weren’t big enough for more than 3 or 4 people in the room at once but we just opened the project in one of the bigger rooms (or even in a meeting room in one place) for viewings. Again it’s not all that big a deal when you get used to it.
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I’m finding it hard to imagine a desk large enough to have two people working side by side and laying out a reasonable amount of script/research/logging notes paperwork, i.e., the kind of thing that you typically need to do in an offline edit, in a room where you couldn’t spin it by 90 degrees to be against the side wall instead of being against the window.
To be honest, I have worked in facilities where they have that layout and there’s only really a problem if there isn’t enough space to walk around the desk to adjust the blinds/window opening. It’s just a shame to have to block out the natural light on bright days.
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I remember EPK, for electronic press kit (if memory serves well), and VNR, for video news release.
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The difference between PAL and SECAM is the way the colour information is encoded in the composite signal. That’s done by the camera, not the tape. If the tape is marked VHS-C PAL SECAM then it’s fair to assume that it’s suitable for recording in either PAL or SECAM, so it should be fine.
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I use PPMulator software, which has loudness metering as well as PPM, going through audio hijack pro on the Mac so that it sits outside the NLE software and measures what’s on the output. It’s a cost effective option that works for the majority of my uses (95% of my work is for national or international broadcast so three quarters of it goes through an audio facility for mastering anyway, it isn’t finalised on my kit), however, I grew up (professionally speaking) using PPMs and we’d use the M/S mode for checking phase – if the side signal is greater than the middle one then you’ve probably got a phase problem, so it’s not as precise as X/Y display but combined with a reasonable pair of ears it gets the job done.
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The track designations mean that your fully mixed track needs to be stereo and mapped to tracks 1 and 2. M&E means music and effects – in factual tv that’s often “mix minus”, meaning that it doesn’t have commentary and the levels aren’t dipped where the commentary is, but it does include whatever speech is sync with the pictures.
The “HD dial norm -24dB+/- 2dB” bit is the loudness measurement in accordance with the calm act. You need external level metering for that, the metering in FCP doesn’t show it.
TBH, if you’re not really familiar with broadcast audio metering (and the questions kinda suggest that’s the case) it’s probably best to have your mix finalised by an experienced sound mixer, even if the production can only afford a day or two of their time.
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The thing to be aware of is the crop factor, a 500mm FD lens will give the view equivalent to roughly 800mm on the 70D.
I’ve got a couple of FD lenses that I use with adaptors and I’m very happy with them, not the 500mm f4.5 so I can’t comment on that, but I don’t think theres any automatic reason to suppose the quality wouldn’t be fine.