[Brandon Smits]

this is good advice as well, very video editor friendly. nice set up John!

8core Mac Pro Early ’08 Xeon 2.8 14gb RAM
Apogee Ensemble
JBL LSR 4328 Surround Set up
Euphonix Artist Series Mc Control, Mc Mix, Mc Transport
All wired with Mogami Cable

[Brandon Smits]

Joe,

I don’t think your problem is insurmountable. Paying for a mastering engineer to simply remaster your audio for broadcast should be pretty cheap, but if you have ProTools you have some rudimentary plug ins that can get the same job done. Michael’s suggestion is accurate, but maybe not specific enough considering your video background. Decreasing by 4db seems to be about what you need if that peak level is accurate, I’d be inclined to take it down 1db more ton ensure you don’t clip the broadcast equipment. I’ll outline a process for you to try which will include this step so read on before trying.
Michael mentioned compression, which is the appropriate tool, but compressing properly is truly an art. If you squash the audio too much your noise floor is going to be audible, which you don’t want. My advice is to tinker with compression using the results you got from soundbooth. The main 4 parameters of a compressor are Threshold, Ratio, Attack, and Release. Listen to a low volume passage of your project(lowest volume portion if possible). Watch your sound meters to see the level of the volume. You will want to plug this number(in db) in as the threshold setting on the compressor. Experiment with the ratio, <1 to 5 is the range I’d suggest messing with(start at 3:1 and finagle). Keep the attack and release at defaults in soundbooth. Make sure your output gain is at -1 db as i described earlier.

After you try this compression, play it through tv speakers to gauge your results. You should notice that you can hear more of the quieter sounds even at a lower volume on your tv. Let me know if this helps!

8core Mac Pro Early ’08 Xeon 2.8 14gb RAM
Apogee Ensemble
JBL LSR 4328 Surround Set up
Euphonix Artist Series Mc Control, Mc Mix, Mc Transport
All wired with Mogami Cable

[Brandon Smits]

Shannon,

It depends on your settings when you output, and the format of your media, but in general the process Michael described is the best way to output for DVD. If you use iDVD to encode you do give up control which is less than ideal. Dive into the minutia, learn what is going on behind the scenes of iDVD!

8core Mac Pro Early ’08 Xeon 2.8 14gb RAM
Apogee Ensemble
JBL LSR 4328 Surround Set up
Euphonix Artist Series Mc Control, Mc Mix, Mc Transport
All wired with Mogami Cable

[Brandon Smits]

Chris,

I’ve used a ton of different external firewire hard drives, and had endless problems with all of them with one notable exception: Glyph. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/manufacturer/Glyph
Though they use other manufacturers bare drives in their enclosures, their warranty is 3 years on most of their externals, and typically includes Data Recovery which is obviously a huge plus.

What usually fails on external drives(and electronics in general) seems to be the power supply. I’ve personally had no problems with a Glyph after using them in Sweetwater’s studio, IPFW’s Studio, and my own home Studio. Now I have moved away from externals as my stock footage library grew, I use an eSATA RAID5 now(16tb total, 12tb capacity). That being said, I rock a Glyph PortaGig 500gb for a portable solution, it does USB, FW 400 and 800, and will do bus powering.

Glyph Drives are expensive, but you get what you pay for in reliability. Also, Backblaze is a service worth mentioning in which you can back up and encrypt unlimited data from a single computer for $60 a year. Once you lose some critical footage, you’ll never chintz out on quality again. Hope this helps your decision making.

8core Mac Pro Early ’08 Xeon 2.8 14gb RAM
Apogee Ensemble
JBL LSR 4328 Surround Set up
Euphonix Artist Series Mc Control, Mc Mix, Mc Transport
All wired with Mogami Cable

[Brandon Smits]

Max,

I’ve been watching this thread for the past 3 days hoping someone could help you who is familiar with vegas. I’ve been editing on Final Cut for 10 years, and have dealt with crazy workflows extensively. I wanted to ask you whether the footage was progressive or interlaced. I suspect(someone tell me I’m wrong if you know otherwise) that your footage is being converted from progressive to interlaced explaining the doubling in frame rate. I’m also not familiar with tsmuxer, but I’m at the very least trying to get a dialogue going so you can solve your issue.

8core Mac Pro Early ’08 Xeon 2.8 14gb RAM
Apogee Ensemble
JBL LSR 4328 Surround Set up
Euphonix Artist Series Mc Control, Mc Mix, Mc Transport
All wired with Mogami Cable

[Brandon Smits]

Kyle,

I assume you mean a Mac Pro, but to be clear, iMacs do not have pci slots. Do your drives have eSATA outputs?

8core Mac Pro Early ’08 Xeon 2.8 14gb RAM
Apogee Ensemble
JBL LSR 4328 Surround Set up
Euphonix Artist Series Mc Control, Mc Mix, Mc Transport
All wired with Mogami Cable