Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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Excellent advice in this thread.
Renting the piano is NOT the point of getting quality music.
Securing the services of a great Piano PLAYER is.
You need the piano player.
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Since you’re running FCP, you’re already a licensed user of Quicktime Pro.
Just output your files as standalone QT files and then you can play them directly out of the QT app.
About the only cost you’d need to incur would be an incredibly cheap VGA adaptor or a video card with a secondary output that you can convert from VGA to video – a process that is as cheap as it is simple.
Good luck.
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Classically, if you have to turn the gain nearly all the way down in order to get the proper level at an input – the initial suspicion is that you’re presenting a line level signal into a circuit expecting to see a mic level.
The equally classic solution is to use a PAD at the input to match the signal levels.
Or check the SD manual to see if you can switch that output from line level to mic level.
Whether the problem is specifically that or not – it’s a clear sign of improper gain structure to have a big mis-match like you report and it can easily cause you many headaches in operation. Particularly if something “jossles” your setup and the poor potentiometer that’s down to it’s last winding trying to get your signal into range clicks down one more step and the input suddenly drops to zero!
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Margaret,
Your description is a bit hard to understand – but let me try.
Typically, the sort of echo you appear to be describing takes place when a speaker produces a sound, that is then picked up by a MICROPHONE, which sends the sound back to the SAME speaker with a small delay.
I suspect that you have a microphone on your computer somewhere – they’re building them into a lot of systems to enable chat, and phone over internet etc. – and the control panel has enabled something that has turned that microphone on – and that you’re getting an echo loop from the speaker to mic.
When a system is working properly, the speakers are muted when the mic is turned on. And the mic is disabled when the speakers are in operation.
But with so many products and pathways in a modern computer or sound system, it’s perfectly reasonable for a system go get in a mode where they’re BOTH on – and the echo takes place.
Look in your SOUND settings for a way to turn the microphone off. Or if it’s some kind of external microphone, look for a way to shut it physically off – and that should take care of the problem.
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David,
If you mis-read this you’re going to find the tone harsh.
It’s NOT supposed to be. I’d like it to be more like a good exercise at a high level customer service seminar you’ve paid a lot of hard earned dollars to attend – and the tone of the presenter is ONLY interested in revealing something that might help you grow your business further and bring you more success….
That said…
Look back at your post. Count the number of first person pronouns. Notice how your focus is nearly relentlessly “I”, “my”, “me”, “we”, “our”, “us.” I score it 11 of those to 1 single use of “your.”
I’m going to argue that unless you notice and change this. You’re going to VASTLY limit your ability to attract quality customers and succeed in the long run.
Business does not grow when the propriator constantly takes care of his or her OWN needs. It grows once they’ve learned to concentrate on satisfying the needs of their others.
Food for thought from someone who, early in his own career – was as “I” centric as any other young man. But learned better over time.
Good luck.
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Sounds like you’re anxious about this stuff. That’s reasonable and fair.
But fundamentally, it’s YOUR issue.
Be proactive to do something in order to take care of your anxiety.
Try posting your low rez draft “approval” videos to a server – with email links behind a COUNTER that tells you if the recipient has looked at the file and/or passed the link to others for comment?
If the counter doesn’t rachet in a couple of days, resend them a message about the link. Simple email, no big deal.
If they don’t respond within 48 hours again, total the bill to that point and send it out as a “progress payment” PDF and put the project on hold and turn your attention to something else.
If you don’t hear from them for a while after that, the project goes “INACTIVE” and let them know you won’t bring it back again until they pay the current bill in full.
That might be one way to put the proper responsibility on the CLIENT for the necessary communication in order to keep projects alive – and give you verifiable progress touch points to quell the anxiety.
FWIW.
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Jay’s books are great.
And I highly recommend them to anyone wanting a good grounding in practical audio theory.
That said, I’m not sure you’re going to find precisely what you’re looking for in any form of print.
That’s essentially because audio sweetening is more like cooking than like driving.
In a task based deal like driving, you learn the pedals, switches, rules of the road etc then with some basic practice you’re good to go.
But cooking really isn’t all that “task based”. It’s about learning the properties of the ingredients and how they REACT to each other. You add cinnamon to this combination – it’s great. You add cinnamon to THAT combination – it’s HORRIBLE. Cooking is too complex to distill down into simple rules.
Likewise audio sweetening.
Take a simple voiceover. Each voice has specific frequency fundamentals that make it unique. It also features patterns of delivery that are distinct. Let’s say your voice talent hits their “s” sounds hard – So you naturally try to find the frequencies of those splashy sounds and trim them. So you drop a low pass filter on things. Which removes the splashy-ness – but also reduces intelligibility to unacceptable levels. So you consult your tables about human speech, figure out the general high frequencies involved, and try to tone down the splashy-ness with a notch filter, or a bit of parametric EQ…
But NONE of them get you the sound you want. Maybe rather than dropping the frequencies around the S’s – maybe you try propping UP other frequencies to make the “s” sounds fit better in the overall mix? Or not. Perhaps compression will help on THIS recording. Or make those “s”s sizzle twice as bad.
That’s half a dozen reasonable approaches to trying to generate one “recipe” for solving this one problem.
