[Craig Alan]

How do i get all these files in sync before setting up the drop box?

Anything easier than manually going through them and keeping the last version of each?

These are small files but 1000s of them.

[Craig Alan]

what is the capacity of each drive and how full are they? at about 80% they start to slow down. is everything slow on your system or just the transfers? Is this from external drive to external drive? Are you emptying your trash after cleaning up? Try running repair permissions from disc utility. Try disk warrior.

OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

No. I got that. Just giving an example.

OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Thanks Ty,

Yeah they still do, but if you guys don’t use it, I won’t bother. Though I do feel the need to understand audio tech speak better and maybe having measurements for things like SPL would help.

I’ve recorded performances using a Sennheiser MD46 – Cardioid Handheld Dynamic ENG Microphone plugged into a G2 Sennheiser cordless kit. We’ve gotten the mike close to one of the speakers (mono). Adjusted the sensitivity and output levels on the transmitter and then adjusted the output levels on the receiver and the input levels on the camera. The PAs they were using were set really loud. The recording captured the live sound pretty well. If their sound was clean so was ours. If their sound was distorted or muddy so was ours. We mounted the cordless mic on a stand. Pointed it at the PA at a distance that sounded good to my ears. Fairly close but not too close. Now all this is not as good as a proper feed from a well adjusted sound board and padded down for recording purposes. But no such feed is being offered. I compared this to recording directly into the cam’s built in mike and it was way better.

Bottom line: the MD46 was not overwhelmed by ear deafening sound levels.

OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Ty,

Just curious. To test this theory, could you plug your headphones into the mixer’s headphone output and listen. Thus you are not yet dealing with the camera’s preamp?

Could using the camera’s phantom power instead of the mic’s battery possibly help?

And is there anyway of adding a “pad” between the room sound and the mic? Something like a windscreen but designed to soften the overall noise or maybe just the bass?

Do you recommend an instrument to measure the SPL. I know lab quality ones are very expensive but there are fairly inexpensive ones with I assume a greater degree of inaccuracy but might be helpful to get an overall idea of SPL and thus choose a mic and pads accordingly?

OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Hi,

Thanks for everyone’s feedback. Simply from experience I’ve learned to play with and listen to sound as well as keeping an eye on the meters. Whether from a mixer or powered units like cordless lav kits, I’ve fooled with the line/mic switches, output/input levels etc until I’ve gotten it to sound good. But I would like a better understanding of just what is going on. In this particular case, I was working with no mixer. Just a handheld mono mike directly into the mic input of a Canon HV40, which has manual control to adjust input levels and a meter on its LCD screen. With the stereo plug from the xlr to miniplug cord the sound playback was at whisper levels even though the meter read -12.

No phantom power coming from cam.

Plus there is only one meter on the LCD – not two like on prosumer level cams.

“It is possible that you ended up recording a DIFFERENTIAL signal on the two tracks (because of the way the cord is wired). And then when playing it back with L+R combined, they cancel each other. Do you still see a signal when you look at the meters (or in an editor?) Try listening to just one or the other channel by itself. Trying the adapter was a good debugging move. But you really need to know more details to arrive at any specific conclusion.”

Now that would be interesting. I’ll try this experiment myself and record with the stereo plug and see what reads in post.

Ps I would never record anything important without monitoring. I know the meters can read in a good range and the sound can be awful. But very low levels with meter readings high confused me.

OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

the 13″ has a firewire 800 port. For $200 you can get a 2TB raid like this one: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/ME8SRS20TB64/

Or if you don’t like that, look around owc site – lots of options.

But like the others said, 13″ is small for FCP. If you go for it, play around with setting custom window layouts and toggle between them.

OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

do a search for usb and media drive and you’ll get it. you should not use your system drive or an external usb drive as a media drive.

OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Thanks,

I was aware that it was a post question but I asked only because lighting pros will link to samples of their work and I assume they don’t hire a post pro to do this for them. That and I know they would be very critical of color and exposure issues and would want to show their work in the best light. (intended).

OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

[Todd Terry] “But… no, clips on a computer monitor are rarely if ever an accurate representation of what something will look like on a “real” TV monitor.”

Right. That’s what I’m asking. If we look at these clips on-line, do we really know the look you created?
I’m not suggesting it’s not helpful anyway, but lighting is all about the look, exposure, color. Since more and more video is being watched on-line, I’m just wondering how lighting pros address this variable???

When you save your files to be posted on-line do you color correct your clips specifically for the on-line version?

OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.