And the truth is, nobody can tell you which one will work. BECAUSE THE VOICE and it’s relation to the OTHER SOUNDS in the track are UNIQUE to your mix. The way that voice sounded on the day it was recorded saying those words recorded properly or improperly – digitized at a particular level using this particular microphone which was set up in this particular space – HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE.
I’m not being difficult – and yes, there are some conventions that can help in some situations and resources like Jay’s can guide you to them. But in the end, the ONLY way to become a good audio mixer is the same way you become a good cook.
Study, study, study the basic skills of the trade…. then
practice, practice, practice.Good luck.
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Another voice added to the congrats!
If you’re not already steeped in sailing skills – go buy a good book on basic sailors knots.
I’d also recommend buying an excellent floating waterproor hip knife, belt clip, then spend a few days in a pitch-black room practicing until you can reach and deploy that blade in less than a second from any position, including hanging upside down.
The first advice will keep anyone from laughing if you’re ever tempted to wrap a line around a cleat fishing reel style – (I did that – ONCE – when I was about 12 and remember the teasing to this day)
The second piece of advice you’ll never actually need. But only because the SeaGods will know they can’t mess with you in that particular way.
Have a wonderful time – including a safe trip home.
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Assuming your caps key is stuck and you’re not shouting – I’ll take a shot at this…
The central problem is that a computer screen and a TV screen are two completely different beasts.
A television screen is a fixed raster with a fixed refresh rate and NO scalability involved. Well – sorta. In fact the different world standards of TV make the first sentence of this paragraph arguably untrue. There are multiple WORLD STANDARDS for broadcast TV. But let’s ignore that. Pick any one of them to produce your TV content for – and you’re working in a fixed format.
COMPUTER displays are anything BUT fixed. They are progressively scanned rather than interlaced. They are variable in size, screen dot pitch, and can be electronically refreshed at any rate their software drives them to. There are “some standards” for screen raster sizes. But it’s a choice for the user. If you buy a better card, or a better monitor, you’re free to ALTER your screen dot pitch and refresh rate all you like.
So when you say you want to “CAPTURE PC SCREEN” it’s like saying you want to “COOK CHICKEN”. Your library has 10, 000 different recipes for how to do that. And doing it in a satisfying fashion depends on a lot of stuff – again like cooking chicken.
To do it really well, you have to know a lot about that original PC signal. Is it complex? Simple? Is the color pallet used TV safe? Is there type? Is that type large or small? What about patterns and detail? Are their patterns that look fine on TV, but will shimmy and crawl when converted to the raster of TV?
Those questions are the first of hundreds that can come up when you’re transcoding between a good COMPUTER signal – and a good VIDEO signal.
Some general rules are: Better quality scalers, transcoders, and rasterizers are typically the BEST way to do direct transfer of computer output to video – but sometimes even the best work poorly if the original computer signal design is “video hostile” with broadcast unsafe color, tight pattern design, or too-small type choices
Shooting traditional cathode-ray TV picture tubes is possible, but is best done with higher end cameras that feature very adjustable shutter speeds (Clear-scan, etc) that allow you to precision sync the camera shutter with the monitor refresh rate in order to avoid the “rolling white bar” issue of sync incompatibilities.
Shooting LCD video screens is easier – and sometimes you can get decent results just videotaping a laptop screen – however for best results, you might need neutral density gels or color correction gels (laptop backlights tend to be more daylight like than tungsten-like) to get the laptop screen dimmed and color corrected enough for a proper exposure.
I know you just wanted a simple “set it up like this – and hit record” but while capturing video from a computer can sometimes be that simple when the gods are smiling on you – in practice it’s usually annoyingly complex – and if the original computer designer made poor choices – it can be a solid nightmare.
Good luck.
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Here’s my perspective as someone who was a voice talent and narrator BEFORE I started directing, shooting and editing content.
With that background, voiceover was one of the primary tools I brough to the table when organizing my work. I knew I could competently write and narrate the underlying thread no matter what visuals or actualities I had.
Then I did a program for a local non-profit. We set up a series of on-camera interviews with about a dozen volunteers – and interviewed them extensively about many aspects of the operation.
At the end, I sat down to write my narration, but something kept bothering me. After a day or so I realized the problem. What I had in the can no longer NEEDED narration. The interviews said it all – and far better than I could have written it.
There were a lot of lessons for me in that experience. First, learning to trust my instincts. Second, learning that while I “own and operate” a wonderful, professional storytelling tool: to wit a narrators voice and proven narration talent – that doesn’t mean I need to pull it out to solve my storyteling problems all the time.
I’ve learned that you seldom know what you need, until you get past the point that you need it. And that there are a lot of ways to tell a story – and sometimes good reasons not to tell it at all, but to let your audience figure it out for themselves.
I think writing narration as a structural tool is probably always a good exercise because organization and structure is an essential tool for good storytelling. But it’s just as important not to use any original script as a crutch.
Live in the process. Keep your eyes pealed for ways to do things outside the way you USUALLY do them.
And finally, respect the story you’re telling enough to listen to it for clues as to how to tell it best.
My 2 cents anyway.